Thinking on one's feet

Running customers through our entire range of support tools is something I am designated to do. In one such demo exercise with a bunch of customers yesterday, I was encountering problems in navigating from one link to the other.

Not wanting to tell them that it is to do with backend issue, I just mentioned, “Sirs, am on wireless and the signal strength seems to be very poor”.


Convinced, the customers started walking out when one of my customer-friendly associates said, “Somu, I have a PC wired on the LAN. You can show it from there.” Little did he know that the problem was to do with backend and not my wireless LAN.


After 15 mins of embarrassment, I had to tell them what I wanted to avoid all along. “Sorry sirs. It is unfortunate that we are having back end issues now. I would love to walk across to the conference room sometime and show you the demo”.

Trust me. If you have been thinking “THINKING ON ONE’S FEET” is an individual trait, you are wrong. You might need others to shut their dim-witted mouths up for you to be successful in it.

9 comments:

  1. is this the meeting you were talking about

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  2. Truth always have more value than sugar coated false things :p

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  3. How true!! So true! Polished ways never work out !

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  4. :) Does it mean honesty is the best policy:)

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  5. oh man - i would have come out and strangled the over eager guy!

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  6. Dont we hate people who stab us in the back-end? LoL :-)

    Good to be here again!

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  7. Poor u somu,,,,,
    Sometimes it is better to tell it out than to make things worse!!!!!!
    Have a nice time!
    -Marutham

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  8. Is there a pic of you meeting your bigmouthed pal after that gaffe? :)

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  9. @Sophie
    No, this is not what I was talking about. This is something that keeps happening everyday,

    @Subra
    Truth sure has value, but not at the expense of issues within your org esp in front of potential customers.

    @Limsa
    Ha ha ! Correct,,, Confuse pannurathukulla oruthaan poondhu yelaathayum keduthutaan.

    And remember ? Your earlier tag is still pending. Now another one ?

    Too much.

    And yeah my vacation has begun ;o)

    Cheers,
    Somu K

    @Ramya
    Polished ways work out at times too... provided u ensure no one around messes up with ur polished ways.

    @Art
    Hmmmm Times have changed and sometime the age old proverbial references do not carry significance to every possible situation.

    @Visithra
    I wud have been glad had u been here and done that to him.

    @Vinesh
    Yeah yeah and good to have you back...

    @Marutham
    Correct... Being transparent is always the right thing to do.

    @Talkative man
    Aha ! Didnt really bother to take a pic with him ;o))

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