Year: 2013 Page 5 of 14

Beyond the Reboot #8: Basic Computer Skills

On October 14, 2013

Learn the systems you’re supporting. Understand how they work and it will save hours looking up information if you have it in your head. You should have a good understanding of Windows or Mac operating systems, or both. You should have no problem accomplishing simple tasks such as adding a printer, changing the display resolution and locating the status of network connections.

I am not saying you need to know everything, but if you need to ping an IP address, find a MAC address, or change the monitor’s resolution, this should not leave you clueless. As a bonus, these are often questions asked in interviews for IT Support jobs.

Touch-typing is not a much have. I know plenty of techs who hunt and peck for keys. Even I do not touch type properly. I don’t rest my fingers on the home row and click merrily along. But I do type very quickly and with a high degree of accuracy and can map out the QWERTY keyboard in my head so I know where my fingers are landing.

I still look at the keyboard sometimes and I still make mistakes. But I know the keyboard in my head and my fingers can fly across it. Typing speed doesn’t hold slow me down. Especially when documenting the work I have done. The quicker I can enter it, the fresher it is in my head and I can get back to helping other customers.

While this isn’t an essential skill for working in Desktop Support or other areas of IT Support, this is absolutely vital if you’re working in a Help Desk or Call Center environment. There, the emphasis is one speed and response time and the faster you type, the more call you can take and the happier your manager will be with you.

Beyond the Reboot #7: Stress Management

By Carl

On October 9, 2013

In Observations

Customer service is thankless work. You never get noticed when things go right, only when they go wrong. Everyday is a pile of new problems with more customers needing your help. The work is stressful and finding ways to manage that stress is a problem in itself.

Find ways to blow off steam constructively. While at work, consider taking a walk, listening to music or reading through your Yay Me! File.

I recommend keeping a Yay Me! File to read over when I need a morale boost. A Yay Me! File is simply a collection of all the nice emails, notes and Thank Yous I’ve received for work I’ve done. I keep a folder in email where I save all the nice emails I receive. I archive those messages into Evernote so I can keep them outside of Outlook.

I also keep a text file in Evernote where I copy down nice things people have said to me when I’ve done work for them. It can lift my spirits when I’ve had a rough day or when I get overly stressed out.

One of my biggest problems is leaving work at work. Even when I leave work, my mind will often be on the difficult customer I had or a problem I can’t seem to solve that’s eating at me. Try to leave it all behind when you get home. It does no good to worry about the day behind you.

Think of the evening ahead and do something fun. Turn on the TV or play a video game and turn off your brain. Once you’ve stopped worrying about the problem, your unconscious mind will get to work an answer may come to you later that night or when you least expect it.

Managing stress can be one of the hardest parts of a customer service job. All day long you’re helping other people with their problems. It’s important to remember you need help with your own problems and you need to relax and unwind too.

When I get home I ask my wife how her day was and we talk about it. And I get some stories from her about the craziness of managing activities for a group of senior living homes for people with dementia. And then I get to share my day, I talk about the frustrations of the day. I talk about the best parts. I talk about anything that’ been bugging me about the day.

It’s the perfect time to get anything out of my head I need to in a constructive way. I’m not yelling at her. Nor am I blaming anyone for things that went wrong or the troubles I’ve had. But I get the pent-up feelings out so I don’t take those same feelings to work with me.

When I lived alone, I would come home, throw on my headphones and turn some music up. Good thrashy death metal or maybe some super fast techno and just dance around my room. Or sing along and throw myself on to my bed at the end.

It was a great cathartic release.

There is no perfect advice for beating stress since different things work for different people. But find what works for you. I’ve been known to put in a video game and mow down aliens or zombies for a few hours to burn off stress. Or get in the car, roll the windows down, turn the music up and just drive down a beautiful stretch of road.

When I feel the most out of it and just needing to get away, I go to the movies. I love losing myself in some other world for a couple of hours. My problems disappear when the world is at stake or when there’s a killer on the loose who needs to be caught.

Sometimes escapism is the best way.

In the end, I feel better. And because I do, I can be better at what I do. A clearer head leads to better problem solving and making my customers happy.

Beyond the Reboot #6: Time Management

By Carl

On October 3, 2013

In Observations

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

By Carl

On October 2, 2013

In Observations

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

By Carl

On October 1, 2013

In Observations

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!