Kudos to Ross Re: Agencies to avoid/Blacklisting/etc

[Dan BRINEGAR <vr2link -at- VR2LINK -dot- COM>]

Bravo to Ross Squire (of KTI) for his response about the
"employers-to-avoid" flame!

I'm  glad to see that at least one potential employer can take a hit, and
then respond like a grown-up. I have quite a bit more regard (and less
suspicion) about KTI following Ross' post than would have been possible had
no response come forward, or had such discussion been banned.

Ross appears to be able to take such a hard criticism *without* having to
be protected from it.

Now, I will admit that just a few short weeks ago, I succumed to a bad mood
and sorta flamed a job-posting, so feel free to take my comments with a
(large) grain of salt.

Some of this may be more related to marketing or customer service than
strictly techwriting issues, but strictly; where would techwriters be
without their customers? (And where would agencies/employers be without
their customers and employees?)

No business or profession can do their jobs if they ignore or are
"protected" from hearing about what their customers and suppliers think of
them ... Consider the four-door, 6 MilesPerGallon Thunderbird for an
example of what happens when someone attempts to protect decision makers
from what their customers and suppliers think.

When the subject of "blacklisting" or a goodguys/badguys website came up,
the first situation I thought of was the newsgroups Internet Service
Providers maintain about their services: such lists can and do often
degenerate into neverending flame-fests between disgruntled customers and
employees, principals of the providers, and employees tasked with
supporting those lists...

About two years ago, I was shocked (*SHOCKED* I tell you!) when a "short
while"  after the ISP I worked for went online, it was mercilessly,
scandalously, scurrilously and obscenely flamed  by a former customer out
where everybody could see it in <az.internet.general>. I was up all night
trying to respond with a reasoned, calm-yet-passionate response to that
customer -- after I sent one private message to the customer offering to do
anything I could to make things right, and one message to the group
spelling-out our mission and policies (and why we never *ever* would do
that to a customer, even if they were real mean to us), I looked back into
the group to see that two other fellow-employees had flamed him back, other
ISPs were flaming us, each other, and the customer... <sigh> and noone ever
responded to my post.

Our own employees flamed us once in awhile <tremble>...

I can only bring myself to look into such newsgroups about once a month
now, and only rarely contribute to them publicly, but I feel it is *quite*
necessary that we be able to have even discordant discussions about the
things we care about: even if we can't all be grown-up about it all the
time, when we *do* get grown-up discussion going, we all benefit.

How did we benefit by getting flamed in the newsgroup? My boss and I stayed
all night awhile later and brainstormed a list of the things we did that
ticked customers off, the things we did to make them happy, and how we
could address those problems with policy changes and training,  and went to
work on them to make sure that customers were satisfied, and try to let
others know that we took it seriously. (and what did we do about the
employees that flamed us and then quit? We tried to figure out why someone
would want to work at an ISP, and worked on communication issues within the
company. It almost worked, too, till we found out that you can't make money
on dialup internet services <blush>).

Without the full spectrum of discourse available on the Internet, the only
information available is propaganda.

Eric Wrote:
>BTW, just for the record, I do not think this posting
>reflects particularly good judgement or discretion.
>I'm still undecided if it's "appropriate" for the list,
>but am leaning toward amending the posting
>rules to forbid this kind of message.


..and then "Ross Squire <KTINY -at- AOL -dot- COM>" replied to the original posting:

>I guess there is always a first time for a royal Internet flame.[snip]
>With that said, just a couple of responses to some of the inaccuracies in the
>posting:[snip]
>We strive to satisfy every client and consultant that we meet.  While we
>clearly have not created a raving fan here, we do have many, many satisfied
>consultants that have been affiliated with KTI for many years.  If you are
>interested in consulting opportunities in the NYC or Boston Metro areas,
>please consider spending an hour with us to make up your own mind.
>
>Thanks for your attention.
>
>Ross Squire
>Vice President, Client Services

-----------------------------------------------------------
Dan BRINEGAR  Information Developer/Research Droid/Mac Guy

http://vr2link.com/ <--- Under Construction

"My friends: Everything we ever learned about Subjunctive Parable Routines
in COBOL is Wrong!!!!!
Recursive Allegory Classes are the way to go I have SEEN THE LIGHT!!!!!!
[Feast.Container --  ProdigalOffspring.Class -- MammalianLivestock.Obj]
... it's all clear to me now."

vr2link -at- vr2link -dot- com

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