I'm going to need you to come in on Saturday

So you may have noticed a lack of postings recently.  Well, last Friday about 3 minutes before I was to grab my bike and go home I get a call from a high up person.  So to make a long story short I was on a plane last Sunday to visit a customer and I just got back a day or so ago.  This required me to work all weekend to set-up my laptop so that I could get access the materials I needed to do all of the things I required while I was away.  So I lost Saturday.

We flew the red-eye on Sunday and then I worked straight until about 9 pm the next night.  Followed by a long Tuesday and then a half-day on Wednesday which I followed up with a long flight that was delayed by an hour.  That was my last week.   Couple of lessons in general for those who are likely to interact with customers.

1. If your customer's company is non-American then expect to spend lots of times with misunderstandings.  I wasted most of Monday because we couldn't communicate with the customer effectively.
2. Make sure your support staff at your home office are available and will help you.  We had a lot of problems because we could not get in contact with the people at home.
3. Expect your customer wants to own every aspect of your product regardless of whether or not they should.  My area is completely automated and self-configuring and the entire trip was about the customer wanting to tweak things in the system.
4. Make sure you bring a program manager or someone with you.  Program managers are people and relationship managers.  This is important because as a technical person I didn't have the time nor the energy to take care of that aspect and I really appreciate my coworker who went with me as he did a great job of keeping the entire process on track, documented, and productive.

Anyway I have more posted about the trip I am sure though they are for another time.