Do techie people 'get' customer service?

Recently I wrote about relationship marketing, and how there needs to be a great integration of the marketing and customer service functions to make it happen. Let's add IT to that list!

Software companies make great claims about how fantastic their systems are. They usually tell us they are very user friendly too. Well just take a look at this error message that popped up on me today when making some changes to a client's website using their content management system (name of system changed to avoid lawsuits!):

An error occurred while executing this script!

1.     If you are a ABCSystem user, contact the administrator of your website.

2.     Open file system/logs/error.log and search for a corresponding entry.

3.     Open file system/config/localconfig.php and add the following line:

$GLOBALS['TL_CONFIG']['displayErrors'] = true;

4.     Read the FAQs or visit the support page.

To customize this notice, create a custom template file named templates/be_error.tpl.

Er, excuse me? This is supposed to be a content management system used by non-technical people. Couldn't they find a clearer way to let me know what was happening?

Let's get all the people who write these messages in the loop on relationship marketing: who knows how much happier the world would be if we did.