Friday, April 10, 2009

Fud Buster Friday #35 - Twitter Users Complain

While replying to a number of Twitter users with issues related to their admins more than their servers, I was researching in Twitter's search and found these Twitters from a previous day this week:

TamaraBred: @lauriehevier Ooooo I hate it when Outlook doesn't play nice.
bethmshaw22: waiting for "IT" to fix my damn emails. hate outlook
DeepBlade: I hate it when PIM sync doesn't work 100% right... especially calendar.. Try mixing Exchange (Outlook) + BlackBerry + Google Calendar + iCal
BrightBold: I hate designing HTML e-mail. Tables and in-line styles and Outlook 2007, oh my! Go, Email Standards Project, go!
pikatchus: Outlook I hate you!
amatern: Enough lollygagging. There's work to be done! Outlook calendar, how I love to hate you (but I NEED you!)
kencamp: @jeff_hopper I hear you Jeff. I was very unimpressed with the whole of Office 2007 and hate Outlook 2007. What a hog!
LaMaite: Ode to Microsoft's Outlook: Oh Outlook. Sometime I love you. Sometimes I hate you. Today. Today is hate what I profess!
fredrikkjell: is archiving 6 months of emails. I hate Outlook quota limits.
michelleblogs: grrr. i really hate outlook and the fact that it doesn't let me send ANY HTML email templates without breaking SOMETHING.
sommernyte: I hate Outlook!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
profexorgeek: --stupid outlook. I hate you.

I show you this to remind everyone that when you force someone to use a tool it is not pretty out there away from the Mahogany floor. Also if you are migrating someone to/from a product, they will hate YOU more than they hated the product, especially if you make their life worse.

One should make sure the following go with the tool at a minimum, otherwise you grow unrest needlessly
  1. Training You can't appreciate, let alone like, what you don't know how to use properly. Refresher courses or advanced courses are always appreciated too and not just some self study online. Some of us learn by doing, reading, watching, repeating and not via osmosis.
  2. Proper Support and Documentation Intelligent people that can answer the phone and help the customer. Guides to usage, documentation or videos, blogs or wiki's should be accessible and encouraged.
  3. Management/Administration If there is a back end to the product or an aspect which is not up to the user, it is your job to ensure it is not only up to date and tested and verified, but it is always available. These days someone somewhere is working, sawing trees, flying a plane or hoping their bullet proof vest works when THEY need it.
Sure there is more, but in discussions with customers these are the top 3 which the people using the tools wish they had from day one.

Where do you or your products fail?

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