Businesses exist to help customers with their problems, and not giving them more problems than they already have. This may seem like a simple theory which anyone can tell if they bother to use common sense, and yet it is something that most businesses, big and small, failed to do.

For example, a customer needs to claim for a medical fee. It would help if the business concerned can make the entire process of approving the claim as simple as possible. Things like 12 hours or even 24 hours approval certain help. Imagine what would happen if the claim process is 1 month long and the customer is required to provide not only photocopied receipts but also original ones, handed to the company’s office by the customer himself. To make things worse, the company’s offices don’t operate on weekends.

Talk about helpful customer service

Another example, a customer recently lost his wallet to a robber. He called company A to cancel all his cards, and also to ask for an insurance claim (to cover the cost of the card replacement). Company A said yes, it can be done. The customer was relieved and thanked company A for it. Few weeks later, the claim was rejected. Why? Because the customer did not provide the original supporting documents (including the official bank statement which is required to cover the cost of the lost ATM card – worth RM 12). The customer was furious because he still could not get his credit cards back and he, who has been the customer for 5 years, was forced to show so many documents for something worth RM 12. He called the company up, scolded them and cancelled the membership on the spot. The company lost a very loyal customer who used to spread the good words about this company to his friends.

The above 2 examples, I believe, might have been experienced by many of you before. When we’re in trouble, we expect the companies which we’ve paid to help us, to…well…help us. Instead, what we get is processes and unnecessary procedures, which only give us more headaches than help. I must admit that it’s not wrong for these businesses to have processes and procedures, but they need to abstract them from the customers and not troubling them.

Look, if your business is giving me more headache than helping me, then I will just go to another business and you most probably won’t see me AND my friends. End of story.

I’ve been rushing project for the past few days like there’s no tomorrow. As a matter of fact, I’m supposed to submit my work on 23rd of January but I failed to do so. I won’t blame anyone actually and must admit that I’m bit slow, and also my mistakes for misunderstanding the requirements (thus the major revamp few days ago).

Some of my colleagues, on the other hand, preferred to complain about the others outside the company. Honestly speaking, they (not my colleagues) are giving us a lot of headaches but our side is wrong too, for not being able to stop the customers from thinking too much. However, I chose not to join because I feel that there’s nothing much we could do anymore since we’re already at such a stage. The only thing we can do is to work hard together and pull this through. I personally feel that’s not as demotivating as complaining.

Hopefully this won't be seen in customer service department

But don’t get me wrong. I don’t blame my colleagues because I myself am frustrated. But complaining really does not help. And it also doesn’t help to pour oil over fire – or to make someone who is already very angry…angrier. That’s why when some of my teammates started to complain, I chose to make them calm down and look at the bright side of things, rather than making the person even more pissed off.

Thus, the best thing to do is – STOP complaining and STOP discussing such negative things. No point going back to history to say who is right and wrong. We can do that once our project has been completed. For the time being, if it does make you feel better, then feel free to vent your frustration. You can complain, curse, etc. But don’t spend too much time and energy in that because it’s very demotivating and it might make you tired.

But if it doesn’t make you feel better after cursing……then try to minimize it. But the thing here is most people STILL complain a lot about things which they can no longer change…even if they actually feel worse after complaining (instead of better like some people).

My advice to you then is – if it makes you better, then do it for a short while. If it doesn’t, then don’t do it at all because complaining and cursing will not help make the situation better. It’s better to spend your energy elsewhere, where it can be more productive.

Remember that your project is still ongoing and you need to stay motivated to complete it.

And if you want to complain about your job or project being bad and sux…….try to think for those who have been laid off and are currently jobless. Maybe you should be glad you still have a job.

PHEWWW it’s finally done. I’ve been spending my Saturday and Sunday on WordPress upgrade. My previous blog was corrupted…..the plugins stopped to work….the stats gone…everything went haywired. Then I finally decided to upgrade to the latest 2.3.1 2.3.2 WordPress.

It’s not an easy feat. I should’ve done the proper blog renaming and migration beforehand but I didn’t. So now I have to restart my STATS from 0…….my Alexa from 0 (unavoidable even if I did move the blog address properly…but well, it’s the same domain, so not that bad)…..my comments in a total mess (thus you can see Cirnelle with the latest comment instead of Jamy)…..my previous postings are not associated with any categories.

It’s just too tedious due to the change in database structure. I exported the DB SQL script but the table structures have changed. I can no longer import straight in. I did a lot of manual modifications to the script in order to get my older posts back and also the comments (600 of them).

Been spending too much time on this so I finally gave up on the post-link-to-category kind of thing.

On a positive note, the new WordPress is very cool with a lot of cool plugins which were not available towards the end of last year. A lot of Web 2.0 and AJAX-enabled plugins. If you notice, there’s a page called Alvea Artwork where you can browse my sketches using Javascript-enabled popup.

Also, there’s the wonderful theme I am using here which allows you to change the backdrop (unless you disable cookie in your browser).

Feel free to play around the new blog. In the future, I think I can post my comic here….mmm…still thinking about it.

p/s…. if you found out any problems with this new blog. Please let me know via e-mail, or just drop a comment here. Thanks!