Supporting our Customers

Last Sunday evening, after a busy weekend, we decided to get a 'quick' snack at out local pancake restaurant (de Panoramahoeve). The restaurant is in the middle of a forest  and has a nice outdoor terrace.  Because of the nice (warm) weather we decided to sit outside.   After a few minutes we heard the rumbling thunder of an approaching thunderstorm and decided to move inside (as many customers did).  5 minutes later all hell broke loose and rain came pouring down.

We ordered the menu and the drinks where served, no warm servings came from the kitchen for a considerable time and many clients started to call the waiters for an explanations why they have to wait so long.

The explanation was simple. The waiter told  "The policy from the restaurant is that the kitchen stops when weather conditions changes rapidly and customers have to move away from the terrace. When the situation stabilizes the kitchen reviews who moved inside and who left for home. Then the orders are adjusted based on these changes and the cooking process resumes".  After thinking this over, this seems logical from a business-perspective but not from a customer-focus perspective. We went to the restaurant to have a quick-snack and not for a long evening waiting because of internal policies.... (but the explanation helped a lot).

An eye opener ! in Oracle we sometimes forget that our policies are not always customer focused and to make it worse, we do not always explain the reasoning.  Sometimes, even I have to think hard why things happen the way they happen....  One of my mentors in my first Oracle years learned me 'when I cannot find an explanation for an error in 10 minutes  its an error, file a bug to get this resolved !'.  

In the era of change in Oracle Support, lets agree to focus on explaining our policies and improving our processes. In fiscal year 09 we have already started with explaining the processes on our Customer Services Days  (Oct6 for the Netherlands).  But lets also reduce the number of inconsistent policies and go back to the basics  "make our customer successful with  Oracle products".

Looking forward to your feedback an suggestions for explanation or improvements !

Hans Wiggerman

p.s. When the kitchen resumed service - we where served quickly by a smiling waitress that made us forget we had to wait bit longer then usual.