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The 5% Rule

jonpauluritis.com

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Re: The 5% Rule

#191

Post by Bjartr »

WallyFunk wrote: post #63
Bjartr wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which means a business should always have the best interests of customers at heart and always assume good faith I thought it meant, at least originally, that a customer's choice to shop, or not, at your store needs to be treated as your failure to attract the customer, not the customer's failure for making the "wrong" choice.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_customer_is_always_right https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_customer_is_not_a_moron

Looking further into it, there's more nuance to it. Of the several people who popularized the phrase in the early 1900s, one of them was Harry Gordon Selfridge. While he is lumped in with the others, the phrase he used was actually "The customer is always right, in matters of taste." With the idea being that a salesperson shouldn't judge the wants of the customer. If they want an ugly sweater, sell them an ugly sweater, don't try to convince them to get a good looking sweater.

Others said slightly different things. Like Cesar Ritz who said "The customer is never wrong", where the idea is that the moment the customer complains, you take action to solve the problem the customer has stated, even if they are incorrect.

Re: The 5% Rule

#192

Post by SturgeonsLaw »

chasebank wrote: post #169
AndrewDucker wrote: post #89

Related: 2% of people respond to oxytocin differently and are just "bastards" no matter what. https://www.hugthemonkey.com/2007/03/paul_zak_oxytoc.html

I've taken MDMA on 4 separate occasions, in the crystal form each time, at a dose of 200mg. Each time, I've watched my friends' eyes pop out of their skulls, sweat like crazy and hug everything in sight. I felt slightly better. Drugs most definitely affect people differently. Edit: I can't read. Ha. I read oxycodone.

It's all neurotransmitters in the end anyway :)

Re: The 5% Rule

#193

Post by IanCal »

thewebcount wrote: post #131
IanCal wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, screaming at a worker whose job is to answer the phones is not reasonable. It shouldn't have cost them anything either - you shouldn't be paying incorrect bills. Had they filed official complaints? Gone to any regulator? Had the issue escalated?

I will say that I have since grown and become more emotionally intelligent and am far less likely to do that now. My comment about being raised by wolves was intended to convey that I was brought up poorly and not taught how to handle myself in situations like this without yelling. > Had they filed official complaints? Gone to any regulator? Had the issue escalated? At the time I wouldn’t have known how to file an of…

I think your comment was fine by the way, I got the raised by wolves part and you clearly stated you weren't proud of it. It's entirely understandable as a response, and it's not like it's some mortal sin. I was more responding to someone saying that was the right thing to do.

Re: The 5% Rule

#194

Post by sph »

semireg wrote: post #95

I handle 100% of my indie app's email and telephone (yes, telephone!) support. My app is designing/printing labels. Printers in general, and label printers specifically are awful and inconsiderate robots, unable to perform the simplest printing job when you need it most. Sure, 2-5% of my users are nasty/mean, but let me tell you a little secret: They are immensely frustrated with their life situation and they know ho…

> Sure, 2-5% of my users are nasty/mean, but let me tell you a little secret: They are immensely frustrated with their life situation and they know how simple the solution should be.

Yours is a wonderful comment and you must be a very empathetic person.

Sadly, the vast majority of people tend to have just enough empathy to get by (we definitely are outliers!) and have a really hard time understanding that the very mean person most probably just had a terrible, terrible day or week, and lashed out on you. Yeah, it sucks and it is non excusable, but we all go through the worst days of our lives eventually.

In my experience it is wrong to assume that 5% of people are nasty, like the article says. It's a sad view of the world. 5% of people are currently blinded by life that has just shit upon them, and patience and a little selflessness would calm them down, and maybe, make their shitty day even better. And if they are complaining about something, whatever their attitude, there is probably something wrong that needs your attention.

Sociopaths exists but they are very rare, and often they just want to go about their day, not caring much about you to do anything good or bad.

Re: The 5% Rule

#195

Post by lifeisstillgood »

brianwawok wrote: post #160
gnicholas wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A lot of people contact support half-expecting that they'll get fucked around, and you see a complete 180 in their tone as soon as you offer a decent solution to their problem. I occasionally get rude customer service emails at my startup, and in nearly every case the person apologizes after receiving a personal reply (from the founder, in my case) within 24 hours. In many cases, the customer actually becomes an ad…

75% convert. 25% are just rude forever. I have had to fire a few aholes from my SaaS. They would ask a question, get an answer, do the wrong thing, then call my support team member profanities. So I just refund their last bill and delete their account, and send them to a specific competitor I don’t like.

>>> and send them to a specific competitor I don’t like.

:-)

Re: The 5% Rule

#196

Post by BeFlatXIII »

akira2501 wrote: post #99
Ozzie_osman wrote: post #32

Many laws, company policies, etc exist to prevent those 5% from causing damage to the rest of the population. So 95% of people have to live with restrictions and bureaucracy that merely exists for those small group.

That might be the wrong way to look at it, or rather, it doesn't take into consideration the natural minimum. It may be that just 5% of people will continue to break the rules _despite_ the bureaucracy. So, how many of the 95% are following the rules _because_ of the bureaucracy? I suspect it's much higher than most people would care to admit.. just look what happens when the system or enforcement mechanisms break do…

How many of those 95% will find their own equilibrium outside of official laws? Do the laws only apply strictly-defined caps so everyone is on the same page as to what is or is not acceptable?

Re: The 5% Rule

#197

Post by shultays »

Beltalowda wrote: post #35
plugin-baby wrote: post #16

> As an example: one time a lady threw a huge fit about a 2-3 inch smooth brown hair being in her meal when her server was a blond girl and the entire kitchen staff were 35+ year-old Mexicans/ African Americans with completely shaved heads. Now I'm not saying this woman brought the hair into the restaurant and planted it in her meal... but I know for a fact it couldn't have been from any of our staff in the restauran…

Whether it's from the kitchen staff or waiter is kind of irrelevant; throwing a "huge fit" is ridiculous regardless. Kitchen staff make mistakes all the time because it's hard work with a lot of pressure. You deal with it by saying "sorry to be a bother, but I'm afraid there's a mistake" and that should solve it. No fits needed. (Of course, we have just one side of the story and it could be that the staff was rude or…

We don't really know what her tantrum really was. Was she apologized and compensated for her meal or OP told her "we don't have anyone with black straight hair" (and while he has such hair, heh)

Maybe it was a hair stuck to someone's clothes and that fell of (or maybe it was OP's hair indeed if even he don't go near the food!). Or that blond person's hair looking darker after being soaked in meal. Or someone with curly hair had sime straight strands or they were less curly after falling off. I would assume any of those before assuming customer intentionally put that hair

Re: The 5% Rule

#199

Post by sodapopcan »

IanCal wrote: post #193
thewebcount wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will say that I have since grown and become more emotionally intelligent and am far less likely to do that now. My comment about being raised by wolves was intended to convey that I was brought up poorly and not taught how to handle myself in situations like this without yelling. > Had they filed official complaints? Gone to any regulator? Had the issue escalated? At the time I wouldn’t have known how to file an of…

I think your comment was fine by the way, I got the raised by wolves part and you clearly stated you weren't proud of it. It's entirely understandable as a response, and it's not like it's some mortal sin. I was more responding to someone saying that was the right thing to do.

I didn’t say it was the right thing to do, I said it was reasonable. Maybe “understandable” would have been better.

Re: The 5% Rule

#200

Post by metadat »

graderjs wrote: post #188
metadat wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey jiggawatts, I agree, and want to also add: If you're in software / tech (if this is an incorrect assumption on my part please say so and I apologize in advance; I've become used to seeing your posts and my sense is this might be your domain), on average you're working with people who are significantly more intelligent than the average adult human being. In my experience, the rate of nasty / miserable / mentally u…

> significantly more intelligent than the average adult human being. ? You'll probably take offence to this, and I'm sure this will contradict your general experience, and will probably even set off some folks' pet pride narratives about themselves working in software...but I think that's bullshit. I don't think software people are smarter than any other profession on average, and I think almost anyone can learn to p…

Hi graderjs,

In latching onto the elitism angle, you might have misunderstood the point I'm trying to make. It's not that software people are so much smarter or better than other professionals. It's that software engineers (and possibly professionals in general, but this goes beyond my realm of significant experience) are more intelligent on average than a random person off the street. For example, look at Instagram comments sometime. They tend towards truly unreadable nonsense. The people pushing out these gems are the kind of randos I'm referring to. To be clear, I'm not saying software people's average mental capacity exceeds that if plumbers, doctors, bankers, etc. Only that on average it's way above the true average intelligence of the general public population.

A long time I worked on a free messaging app. In debugging issues I occasionally had to look at random selections of messages from the DB (conversation history), and it was utterly depressing. The average human is much lower, depressingly so, than I had previously fathomed.

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