The customer-relations tag has no wiki summary.
0
votes
0answers
23 views
Software for a “registered users self service” backend
Do you know any server-side software package for "registered users self service" / "service portal" backends?
Background: software shops (software developers) need a web interface where customers can ...
-1
votes
2answers
156 views
Setting up a refund policy for a commercial WordPress theme [closed]
I'm developing a WordPress theme and am planning to sell it myself. I was thinking of having a 14- or 30-day refund policy for customers, but my concern is that people can essentially get the theme ...
4
votes
3answers
276 views
Customer Requirements Contains Equations that Cancel to Nothing
I have a project where the customer requirement specifies a report and contains mathematical equations for the contents of some of the columns on that report. One of the columns on this report is a ...
4
votes
3answers
175 views
Customer ask firmware source file
Recently my company was asked by a customer to develop a control board that includes firmware and PCB layout development. After finishing development the customer will buy the control boards at ...
2
votes
4answers
210 views
How to justify technology choice to customer?
When freelancing / contracting a customer will typically specify functional requirements, acceptance criteria, etc, and the implementation details are in the developer's hands.
As a developer your ...
17
votes
4answers
863 views
Should I continue to perform freelance work for customers who keep on demanding more without paying?
So a client comes to me and says it needs some work done. Basically 4 tasks, which I agreed to perform for a certain price. The customer creates the job offer (a fixed time and price job) on ODesk, I ...
7
votes
3answers
219 views
How to explain to my customer that the hosting provider is terrible, security-wise?
As a freelance developer, I sometimes have to access the administration panels of hosting providers of my customers. It is an astonishingly frightening experience. Below are some points I noticed when ...
8
votes
6answers
587 views
How to refuse to give an access to passwords to a customer without being unprofessional or rude?
Let's say you're creating a website for a customer. This website has its own registration (either combined with OpenID or not). The customer asks you to be able to see the passwords the users are ...
-1
votes
4answers
205 views
Should I Leave off the Currency Symbol? [closed]
I'm upgrading a desktop application that currently displays the currency symbol anytime money values are displayed or printed. A friend of my from the UK told me "Whenever British people see software ...
0
votes
2answers
145 views
How can describe slow connection issues?
I have been working on a website containing 3d maps, virtual 3d tours, etc. All of the content is large like images and video.
The problem is the site performs well under normal speed connections but ...
2
votes
0answers
54 views
New website - best practice for requirements specs? [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
Extracting user requirements from a person who does not know how to express himself
As a hobby freelancer I'm new to this. I've never had a non-technical client before ...
12
votes
7answers
1k views
What to answer to a customer who asks which one of two equivalent technologies must be used?
As a freelancer, I am often asked by my customers what they must choose between similar elements, neither of which being better than another. Examples:
“Do I need my e-commerce website be in PHP ...
5
votes
2answers
140 views
What are your advice, methods, or practices to take out the most from a day on-site at a customer?
We just deployed a large software that affects the way the user work-day looks like in many aspects. It changes a lot of things in the way they interact between eachothers.
The developers of the ...
11
votes
2answers
307 views
Intelligence as a vector quantity
I am reading this wonderful book called "Coders at Work: Reflections on the Craft of Programming" by Peter Seibel and I am at part wherein the conversation is with Joshua Bloch and I found this answer ...
29
votes
9answers
1k views
How to reply to incomplete requests from potential customers?
Working as a freelancer, I receive many weird, invalid or incomplete requests from the actual or potential customers. The most frequent case is this one:
Hi,
I need a website where people can ...
1
vote
4answers
181 views
Alternatives to pulling updates off the website
So, I think it look pretty bad when you release an update and pull it off the web. I'm pretty sure this has happened for at least two of the the last three Delphi XE2 updates. I'm not complaining ...
9
votes
7answers
275 views
When should complexity be removed?
Prematurely introducing complexity by implementing design patterns before they are needed is not good practice.
But if you follow all (or even most of) the SOLID principles and use common design ...
316
votes
21answers
80k views
My customer wants me to record a video of how I develop his software product
Working as a freelancer, I often see strange requests from my customers, some of which can negatively affect my daily work¹, and others trying to set some sort of control. I usually encounter those ...
9
votes
12answers
583 views
How to handle “can you add just a few more fields” type of requests from customers?
Very commonly we have feature requests for fields that only one customer wants. This, at best, clutters the application's code. Often when we look in their database a few months after adding the ...
10
votes
6answers
432 views
Changed The Customer's World - how do we handle this?
Some time ago, we were tasked with a project to come in and replace a customer's old Mainframe system with a new intranet ASP.NET solution using SQL Server as the back end. Part of this was a ...
14
votes
10answers
835 views
How can I get paid for reducing technical debt?
I'm currently working for small company that has few technically complicated products. I'm the one and only developer for one of them. About a year ago, I got the legacy version of the product and ...
9
votes
9answers
1k views
Revenue sharing with customer who is unable to pay development fee
I have a potential customer who has an idea for an ipad application but is unable to find sufficient fundings for this.
One idea that came up is that I do the work either for free or for a minor fee ...
8
votes
3answers
324 views
How to approach client who started using my server to train staff?
I'm in the process of finishing and delivering a web development project. The contract specifically specified that client is responsible for adding all content and installing. The deliverables ...
16
votes
4answers
565 views
How to dissuade a customer who just learned a technology and wants to use it everywhere?
My customer recently discovered what is URL Rewriting, without completely understanding what it is, how it works and the pros and cons of it. Now, he asks for lots of strange changes in actual ...
19
votes
6answers
586 views
Explaining floating point precision to customers
What is the best way to explain floating point rounding issue to customers?
I know
http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E19957-01/806-3568/ncg_goldberg.html
as well as the entries in the C++ FAQ and ...
18
votes
8answers
1k views
Customer buys software for function it cannot do and then complains. How to resolve?
I have come across this several times when selling a prepackaged solution.
Customer buys the package, which clearly sets out that it can do XYZ, but the customer wanted it to do ABC.
The ...
3
votes
6answers
289 views
How do you keep your customers informed about the exact time you spent on their projects?
In my answer of the question about what are the important points to consider when starting your own company, I mentioned the fact that when the customers pay per hour of work, there must be a way for ...
7
votes
7answers
468 views
How detailed is the estimate you show your customers?
For custom software, when you are giving your customer an estimate, how much detail do you tend to include?
Do you:
break it down into small tasks that can be done in a few hours and give them ...
13
votes
7answers
827 views
What is the best practice for gathering requirements when a customer does not know what he wants? [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
How do you deal with changing requirements?
This question must have been asked a thousand times but there seems to be little progress in this area:
I have asked the ...
14
votes
6answers
526 views
Hourly rate benefits for the customer
It is good for a developer to work on a per-hour basis, but it's hard to explain the advantages of hourly rate to the customer.
What are your arguments on the hourly rate for the customer? How do you ...
8
votes
11answers
784 views
How are we supposed to deal with Customers who don't give a damn?
I have some customers who expect everything for next to nothing. They also want things to behave a certain way, or look a certain way, but when explaining to them why it's not a good idea to implement ...
4
votes
6answers
250 views
Customer won't decide, how to deal?
I write software that involves the use of measured quantities, many input by the user, most displayed, that are fed into calculation models to simulate various physical thing-a-majigs.
We have ...
3
votes
4answers
321 views
Have you ever had to sacrifice programmer integrity for customer satisfaction?
I mean did you ever reluctantly adopt a less than ideal solution because management told you that "customer is always right"?
I'll go with mine first. A few years back, me and my team developed a ...
20
votes
10answers
3k views
Hand over source code to customer
I have made a couple iphone applications for a customer and was asked today to hand over the source code so that they could do the maintenance if this should be required.
Until now, no code issues ...
7
votes
1answer
1k views
how do I write a functional specification quickly and efficiently
So I just read some fabulous articles by Joel on specs here. (Was written in 2000!!) I read all 4 parts, but Im looking for some methodical approaches to writing my specs.
Im the only lonely dev, ...
6
votes
4answers
228 views
How do you educate your customers?
Customers need some education because they think different. Customers think:
changes are not a problem in any time of the project
details are not important (exceptions even less)
time does not cost ...
0
votes
4answers
113 views
how to get clients and domain experts on board and interested
So I think this might be me soon!
Excuse my ignorance in this post, I am not formally educated and young! =S
(Taken from http://theoatmeal.com/comics/design_hell)
Im building an inhouse application ...
11
votes
6answers
699 views
How to deal with customers who don't understand the complexity of their requests? [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
Explaining technical things to non-technical people
Working with stakeholders who don't know the first thing about technology can be interesting. On one hand, I ...
8
votes
6answers
435 views
How do you respond to: “Ever since the update…” questions from clients?
Ever since the update, people keep calling and saying "Ever since the update X, Y and Z are slow, bad and crashing"
This has happened ever since the dawn of updates.
What do people expect? Gamma ...
11
votes
15answers
1k views
What was the worst experience you've had with a customer/user? [closed]
As a programmer, you have to interact with your users/customers in some way to both develop and support the software they pay for.
What was the worst experience you've gotten from those ...
4
votes
3answers
398 views
Customer relations in agile development
My management just asked an unprecedented question in my (admittedly brief) history with the organization: "What can we do to help you?"
Simultaneously, we're working several big projects for a ...
3
votes
5answers
803 views
How to deal with users who think their computer could think? [closed]
Along my career, I had to deal with users who think their computer could think:
My computer hates me!
or
He just do this so he could laugh at me!
This is often a joke, but some users are ...
