Somu's Scribbling Pad: Thinking on one's feet

Thinking on one's feet

posted by Woodooz on Wednesday, January 25, 2006 9 comments

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:

che sara sara7:34 PM, January 25, 2006
is this the meeting you were talking about
Subramanian Ramachandran3:12 AM, January 26, 2006
Truth always have more value than sugar coated false things :p
Ramya Shankar9:03 AM, January 26, 2006
How true!! So true! Polished ways never work out !
Art9:06 AM, January 26, 2006
:) Does it mean honesty is the best policy:)
Visithra11:23 AM, January 27, 2006
oh man - i would have come out and strangled the over eager guy!
Vinesh11:43 PM, January 27, 2006
Dont we hate people who stab us in the back-end? LoL :-)

Good to be here again!
Marutham3:34 AM, January 29, 2006
Poor u somu,,,,,
Sometimes it is better to tell it out than to make things worse!!!!!!
Have a nice time!
-Marutham
The Talkative Man8:18 AM, January 29, 2006
Is there a pic of you meeting your bigmouthed pal after that gaffe? :)
Woodooz11:00 AM, January 29, 2006
@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))