Category: Observations Page 65 of 90

We’re all human

On March 1, 2013

Apple has a reputation for stellar customer service and Chrisg shared his story of The Coolest Experience I Had as an Apple Store Employee.

He talks about assisting a group of students who were all communicating in sign language with each other and their teacher.

And then it dawned on me that all of these students were all speaking to one another in sign language.
They were from a school for the deaf.

The story continues later in the day when he came upon the same group on the mall’s food court and learned it was an assignment. The students were all pretending to be deaf to see how they were treated as they visited different stores in the mall.

The next part of her story made me feel awesome inside: She said that I was the only person they worked with all day that had treated them like real people, and actually tried to be as helpful as the situation allowed. They had all been impressed with my idea of using TextEdit to communicate, because nobody else in the mall had even bothered to grab a pen and some paper.

You never know who will get to help everyday. Every interaction you have with a customer is a chance to make their day a little better. In this case, Chris got to make these kids feel good in contrast to everyone else they had met. And in return, he got the great feeling of making their day better through great service.

This reminded me of a time when I worked for Best Buy over the Christmas holiday. I was in college and needed the extra money so I was a seasonal employee with Best Buy working in the PC/Home Office department.

One day, I had an older gentleman come into the store. He was looking to buy a printer and I quickly realized he was hard of hearing so talking out.

He wasn’t deaf so he didn’t sign and neither did I, but I did have a pen in my pocket so I pulled a sheet of paper from a nearby printer and we had a long conversation about printer features and costs. How many pages would this printer hold? What did I recommend for pictures versus documents? How much was the ink going to be when it ran out? What was the most reliable machine?

I “talked” with him for a half hour answering all of his questions and at the end he thanked me and made his choice and wished me a Merry Christmas.

It made me feel great that I could take the time to help him get exactly what he needed and he didn’t feel neglected.

The best feeling in customer service is when I can give great service because the reward is how you feel afterwards.

Rookie Mistake

By Carl

On February 22, 2013

In Observations

I was reading A Rookie Mistake over at Support Ops today. Chase talks about an exchange with a customer that went like this.

Me: Where are you logging in at? I’ll take a look and see what’s going on.

Customer: My desktop computer.

This got me thinking about the assumptions we make with our customers. In the course of my job, I find myself in similar situations all the time.

For instance, the newest version of the VPN client we use at work was updated and VPN is no longer in th name. It is now called Cisco AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client.”

A computer savvy person wouldn’t find a huge problem with this. However, when I’m trying to explain to a customer they need to click the VPN Client icon and they don’t see anything that says VPN they become confused.

Along with the name change, the icon also changes from a padlock icon to a generic looking bubble. So the customers who are creatures of habit and have learned what they need to click by name and icon are not completely lost.

Working with customers who have varying levels of computer savvy and varying understanding of the English language means my job is part translator and part computer technician.

Sometimes I must translate geek to human, other times geek to English, sometimes just plain English in terms my customer can understand.

I try to keep a rule in mind when I am going to help a customer and that is simply to assume nothing. Don’t take anything for granted. Don’t walk into a situation assuming your customer knows anything. Start with simple questions and see where they take you.

If the customer is computer savvy, you will quickly find out and can elevate the conversation. However, if the customer doesn’t know anything about their computer you don’t frustrate them further.

More Thank You’s

By Carl

On January 17, 2013

In Introspection, Observations

There are not enough “Thank You’s” in my line of work.

I’m always the villain.
Never the hero.

It would be nice to hear more thanks for the work I provide to my customers everyday.

This got me thinking. How often are other thankless jobs recognized and appreciated?

How often does the legal team get a Thank You?

How often do Human Resources get a kudos?

What about your own manager? Do you ever tell them you appreciate their time and efforts?

It’s easy to get lost in feeling under appreciated and overworked.

Take today to tell someone how much you appreciate their work. Find a teammate, co-worker, or even someone in a department you barely know and say Thank you.

Send them an email.

Pass along a Card Against Apathy.

Or even better, put a handwritten note or card through inter office mail or on their desk.

Do something small for someone today to show you appreciate what they do.

We could all show more appreciation to those around us.

A customer at Tim Hortons decided to pay for the order of the next person in line. The trend continued for 3 hours and 228 people.

Can you start a chain of kindness today?

Customer Service Is

By Carl

On December 12, 2012

In Observations

Customer Service is…

Working three hours past lunch time to fix problems.

Staying a little late waiting for a meeting to finish.

Relentlessly tracking down a customer who works odd hours.

Cover for a teammate when they get sick or slammed with work.

Communicate outages and issues to the larger team quickly and accurately.

Read notifications about upcoming maintenance.

Read emails from the team and management.

Read.

Learn.

Toiling all day in a basement then leaving to a beautiful sunset.

Saying Yes. And meaning it.

Promising to followup. Then following up.

Taking time to answer questions. No matter how mundane or simple they may appear.

Speaking slowly and clearly.

Remembering to smile.

Calling people by their first name or preferred title.

Politely pushing back when a customer want something unethical or illegal.

Treating every customer like they’re the first person you’ve seen that day.

Knowing every problems has a solution.

Putting the customer first.

Remembering the customer is a human being too. Not a ticket number. Not a line on a spreadsheet.

Remembering we are all fallible.

Remembering we all make mistakes.

Being kind.

Being confident.

Being trustworthy.

Being trusting.

Being approachable.

Job Insecurity

By Carl

On December 10, 2012

In Observations

For the month of December I am writing a journal entry each day called Today I Learned where I talk about what I learned that day. It could be something like a technical fix at work. It could be something bigger about my life. Earlier this month I was thinking about work and the time I got laid off.

I learned today I am thankful to have a job. I am thankful to be drawing a pay check. I am thankful to have that measure of stability in my life. But I have thought about my quality of life. What kind of life do I want to have? What do I want to get out of my life? How do I want to spend my days?

I have settled for a lot of jobs. I have settled for jobs. I have settled to sub-par situations. I have worked below my potential and I learned nothing in the process. I have done a lot of things I am not necessarily proud of. But I got a pay check. I had health insurance. I had stability.

Or so I thought…

Until the day I got laid off.

I was working for the help desk of the City of Richmond, VA. It was my first help desk job. I took the job because it paid more than the position I held. I was happy where I was and I was making pretty good money for grunt work. I was content because the work was easy and I could listen to music in one ear and take calls on the Bluetooth headset on the other ear. I was content there.

And then I was told I was going to meet with the head of the IT Department there along with my manager. I figured this was not a good sign even though I was working circles around the other help desk tech. So I went to the meeting and I heard the words that still ring in my ears.

“This has nothing to do with your job performance. You are a great employee who works hard…” and the rest is a blank in my memory. He talked for a few more minutes but the writing was on the wall. The city was going through a round of budget cuts. Because I was the last person hired, I was to be the first person let go.

Last Hired, First Fired.

I was not going to have a job in two weeks. Maybe it was longer. Maybe three weeks. But I was out of a job as of that day. The rest of the time was worthless in a way. I was gone. Deadman Answering Phones.

And because one of the desktop support technicians had been hired before me, he was given the choice to take my job or lose his own and be laid off too. He opted to take my help desk position. I can’t blame him. I would have made the same choice. But I was expected to teach him what I did. I was expected to train him to take my job. That was just too much for me. I couldn’t do it. My pride was hurt. I was freaking out because I didn’t know what I was going to do next. I was freaking out inside and trying to keep myself together outside. But I was unemployed. And no amount of hard work and effort on my part would change that.

I was unemployed.