From the Editor’s Desk: Customer Service (Premium)

My first job in banking was as a teller for the Bank of New England in the late 1980s. I had no idea what I was doing at first, obviously, and so I had to lean on the experience of those I worked with. But early on, I had the strange experience of standing next to our head teller and listening to her tell a customer incorrect information about some process they needed to perform. I didn’t speak up at the time, but because our branch was in a mall and the customer worked there, it was easy to find them. And so I did, during my lunch hour, and I told them about the mistake and what they really needed to do.

These situations are always difficult, but as is the case so often in life, the right thing to do is usually obvious, even when it’s not easy to do. And over time, as my experience grew, I would eventually develop the courage to intervene when needed as mistakes were made and, hopefully, to do so gracefully.

But not always. Dealing with the public is difficult, and that felt doubly true when I was standing between them and their money or their paycheck getting cashed. And I had my share of run-ins over the years, leading to an obvious spin on the adage, which in our minds in banking was more correctly stated as “the customer is rarely right.” But that’s an easy stance to take when you’re the smallest cog in a gigantic national-scale financial institution and it is somehow left to you, that most underpaid of employees, to be on the frontline for any abuse or vindictiveness that a customer might have. It’s a different thing entirely when there is no giant corporation standing behind me, way behind me, bearing the ultimate responsibility for that relationship.

Put more clearly, when something goes wrong here on Thurrott.com, I’m on the line, because it’s my name on the site, my responsibility, my fault. And partly through being the way I am, and partly because I was simply shielded from the business end of this business for so long, customer service just isn’t a strong suit in this online era of kneejerk reactions. The very thing that might cause someone to be interested in my work, to follow the site, and perhaps even subscribe, could be the very thing that severs our relationship down the road. That is, you may celebrate my railing against Apple and its anti-competitive business practices, to use an obvious example, or you may be hurt by that because you use Apple products, and any condemnation of that company is an implicit criticism of you and your decision-making. You’re not stupid, and you make good decisions. So the problem is me.

And, yeah, the problem is me. If I wasn’t outspoken, and if I didn’t actually care about the people who use personal technology, I wouldn’t be relevant in any way. And I also wouldn’t eventually upset at least some of the audience. It’s a tough thing to navigate, and so all I can do is try and stay true to who I am, base my opinions on evidence, and adjust as new information comes in. No one is right all the time, but to be truly credible, you must be able to admit when you’re wrong. Honestly, you also need to be able to laugh at yourself. And this is an area in which I feel that many people in this increasingly sensitive age have trouble with. Well, that and allowing contrary opinions to their own.

So that’s a lot of babbling, but I write this in the wake of my ranting about the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) and its ridiculous decision to block Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard. I wrote that mainly to publicize the overt threat that Microsoft president Brad Smith delivered to Britain, which didn’t get enough press and was often under-stated when it was covered at all. But I also agree with Mr. Smith, and of course I had to state that in what can only be described as incendiary language. Language that some readers from that country took exception to.

I had to address this. But I left what I originally wrote in the article because I’m not a fan of rewriting history. And I then added a rewriting of the final couple of lines of that article refocusing my ire on the CMA as opposed to Britain.

And I have a few thoughts about this whole episode.

The people who complained and, in some cases, threatened to unsubscribe are, I think, being overly sensitive, in the sense that criticizing a country is on the same level as criticizing a company, product, or service. The country I live in is spiraling in many ways and is fair game for all kinds of criticism from all comers, and I’ve been critical myself. (In fact, I called out the Biden administration in this same article for its ridiculous stance on curbing the power of Big Tech no matter the circumstances, all while doing absolutely nothing to rein in bigger abusers like Amazon, Apple, Google, and Meta.) It was not meant to be personal.

Looking past the jeering–and some support too, to be fair–no one offered a cogent debate refuting Brad Smith’s complaints about this bizarre overreach by the CMA and its quest to prevent imagined future crimes. And I think that’s because most people actually do agree that what the CMA is doing is wrong, and that those who “just can’t stand Microsoft” (or whatever) don’t have much to add beyond that. These types of complaints seem to fall apart when it gets to details.

Most importantly, none of that matters.

For all the outrage I may feel about whatever topic, whatever wrong or slight, I do want it to be clear to anyone reading that my outrage is not directed at them, ever. And in this case, I have clearly failed. I was insensitive.

And not for the first time. There are smaller, less confrontational examples of this issue, such as me making a statement about how traveling light is always right and then a reader pointing out that travel is stressful and that if packing a bigger bag and checking it reduces stress, then maybe that’s the right choice for that person. And here we go again. I was upset and I unloaded on the wrong target.

Will it happen again? Yeah, probably. I’m as human as the people who were upset that I criticized the UK, a place I happen to love, too, by the way. But being aware helps, and while I struggle to describe this event as a net positive, I have absolutely learned something. That’s not great, but it’s not all bad either.