Carl T. Holscher fights for the customers.

Category: Observations Page 19 of 88

Boring Technology

Boring, stable technology is king. If you’re running a huge site, you need things to work and work reliably. In this interview, my brother who also happens to run ReadTheDocs talks about sustainable funding for open source projects, getting people to work to support them without it, and boring technology.

Starting around: 1:06:30 Eric talks about stability and proven solutions in tech.

As you stay in an industry longer and see things come and go you realize new things don’t actually matter. Especially if I use something in production. I want to have been around for five years minimum. Because I value my time so much more now than I used to.

If I go and try to use this thing that just got released I know I’m going to be beating my head against it for the next five weeks or whatever. And when I use it in production I will be hating it. This is why ReadTheDocs uses boring technology.

Photo of woman with a pen and paper notebook

Text Travels

Exepundit write a short post today that really struck me. In Some Helpful Cautions he writes,

“Would the person who sent you that e-mail be completely comfortable if you forwarded it to another person?”

I never assume my email is private. I never assume the recipient of my email is the only person who will see it. Let me tell you a story about working in tech support. There are no secrets.

When you’re supporting customers, you generate a lot of text. You send email. You type instant messages. You update tickets. Your words are everywhere. Those words end up in the most unlikely of places.

Text Travels

When you update a ticket, that ticket could be seen my management, either yours or the customer’s management. Is this how you want to come across to management?

Ticket notes can be sent to customers. Did you write anything in the notes you wouldn’t want the customer to see? I’ve had help desk reps or other technicians send the entire ticket, with all notes and history to a customer or to another team without my knowledge. I have never been burned by this because I never make notes that disparage the customer or lie.

Truth

Never lie in ticket. Don’t say you did something when you didn’t. Don’t say you updated the customer if you did not. Don’t say you installed a program if you didn’t. Don’t say you called someone and left a voicemail if you never dialed their number.

Your lies will come back to haunt you. You’re doing a disservice to your customer and yourself. So don’t lie. Tell the truth about what you did, what you didn’t do and most importantly, what worked to resolve the issue.

Help Future You

Future you needs the help of Past You to be successful. I’ve fixed thousands of problems over the years. I’ve assisted other people with fixes and workarounds for their problems. Some took minutes and others took hours, days or weeks.

Always write what you did! Future You will thank you. I’ve gone back to old tickets many times to find “issue was resolved. Closing ticket.”

“Update fixed problem.”

Worked with _____ team to resolve issue.

WHAT DID YOU DO?

How does that help you or anyone? You’ll see this issue again. I guarantee when you fix an obscure issue you’ve never seen before, it will come up again!

Help yourself. Help your team. Help you 6 months from now when you remember fixing the issue, but have no idea what you did. Leave yourself a trail to follow.

List what you did. Specifically. Leave ticket notes behind that anyone could follow. Because in 6 months, or a year, or even 6 weeks later you are that person.

There’s nothing worse than solving the same problem over and over and starting from scratch each time. Give yourself and your team a head start.

Ads in Times Square

Collecting Data

I’m fine with giving Google my data. I’m happy to let Waze read my calendar and peek into my email to let me know how to get places and when I should leave to arrive on time.

I’m happy to let the world of Internet services revolve around me to offer me snippets of information or convenience. Though what I really want is for them to work better.

Don’t show me ads for socks because I bought socks. I just bought socks. How many socks do I need? You should know I bought socks yesterday. How about showing me ads for new shoes. Or another article of clothing. Maybe it’s time for a new belt or a nice hat.

If you’re going to collect and sell my information, would you please so something useful with it?

Here are some ideas to help you out.

  1. I am 6’5″ and 350 lbs. I am a tall, fat man. I wear a size 14 shoe. Tell me what stores actually stock such an endangered creature. I don’t mean tell me where they are “available” because when I walk in and am greeted with two all-white tennis shoes and a single pair of dress shoes, that doesn’t count.

  2. You’re using data of what I bought to offer me… more of the same thing. How about looking at what other people buy when they buy this item. What about a complimentary item? When people buy these socks, they also often buy these shorts. After buying these socks, people look at shoes. Or a water bottle. Something tangentially related to those socks. I don’t need more socks.

  3. You know what problems I’m having by what I write about, email, add to wish lists and look up. Why are you not offering me solutions? You know I’m looking at NAS storage devices, recommend one. You know I am looking for a new hard drive, how about a recommendation?

  4. Things go on sale all the time. I wait for things to go on sale before I buy them. If you know I’ve added something to a wish list, why not tell me when it’s on sale? You’re practically guaranteed to get a sale when you tell me the thing I am interested in is available for less money. Why are you not doing this?

Heavy

The West Wing has me thinking about the death penalty.

The news has me thinking about how scary it is to be Black in Baton Rouge or Minnesota.

Did you know there was a group dedicated to tracking and filming crimes and uploading them to deter youth from violence?

Guns are everywhere and mass shootings are as routine as running out of milk.

The jobs are gone. Eaten by computers.

Happy Thursday.

Using Facebook Group emails to post updates

I’ve spent 942 hours playing Destiny That’s 5 weeks 4 days 6 hours 8 minutes 45 seconds of my life I’ve spent inside a world created by Bungie. I love this world and my gaming friends. Bungie puts out news about the game on their blog which some of us read religiously and some ignore completely. In an effort to get the information into people’s hands more easily, I wanted to set up a way to get the new post to our Facebook Group every time Bungie publishes a new update.

I thought this would be simple through IFTTT but they removed the Facebook Groups channel. I learned that each Facebook Group has its own URL and Email address. It’s usually Groupname@groups.facebook.com. However, my group’s address did not work. I had to setup the address since we never had (and didn’t know we could.)

Facebook provides a good article for creating a web and email address for a group I administer. In short, do this:

To create a customized web and email address for a group you admin:
1. Go to your group page and click the … in the top-right corner.
2. Select Edit Group Settings.
3. Next to Web and Email Address click Customize Address.
4. Enter your web and email address.
5. Click save.

Now you’ll be able to post to your group using that email address as well as being able to access and shared the Group’s page directly at http://facebook.com/groups/GroupName

I used this to create an IFTTT recipe to send Bungie’s Destiny updates to our clan’s page.

IFTTT Recipe: RSS to Facebook Groups (via email) connects feed to gmail

This recipe can be used to send any RSS feed to any email address. Not just for Facebook Groups. But it solved the problem I had.

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