Wednesday, January 19, 2005
The Customer is Not Always Right
That comment I made in a message on the Universal Thread has caused more than one person to reply, "If I took that attitude, I'd be out of work". Oh, really??? What if the customer wanted you to do something unethical or worse, illegal? Would the customer still be right? In all fairness, the thread was about setting colors on a form. However, a bigger view of things should clarify my position.
First, you have to look at how you market yourself and your business. Are you a consultant? Do you work in a corporate IT department? A programmer? No matter what you call yourself, your job is to create applications that solve customer problems. (In a corporate IT shop, your customers are other employees.) You should consult and talk with them about what works best and why. They may come to you with ideas about how they want the application to look or behave. For whatever reason, those ideas may not be valid. Consult with them and tell them why. If, after doing that, they still insist on the "wrong" way of doing things, then do it...unless of course it is unethical or illegal.
Let's take a look at this from a different view. You go to your investment advisor and say, "I want to invest $1000 in Foobar Corp.". Your advisor may say, "That's a bad idea because Foobar is under SEC investigation". The advisor has done his job. You can still insist on investing in Foobar, and the advisor will probably take your money. There is nothing illegal or unethical about this.
Second...and this can be one of your arguements about the color settings on a form. Microsoft has published UI guidelines for Windows. Good or bad, they are what they are....and come as a result of several millions of dollars of study. One of the guidelines says that Window colors should be set by the user in Windows Display Settings. Your customer may insist on specific colors. But, what happens later if the customer hires a new employee that has trouble seeing the data on the form due to some type of vision imparement? If they could set their own colors, they would be fine. But, the colors the customer originally picked won't work for this new employee.
So, you see...the customer is not always right. He may have an opinion, and that opinion may be valid, but he is not always right.
First, you have to look at how you market yourself and your business. Are you a consultant? Do you work in a corporate IT department? A programmer? No matter what you call yourself, your job is to create applications that solve customer problems. (In a corporate IT shop, your customers are other employees.) You should consult and talk with them about what works best and why. They may come to you with ideas about how they want the application to look or behave. For whatever reason, those ideas may not be valid. Consult with them and tell them why. If, after doing that, they still insist on the "wrong" way of doing things, then do it...unless of course it is unethical or illegal.
Let's take a look at this from a different view. You go to your investment advisor and say, "I want to invest $1000 in Foobar Corp.". Your advisor may say, "That's a bad idea because Foobar is under SEC investigation". The advisor has done his job. You can still insist on investing in Foobar, and the advisor will probably take your money. There is nothing illegal or unethical about this.
Second...and this can be one of your arguements about the color settings on a form. Microsoft has published UI guidelines for Windows. Good or bad, they are what they are....and come as a result of several millions of dollars of study. One of the guidelines says that Window colors should be set by the user in Windows Display Settings. Your customer may insist on specific colors. But, what happens later if the customer hires a new employee that has trouble seeing the data on the form due to some type of vision imparement? If they could set their own colors, they would be fine. But, the colors the customer originally picked won't work for this new employee.
So, you see...the customer is not always right. He may have an opinion, and that opinion may be valid, but he is not always right.
// posted by Craig Berntson @ 2:17:00 PM 
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