Now and then

Saturday, June 5, 2010 | Blog Post

I am proud to be a 70′s child – we dont need to worry about playing police-and-thief under the rain, drinking water from tap, sharing one chopstick eating fried noodles with friends at school, runs on bare foot playing football, swimming butt naked at the beach, drink sweet coffee, no handphones, no Facebook and no Twitter … i wish i can go back time but we know we can’t, nobody can … things have changed and we have to move forward … coming to think of this, i remember commenting to 1 of my friends facebook post about “Customer is always right” slogan … before i go further and just so you know, i am a freelance web developer – i started developing websites way back in 1999. It was Jenny who got me dived into web development world, i was just a computer technician then.

But long before that, somewhere around 1990/1, i was introduced to photography by a classmate who brought his father’s camera to school but that was about it until i pursued my tetiary education at ITM Perak in 1992 when i knew i had a new hobby – photography! My roomates Albert Sajim, a Sarawakian, was the person who dragged me to learn photography – i took Computer Science while Albert learned Architecture (and photography was made compulsory for Archy’s student). Our ITM Perak campus back in that time was just shoplot studios where any passers by can sit behind and you can listen to the lectures. Apart from hitting the library for photography books, Albert will share some of his knowledge with me; and the rest was history.

Being a freelance web developer and a hobbyist photographer; i believe experience developed thru time … i met many people (customers) with different preferences and backgrounds – they were my “experiences”. Focusing more on my web development skills, i rest my photography ignition power to the lowest; making photography my 2nd choice …

Coming back to the point of me writing this; here are some famous slogans or idioms or whatever you may call it which need a twist in this era …

CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS RIGHT

The “Customer is always right” slogans was made famous way back in 1909; but it may no longer applies in today’s business – well, at least that is what i believe. I commented a friend’s FB post about this and he totally disagrees with me saying that “the customer is always right because they pay you” ; in other words, since the customer pays you, they can get what they want, how they want it, when they want it and possibly get another extra??

I said to my friend that “Customer is NOT always right” because NOT ALL customers has the ABILITY TO DO WHAT THEY HAVE YOU FOR. Personally, i believe that the idea of “Customer is always right (because they pay you)” is wrong. This is implying that whatever the customer “wants”, the business (person) should “give” them (customer) simply because they think they “can”; REALLY!? Some would say that “because a customer knows best what they want” – i agree and also disagree on this. Have you ever told your make-up artist how to do their job; “i dont like too much red, i dont want to put on the fake eyebrows blah blah blah …”, chances are that your make-up artist would simply leave because you had been an insult to them – when comes to make-up, the artist knows best, not the customer; the most you would probably say is “make me beautiful” and that’s all … and YES, the customer has to pay! Unless you are the daughter of some Kings from Africa or England, then it is a different story

Some arrogant customers of an Airline when asked to switch off their handphone but refused to do so; or customers who refused to put their seat up right during flight take-offs or landing – if you are the flight attendant, would you just let them do what they want because they paid for their tickets?

Try walking into any exclusive restaurants or any KFC outlets and ask them for their recipe after you had paid for the service (food) – do you think that they would give you what you want just because you are a customer, and you paid for the food? Similar to when you bought a book; after paying for it (the book), does that mean that you have the right to all of its contents that you simply make a copy and share them with your friends?

I came to know one awesome photographer in-town who had some issues with one of the attendees from his photography seminar after knowing that the attendees used the photos shot during the training for his own (business) purposes. It was made agreed that all materials during the training should not be shared/used by all attendees without the trainer’s consent. The attendees shot the photo using his own camera, he paid for the training fee – but why can’t he used the photos from his own camera? There’s a very thin line that the attendees crossed; and that is the “intellectual property” of the trainer.

Like i mentioned it earlier, if you’ve hired a make-up artist for your wedding and you paid him/her; does that give you the right to keep his/her make-up set too? That’s just silly!

Any professional photographer who has done their business the right way should know that any photos given to their customer after their service does not give the customer rights to the photographs eventhough monies exchanged for the service unless a signed photography contract has been spelled out mentioned otherwise. By default, “The author owns the copyright” – in this case the photographer owns the copyright, NOT the customer. Many photographers just simply skip having the model release or photography contract signed; either they are too lazy to go through the whole process, or simply ignorant and wanted to get to your pocket fast. All benefits goes to the photographer; and you have no control over your own images.

Any photographer who like to think that they are “professional” just because they have been too long in the field/business, had a studio, shot many commercial assignments; but without a model release or photography contract – these photographers are not doing their job professionally. They are just experienced photographers, not professional

YES i agree that “Customer IS the business” but they are NOT always right.

On the contrary, I know many bosses out there who would ‘sacrifice’ their loyal employees merely to satisfy their unreasonable one-time-off customers – what a retard!! Any bosses should protect all their staffs because they are the company’s “asset/valuables”; and if your boss are those kind who would “stab” you merely to bow down on some customer’s unreasonable request – leave now!

PRACTISE MAKES PERFECT

I heard this a lot during my school time … My Math teacher used to stress this especially on our Ad.Maths session; i took her advice, i brought my Ad.Maths books every where i go, even to my bed … It worked for me and i got better result for my SPM exam … and so i took Computer Science during my tertiary education, again Ad.Maths were part of the subjects … so i practised, and practised, and practised but it was like it never gonna ends. It just keeps coming back; so many application to apply and to re-learn with Maths … i can never perfected my Maths, i can only improve my knowledge … just like Fiona said to me, how can one be perfect when we know that “nothing is perfect”? she learned from her boss; “Practise Makes Improvement” …

CONTENT IS KING

When developing a website, the most important thing to me is the Content. I would definitely put priority to the functionality of a website rather than having a pretty design. But so much on functionality that presented in a badly manner would somehow soars the whole idea too … so, Content is King; Presentation (Design) comes second; after that what? … With the new social medias like Facebook, Twitter and Blogs, “Conversation is King, Content is just something to talk about” … Remember during the olden days of Advertising when we used to say “Word of Mouth” is more powerful than anything else on the classified ads … we now “tweet” !