Handling Ignorance

Perhaps a tough subject, but here goes.....

Those of you who have a unique skill, and get paid for your work......how do you handle situations where your customer is just completely ignorant of what it actually takes to do what you do? Meaning.....either they refuse to pay, because they don't understand a certain limitation that is beyond YOUR control.......or, they become frustrated because you cannot do something the way they ask (due to limitations in SL, or other program limitations, that said customer has zero familiarity with)

This issue has arisen for me only a very few times......but it never ceases to stump me because I don't like to be rude, or appear unwilling to help......but on the flip side it can be really really unnerving when someone asks you to do something......and then isn't happy with it simply because they don't have any understanding of the technicalities. I know maybe I'm being too vague......

A while back I did a job for someone who approached me in-world, they wanted ads done. I was happy to help. Because of what they wanted, I had to create a file with a transparency for them to apply to their own images. That's the way the customer wanted it......basically they wanted a 'part' of the ad done, but wanted to do their own in-world pictures. Not a problem......

But, upon delivery of the files.......it became clear they had NO clue how to use any kind of photo editing program and as a result, became very upset, and then didn't want to pay for my work. I let it go......I couldn't seem to help them understand that an editing prgram was needed to do what they wanted...... and that was that. But I felt really bad about it because their initial request was sincere, and so was the intent to pay. But, I see time and again how simple ignorance can turn what should be a smooth transaction into a logistical nightmare. LOL

Do you guys encounter stuff like this......and what do you do? And I don't mean photoshop work....that was just an example...I mean ANY knd of ignorance that leads to frustrated and unhappy customers. Does it piss you off......or you able to just let it slide because you know you can't explain it so they'll 'get it'. I'm just curious....I really hate for people to be unhappy......

I get this in my rl job at times, as it's specialised and I work by commission. People (who are nice, just ignorant about some technical points) perceive faults when in fact those faults are normally considered to be intrinsic features of the medium I work in (glass), and part of what gives it it's natural character. So yes, I understand your frustration, and what it's like to have to spend time "educating" the odd person. It's not fun when you begin to feel like they see the "fault" as yours, rather than the normal and acceptable characteristic that most people would value it for.

Hasn't happened to me really in sl though, but I reckon give it time and it likely will. We can supply as much info as possible to ensure clients are fully aware of what they are purchasing.

One way to try to protect yourself in this kind of situation is just spend a few minutes talking to the customer, learning more about them then just the basic, "This is what I want you to do for me." They say they just want a transparency over which to put their own images- ask them politely, as if one artist to another, "What's your favorite program for that?" When they can't coherently answer, there's a red flag.

There is an art to asking people if they know what they are doing without sounding like you're challenging whether they know what they are doing. Just engage them in a little shop-talk and see if they follow.

Five minutes of friendly chit-chat, beyond just the business basics, might alert you if this is the kind of person who is going to cause you problems later.

Otherwise, always memorialize your deal in a notecard. Include precisely what you are doing in the notecard, and include what you are not doing too. That way you can always point back to it remind them that you pointed out in advance exactly what they were getting.

Finally, just be confident that you have done what you are supposed to do. Some people just aren't going to be satisfied, and will blame you for their inability to describe what they wanted to you, or to do something with it after they are done. If you've done everything you can do, you need to be able to turn on the "I don't care" switch so you don't continue to waste time and energy to no good cause.

Oh Tiffy I can just imagine what you might deal with! I'm guessing that glass is NOT an easy medium to work with. I have a BIL that does stained glass as a hobby and his work is amazing....but there are faults inherent to his work that make each piece uniquely beautiful. But I'm sure if one didn't understand the process.....they might knit pick it!

Amity you're right! I do normally do exactly that, and in fact during the course of my conversation with the customer I mentioned, they made many comments that suggested they were familiar with photo editing. But in hind sight, they likely just didn't want to appear ignorant to me. LOL Oh well..... I do definitely have a diplomatic nature so I can usually handle these scenerios ok......but every so often you get that 'one' LOL

It's one reason among many why I don't do custom work in SL. There are so many, many limitations for non-human avatar creation that are a product of the way SL works, and so many many folk out there who have no clue how SL functions. I'm simply not prepared to deal with "but I wanted [this thing I imagined that is impossible in SL] not [this thing that you made that is the closest possible SL approximation of it]! You're useless!"

I get the occasional customer in my store who buys one of my cat avatars then gets upset because the sit pose isn't RL-identical, or the tail doesn't move exactly the way they want, or, or, or. I'll generally make an attempt to explain clearly and in detail how the limitations of SL affect avatar construction (the limb-joints-in-the-wrong-place-for-a-cat thing's the commonest one). Sometimes they'll get it and thank me for the time I spent explaining it all to them. Occasionally they'll not get it and continue being cranky with me because I'm not a miracle worker and they didn't look closely at the pics on the vendorposters before making the purchase. I can't do anything about those, so if after a couple of iterations of "I've explained why it can't be done; there's nothing I can do to change it until LL change how avatars work" they're still stroppy, I bid them farewell and terminate the conversation.

Now and then I get someone with "I bought this avatar from you and I want to modify it but I know nothing about building in SL or texture creation" (or whatever the mod is they're interested in). I'll spend a few minutes getting them started, I'll give them LMs to the Ivory Tower or in-world texturing tutorials, and I'll explain the very very basics ("this is how you open an editing window and edit a prim", but they're not paying me for private tuition and I don't have the time or inclination to provide it for free, at length. So if a ten minute "here's the basic interface, this is what you need to do, here's places where you can get tutorials on it" is insufficient, I say explicitly to them that I don't have time to teach them all this stuff, I've given them resources sufficient to get them started and from here on it's up to them, and terminate the conversation. Again, mostly customers thank me for spending the time explaining, but every so often I get someone who wants me to do it all for them, and I'm afraid they go away a tad disappointed. I simply don't make enough from my SL business to make it worthwhile for me to provide ongoing free tuition to all my customers. Life's tough that way. *sigh*

I do custom shapes and skins , and I stress to the person, that the avatar is very limited, especially if they are wanting it to look exactly like them.

Once I am confident they understand that, I then proceed forward, and show them some past work, and such, so they can see what I mean.

not much else one can do.

(I do like how the one poster said about engage in shop talk to get a feel for their knowledge level)

Get paid up front.

Solves a lot of problems. If they don't believe in your skills, photoshop's for sale online. End of story!

laughs

It's a common assumption that your doing it for the love of the work in areas that are paid but also classed as esoteric, moral, social hobbies or charitable. Artists, shrinks, tutors, animal carers or programmers cop it all the time.

seeing as SL is in a big part a graphic art and scripted based work area, I'd hope peoples skills here come to be valued properly.

Coincidentally last night I spent a bit of time making myself almost the same as what you made this person. It took a while to find out which formats support transparent and then how to set them etc, my templates are pretty scrappy looking etc. If the person had tried as I have to make their own, they might understand it is a payable skill. It's not simple at all if your unfamiliar.

All I could think of to do is make a note card for each of your skills, listing the cost of time and the basics on how to use it or what it would cost for you to maintain it for them.

These programs are so double dutch to the average person, you could have an ongoing deal where they email you pics and you put the template on them etc.

I have to agree with the other posters here, its worth that extra bit of time chatting with the customer and nailing down exactly what they want and what they want it to do and as has been suggested, documenting your obligations to them and theirs to you.

Most people become ignorant when they do not understand the limitations of what you are doing and how they expected it to turn out. When I was with Adobe on technical support, the ones I found that were ignorant when asking for help were those that did not understand the limitations of the program and after explaining it to them their issues normally went away. However there will always be those that are just ignorant because they cannot comprehend what you are saying or have just said to them.

Do what Desmond says and get cash up front in future

I think you are right...it is all boiling down to communication. making customers aware of what you can and cannot provide for them. For 98% of people, this is a simple matter. There is a 2% however who are "special customers" (smile) and they keep us on our toes. I think Milla met one of these ones, and despite her best efforts, she was made to feel guilty for something beyond her control.

This can happen, unfortunately. And if you work on your own, this bad feedback can seem a bit overwhelming. Just have to deal with it as professionally as you can, work out what questions you need to ask them next time, then get your perspective back. The next satisfied customer hopefully should wipe it all away.

In RL I hit this all the time. Basically, the customer has to know up front exactly what you plan to do and what will be delivered, and afterwards the bill must say exactly what was done. The question you have to ask the customer is, "did I do the work as I said I would, or not? If not, I'll make you whole, if I did it, then why aren't you willing to pay me for my time?".

More to it than that when dealing with peoples' yachts, but it's the same for any industry in my experience. Good luck.

This is a big thing in RL contracting. Businesses will often have a strict flow of paperwork to ensure what the customer is to get and when they are to get it are documented in detail. It protects both sides. The contractor can point to the document when the job is done and say "You signed for <X>, we delivered <X>. Now pay up.". The customer can do the same if what they asked for isn't delivered. Jackie, Amity and others here have already mentioned the same sort of thing.

These documents can get to be a major drain on productivity, and are almost universally hated by the creative folks in a business. I often found myself having to spend more time on documenting work than actually working. How much focus you place on them depends on the complexity of the work you are providing, and the consequences of the customer being awkward (either through ignorance or bloody-mindedness).

I give things away a lot. Especially after a blitz build. They wind up mostly being simple art projects and nothing of any real function. (^_^)

That said... I had someone pester me for an ENTIRE WEEK for a full perms copy of one of my builds. He already had the no-mod no-copy version that I offered for free during the event. But, he wanted full perms in order to "learn how to build it". I let him know that the builds were intended to be temporary in the first place and that I give them out no-mod because they're my efforts done at the spur of the moment and I prefer them unchanged from the final form they take on when I'm done. (=_=)

So... The pestering continues for the week and I say everything short of "My prims. My rules!" I mean... For all the time, effort, and imagination he put into finding some convincing reason for me to give him a full perms version, he could have built his own copy. (=_=)

People like to be spoon fed. I get it RL and SL. I do what I can to teach, but, I rarely hand out a finished freebie simply to be duplicated. (>_<

Plus, my brain works funny. My RL job is to write test applications, which I do very well. The thing is, even though I have no problem writing a program that can send, receive, and log information from a finite yet unlimited number of hardware data ports... I can't explain how or why it works... I'm wonky that way. =^-^=

I'm not sure I agree with that. It can be a double edged sword, I get up front deposits for major work that requires special order materials (like replacing engines or major refits). However, unless you are absolutely certain that the job can be done on time and on budget I would recommend that you trust the client unless he's a known deadbeat, otherwise you can put yourself under a huge amount of pressure that you probably don't really want to deal with. "Well, I gave you all that money and I don't care if you got sick...where's my xxxxxx?".

I agree its horses for courses, personally if I want work done I tend to agree the price, delivery times etc. etc then pay the money up front, that way I know its paid for and if there is a delay I hope the person doing the job just lets me know

I wish more of my rl clients were like you! Cheers.

like someone wanted me to do a customized tramp stamp and wear it as an undershirt or a shirt so she can still wear her fave jacket.. i explained to her that it'll be too high so i suggested doing it as a jacket but she insisted so i did, as expected, she complaint it being too high and i handed her the back up jacket i made "take it or leave it" and only charged her for the upload rate

lol omg hon, i very much feel for your situation(s)... thank you for reminding me why i got out of the 'prepress' biz. ;0

most customers will understand that they contacted you because 'you're the expert' they needed to help them, but then you'll get those random few that seek to use you as their 'teacher' - when most likely, you are not a teacher; you're a 'do-er'.

being a good teacher is a two-sided affair - the pupil needs to be a 'good student.' or they need to find the 'right teacher' for them. (i've always said, those photoshop 'wow' books don't teach you very much at all; it's only dense, 'boring' books like 'real world photoshop' that really teach you how the program -works.- but that isn't to say that the 'wow' books aren't appropriate for everyone; sometimes it's 'just the thing' for some people who feel they want to 'zone in' on a specific trick and not worry about the underpinnings.)

a very good teacher, then, knows how to find the right resources for a student. but if that isn't the job you're contracting yourself out for, maybe that's explainable to your occassional 'problem client.'

i feel for you - i do really so like helping people with achievable ideas reach their design goals; it's a kick and keeps ya busy and usually paid nicely. but, i dunno, there was that 'side-effect' of feeling like 'you don't get to choose your clients' either... if you have your own ideas you'd like to concentrate upon, the road is much, much harder, but the rewards are then that much sweeter. (even if they are so often less than what you'd make hiring yourself out :\)