Stupid is as stupid does
When I first started working in the Macintosh market, it was arguably one of the most depressing jobs a technical professional can ever do: Front-line telephone support for consumer products. Five years of it, all told, working for computer hardware and software makers. In a job like that, you talk with a lot of people who don't have any technical knowledge at all, people who mightn't be all that smart to begin with. It's common to trade "stupid user stories" with friends and colleagues as a release valve for the pressures of the day. After that, I did network administration and system support for another half-decade. Again, it's a tough gig unless you have excellent interpersonal skills. Mine leave something to be desired most days.
The same dynamic exists in the game market, I've learned. Some of the most vocal members of the game community are young people and others who suffer from problems associated with arrested emotional development or anger management. For reasons that aren't exactly clear to me, those particular folks -- a minority, to be sure -- use public forums, e-mail addresses and chat services as a way to vent their problems. For some, it's therapy. For others, it's just another outlet for aggression. Whatever the case, it's often ugly.
My friends and colleagues in this business and I have long been alternately fascinated, repulsed and nonplussed by this sort of behavior. Occasionally, we've even been dragged down into the muck -- that's one of the reasons I stay away from GameRanger now, and my frustration with this whole culture has been fodder for past Tikkabik rants.
There's something that concerns me a bit, however, and while it may not be a trend, it's happened twice now that I'm aware of in the Mac game market, and I hope that's it: I'm referring to the public chiding of "stupid" users. MacPlay's recent e-newsletter sported a satire column where a fictional angry man at the company took users to task for silly questions. I asked the author of the newsletter who confirmed for me that it was indeed based on real feedback they've gotten. And yesterday, Inside Mac Games posted an article called "dumb letters," which make similar sport of intellectually challenged users who have asked them for help.
Whatever you think or say in your downtime, or in confidence to someone else, or screaming into your pillow at night, is one thing. But to show such open, bald-faced contempt for your customers is a big mistake. At the end of the day, whether you're a journalist, a game developer, a publisher, or a service provider, these people are the ones paying your bills -- they're the ones who click on your banner ads, who buy your advertiser's products, and who pay for the subscriptions to your magazines.
The customer may not always be right, but he always deserves to be treated with respect. By all means, treat them with a sense of humor. But don't forget the respect part.
Comments
You said it all, Peter. Agreed completely.
Posted by: Corey | March 28, 2003 09:14 AM
Well said.
Chris
Posted by: Chris Barylick | March 28, 2003 10:45 AM
It burns when I pee.
Posted by: Utterer | March 29, 2003 10:40 AM
I agree with Peter that customers are to be treated with respect, and I think for the most part, the IMG editors did a pretty good job with their answers.
IMHO, most of the "dumb letters" on the IMG site deserve contempt: a "customer" who wanted to return a game after playing it for a year, the person who wrote an obscenity when told that IMG doesn't support software piracy, the extortion note, etc.
Many of the letters weren't written by customers (i.e., people who pay for your product) at all; and it's a truism that some people who may be real customers aren't worth trading with anyway.
A friend of mine tells a story about the retail framing business that he runs with his wife: one particular woman "customer" insisted that they re-do a job no fewer than 3 times.
On the fourth time, the "customer" marched into the shop, demanding yet another re-do on the basis that "the customer is always right."
My friend's wife removed the picture from the frame and, handing the artwork to the woman, said, "Madam, that may be so: but you are no longer my customer."
Peter is right, making public fun of people for their lack of knowledge is unkind, but contemptuous treatment of the dishonest among us is just desserts.
Posted by: Capecoder | March 30, 2003 07:39 AM
Well, in our trade, there are two kinds of customers -- there are the ones who read our sites (page impressions/unique IPs) and there are the ones who buy advertising off our sites based on the numbers of eyes that are coming to read our content. It's even more true on the Web than it is in print that it's the latter group that pay most of the bills, even for sites like IMG that pull in subscription revenue with a "Pro" service.
IMG complicates this a bit by offering a store that people can buy stuff from, so they add a third type into the mix too.
Regardless, all of them need to be treated well for the business to succeed.
Posted by: Flargh | March 30, 2003 10:03 AM