I bought the sob story and she watched as I quickly and easily fixed the machine. She was upset about my apparent "rough treatment" of her $800 computer (about $2,000 in today's cash) and called the owner a few hours later to complain. Shit rolls downhill.

The biggest problem came not from the work done. I fixed that keyboard and had her out the door inside 10 minutes. Rather, the problem came from her perception of service and value.

I've carried this lesson with me since. When I had my own company I charged much more than the going rate, excessive even in light of my simple and absolute guarantee. Customers winced when they first heard it but never, ever complained when the work was done. Instead they'd simply spread the word and send me even more business.

Sometimes you have to fix things immediately. When a blade farm is down and a 20,000-seat call center is sitting around playing Solitaire, things need to move quickly and they do. Resolve it fast and the customers are happy. But for everything else, well...

I realised a couple years ago that customers, despite how often they write WE NEED SOLUTION NOW!!1!11shiftone, are actually dissatisfied when they send in a problem and within two hours receive a complete solution. Maybe they're angry they didn't see it themselves, or maybe they think it's something we should have warned them about.

You know those instant cake and batter mixes which require an egg and milk? Totally unnecessary. Those ingredients could easily be added to the mix so all you'd have to do is add is water. In the beginning companies like Betty Crocker did just that. They found that sales went up drastically when they required the use of a fresh egg and/or milk. Market research showed them that by having to add such ingredients, the people using these instant mixes somehow felt like they were actually "cooking". Their customers get a lot more warm fuzzies and feel better having to do more -- and totally unecessary -- work.

When a ticket comes in with a question that just makes me want to bash my head into my desk again, I often don't send the answer despite knowing it after reading only the first two lines of the complaint. Instead I make them add an egg and some milk. My first response is to make them do some busywork. It's psychological. They feel like the error is more complex than it really is and that they're involved in the process of resolving it.

That doesn't mean every request for additional information is busywork. Sometimes it can narrow down the scope, but my boilerplate includes all possible resolutions. I just delete as necessary.

My charge has already seen this in action. He's learning quickly. $SomeBank insisted on an urgent and speedy answer to a stupid question. $OurOlderBigApp isn't supported on Windows 2003 but that's what they installed it on and were surprised that it didn't work. Paul told 'em so from the start. They're not happy with this answer. Paul now knows to first ask them for logs and maybe wait for a day before sending the exact same response about Win2K3 not being supported along with any old error line from the log that somehow confirms this.

Paul doesn't know our full error code system but he already agrees that we need a Root Cause: 17-Fuckwit.