Carl T. Holscher fights for the customers.

Month: October 2013

Beyond the Reboot #6: Time Management

Customer service is all about time management. There is a never-ending line of people who need help and only so many hours in the workday. Managing your time effectively has a lot to do with the amount of power you have to delight your customers and the team around you.

It’s easy to try to race through everything to get it done. But it’s often like treading water while fighting a hydra. You fix one problem and two more pop up. Take the time to plan your attack first and then try to work through the problems to help your customers.

Try to schedule appointments with them. Try to finish the more important things or easy things first to clear the way for the harder, more time-consuming tasks. There are nearly limitless ways to deal with a stack of problems ahead of you. Find a way that works for you and your customer.

Sometimes there simply aren’t enough hours in the day and not everything will get done. There are days when you have to stop and pick up where you left off the next day. There are far more customers and problems than people to fix them and there’s only so much you can do in a single day. Your customer doesn’t care that you have 30 other problems to fix. They only care, and know, about their own. That’s when your skills at communicating and empathizing come in to play.

Time management is important before the job even begins. For every IT support job I’ve ever had I’ve gotten a question that goes along the lines of, “You have a customer at your desk, the phone rings, a critical ticket comes in and you have an email demanding your immediate attention. What do you do?”

My answer is always, “It depends.”

Then I walk the interviewer through my thought process. Is one of the customer’s a VIP? Does the President, CEO, or VP of something need something from you? You go see them first. Take care of them because they’re the highest in the food chain. Then handle the issues based on severity and speed.

Is a computer not booting? That person takes priority after the CEO. But if the person at your desk or on the phone has a question that can be answered or resolved is under a minute, handle it.

These are not hard and fast rules. These are guidelines. There is no hard and fast rule in Customer Service. You do the best you can and apologize to those who have to wait.

Recently, I had a meeting setup for the Director of the organization where I work. He needed his conference room prepared for a meeting. At the same time, I had to staff a new employee orientation. On top of it, my team was short-staffed. In fact, I was the only person working out of our team of three.

Thankfully, my manager was able to provide coverage for the orientation while I helped get the Director’s meeting setup. I wonder if the new employees had any idea they were being treated to an orientation by someone higher than their own local IT guy.

I struggle to find another specific example since they’re nearly a daily occurrence. As I mentioned before, use your best judgment. You know your customers better than anyone. You’ll know who can wait and who cannot.

Look out for yourself

No one is going to look out for you like you.

This is a lesson I learned too late in life. I stayed at jobs through ultimately misplaced loyalty and promises of better things.

This contract will go full-time. You will get to advance. There will be good raises. What it all added up to was being told there is reason to stay here.

Only there wasn’t.

I dutifully stayed and waited. I did great work. I asked about the promised things. Next year. Next quarter. The carrot always being pulled further away when it looked to be just in reach.

Eventually I learned. I learned to do what was in my best interest. Was there a better job? Go get it! Is there a shorter commute? Grab it! Is there more interesting work? Go do it!

When the challenge in my work disappeared, the only thing lest was money so I was an IT nomad. I went to work for the highest bidder.

I no longer listened to the Siren’s song of a future. I was there, for now.

8 months here. One year. Two and a half years. Until the fun left. Until the challenge was gone. Until there was nowhere to go. So I went.

I learned to value what I was worth. Not just what I thought someone would pay me. I learned to start interviewing the companies as much as they interviewed me.

They need me more than I need them.

There is a ton of work out there for IT people. I can afford to be selective. I can find the right situation for me.

And I have. I know what I want. I know what I’m worth. I know what is going to kill an opportunity for me. I know who I am and I am in control.

I turned down an offer that was nearly double what I was making four years ago because it wasn’t the right place for me. It felt insane.

The hubris of the situation is not lost on me…

But I knew I could do better. I didn’t have to take this job because there was a career out there for me. I just had to go out and find it.

And I think I have.

I’m just waiting for the call.

Nothing’s Wonderful and Nobody’s Happy

News in America is like entertainment in America. Absolute garbage. We are shown tons of footage about a mother who possible killed her child. We hear about the sexual misdeeds of an IMF guy. We hear about these terrible things that in a week are not even newsworthy. ((It is highly suspect they ever were to begin with.))

The problems in Japan are still ongoing. South Sudan is now a country. I am sure there is tons more news out in the world going unreported or under-reported so we can hear more about what vapid celebrity has done who lately. It is ridiculous.

I can’t remember the last time I got any real news from a mainstream news source. I cannot recall the last item that I actually thought, “Oh this is important and this is interesting. This is something I really needed to be informed of.”

No, it just doesn’t happen.

Entertainment is heading down the same path. I miss the days of story telling in television programs. I miss the narrative and cast of characters built by writers who put time and effort into crafting a tale for us, the audience, to follow along and get something out of.

Will and Grace is an extremely witty, well-written show. It does it’s fair share of dealing with issues of homosexuality, relationships and dynamics of differing social groups. But it also makes me laugh. I laugh a lot watching the show because the characters have witty things to say because it was written for them.

Television shows today are dominated by Reality TV. ((Which is a total misnomer as nothing that goes on can in any way be misconstrued as real.)) There are shows exploiting the struggles of 16-year-old girls who get pregnant. There are shows highlighting the poor parenting by certain sets of parents who cannot be adult enough to work out their own problems. There is even a show about toddlers being forced to enter beauty pageants and the insane lengths their parents will try to win. ((Isn’t this a mark of the End Times?)) There is no end of the celebrity worship of rich people doing… very little besides screaming at each other. ((Any “real” housewives spinoff.)) It’s all garbage.

There is so little good in television today. Movies are the last holdout for storytelling and intelligent conversation it seems. Though if you’ve seen what passes for a Comedy, I question even the importance of the movie genre for anything but sucking money out of our pockets. ((See: Remakes and sequels dominating theaters.))

I miss the 90s when there were stories to be told and people to follow in those stories. Sure, they are not gone today. However, flipping through our 80 or so channels in our apartment results in very little tolerable television. I struggle to find anything I would even consider having on in the background while I do something else.

We even have a completely dysfunctional political system and government. We already have the least productive congress since 1948 not working for us. The biggest problem is they can’t agree on things and compromise.

“And so the legislative trickle has slowed to a drip. From January until the end of May, the last date for which comparable statistics are available, 16 bills had become law” compared with 50 during that period last year, or 28 in 2007, also a time of divided government.

We have the most divided, fervently stubborn government in years. It’s no wonder they can’t agree on anything or get anything done. No one wants to give a single inch and when one side tries to compromise with the first, the first side changes the rules and decides they don’t really want to do the thing they just agreed to. It is maddening to watch. I am pretty sure if you gathered 535 kindergarteners together we’d see more cooperation.

We have a government, news media and television entertainment that are all broken systems.

To fix the news, focus on the news again. Stop the celebrity worship and the pundits offering their opinion on everything. Report on real stories that affect the life of the people in your community.

To fix TV, spend money on more pilots. Try out new ideas. Stop stealing each other’s original content and shows. We don’t need another show about Rich Women Screaming, Pawn Shops or People Searching For Junk To Sell.

To fix the government is the most simple of them all. Work together. Agree with each other. Try to stand in the shoes of your opponent. ((And remember they are not supposed to be your opponent at all!)) Work together. Get things done and for once, convince us, the US citizens you’re supposedly serving that you’re actually serving us!

Page 2 of 2

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén