Tag: Customer Service Page 2 of 8

Never Assume

On March 16, 2016

Never assume the person you’re talking to knows what they’re doing. Never assume they know as much as you. They won’t.

Never assume your instructions will be taken as you gave them.

When you say, “Please type ‘123.company.com’ into Firefox.” You assume they’ll type in just that. So you’re be thrown off when they get an unexpected result.

They’re typed “www.123.company.com”.
They’re typed “123.company.com” into a search field instead of the address bar.
They’ve not even typed it at all and instead typed something completely different.

Never assume your instructions will be taken as you gave them. Always be ready for anything the customer may do.

Service Smiles – Share What You Know

By Carl

On February 26, 2016

In Observations

Share What You Know!

This is the biggest lesson I was reminded of this week. Despite being new to my team, I was able to step in and share some things I had learned.

Using Partial playback to crop a WebEx recording

First, did you know you can edit a WebEx recording straight from the server before downloading it? It only works if you need to crop out the front of back of a recording, but it works.

Once you’re logged into WebEx:
1. Click on My WebEx on the top navigation bar.
2. Click on My Files on the left-side.
3. Click the My Recordings tab.
4. Click the meeting name under Topic you wish to edit.

5. Click the Modify button on the lower left under the meeting links.

6. Scroll down and select the Partial playback option.
7. Select the Start and End time codes.

Note: This works best if you download the original file before making changes and make a note of how much you want to crop off the front and back of the file. You cannot edit in the middle of the file using this method. You can only crop time from the front and/or back of the recording.

WebEx has a 250MB upload limit on files

Second, WebEx has a 250MB limit on the file size which can be uploaded to the server. This is not documented anywhere in the site’s settings. Nor is it available in the manuals. I learned this the hard way when I downloaded a recording, converted it to .mp4 and tried to upload it again. Instead of a helpful error message, I was met with this:

I tried many times with different browsers before I gave up and called support. Even then it took them some time to find an answer and get back to me. But at least they were able to verify the limit so I could look for other ways to deliver larger files to my customers.

In both instances, I found this information from asking our vendor about the exact problems I was having. First, I needed to edit a native .arf file from WebEx and Cisco provides no tool for this. Second, I was trying to upload a large recorded meeting I had converted to .mp4 back to the WebEx server. If I had not run into these situations, I may not have ever learned this. But I did and was able to share them with my team.

Share what you know. It makes you a better technician. It empowers your team to offer better answers and delights your customers.

Special Bonus Tip

Make your customer laugh by deviating from what they expect. There’s a lot of way to deliver the same message. Your account is unlocked. Your password is… Here is what I’ve done for you. You say the same phrases over and over until you get tired of saying them. So switch it up. No one’s forcing you to be a broken record.

Today, I told a customer: “Your old password is Green123 and your new password is whatever your heart desires.”
She giggled and said she hadn’t heard that one before. I smiled. Another small win for the day.

Hands making a heart in front of a sun from Unsplash.com - https://unsplash.com/mayurgala

Service Smiles – Smile in Service

By Carl

On February 19, 2016

In Observations

Have a little fun. Support is not always serious troubleshooting. Technical jargon and nonsense-sounding language fills the day.

There are places to sneak in bits of fun among the monotony. This week alone, I’ve said the following to customers:

WebEx gets grumpy if you set too many alternate hosts so…
There’s an unholy alliance between Outlook and WebEx…
Internet Explorer and Java are fighting so…
Firefox is friendly with WebEx and…

When people call support they’ve expecting help and they’re expecting rote memorization and reciting of steps. Each moment of fun is unexpected. And it makes my customers laugh.

A little laughter feels great in customer support where it’s so often empty of any joy. So looking for small ways to add joy to your interactions will make your customer happier and make you happier.

Service Smiles: Beauty among the garbage

By Carl

On January 29, 2016

In Observations

Service Smiles is an answer to the question What did I learn about Customer Service this week?

The Montgomery County Division of Solid Waste Services has an email list. They give updates to trash and recycling pickups.

Their notifications are clear and concise. It keeps me informed to any variations in the pickup schedule due to weather or other issues.

This is the most mundane of updates. There’s nothing sexy or exciting about trash and recycling pickups. Each new notice comes with a poem.

Alone, walking purposely uphill toward the bus stop,
Heavy grocery bags pulling your arms straight down.

So cold. Six degrees. They call it the Siberian Express.

I see you, and I gesture for you to climb into my back seat; I’ve replaced two regulators now, trying to roll down a frozen window.

“Where to?” “The bus stop.” “Where to, after that?” “The county road,” you say.

I make quick calculations of miles, of time, of traffic, of the dreaded round-about, And, against my cautious self, say I will take you home.

We travel together to get you there, and you tell me

You’re an unemployed social worker,
Your car is no longer useful,
You have health problems,
And you have grown children.

Now, in your 70’s, you live alone.
And they are doing well, so far away.

“No jobs around here, if you want to get ahead.”

Of me, you know nothing, except that I, too, am alone, With children doing well, so far away.

It seems enough.

—Patricia Simoni, “Timeshare”, recommended by subscriber DM

It’s nothing exciting. It’s not big and flashy and it won’t change minds or win hearts. But it made me smile.

The first few times I didn’t even read the email down far enough to see the poem. I saw it in the last one and went back and checked and there’s a poem in each message.

This mailing list is great customer service work. It fulfills its mission quickly. It says here is the current waste pickup schedule. And it adds some fun, ending with a poem.

This is great work and I salute whomever started this trend and hope they keep it up.

Evolve or Die: How IT Can Damage Your Company

By Carl

On April 30, 2015

In Links and Quotes

Recently I had a customer come to me with an HR problem – it was a bit odd, I admit, until they explained it to me. Due to their company’s policy of not offering Mac as a choice of computing platform for their employees, they’d had prospective employees turn down job offers and go to competing companies because they could not use the platform of their choice to get their job done. They also had seen an uptick in IT training spend due to new employees who were fresh out of college having never used Windows before. Let that sink in for a minute – employees that had never used Windows before. I thought it was an interesting problem and having given it some thought, there’s a few very good reasons as to why this has happened.

Source: Evolve or Die: How IT Can Damage Your Company | Nerdily

This entire piece sums up perfectly how large IT infrastructures are being left.

The very first paragraph of the post is true and if you don’t think it is, you’re deluding yourself.

Times change, users do, users can, and if you tell them, “no,” they’re simply going to see where you erected the last fence post and do an end-run around it.

I added the emphasis because this is such an important point. If you put up arbitrary roadblocks in front of people trying to get work done, they’ll find another way. The example has been 100% true in every organization I’ve ever worked in support.

For example, does your organization attempt to block services like Dropbox, Google Drive and iCloud? Very likely. Do you have an internal cloud so that users get that cloud functionality? Very likely not. In that case, I can guarantee that your corporate data is on Dropbox, Google Drive, iCloud and other services outside of your control.

In 2015, you can’t block services that help people get their work done and not offer a solution of your own. All of this is being done while asking more and more of people.

Blackberries and smart phones tether people to their corporate responsibilities longer and later in the day. Telework, laptops and VPNs mean working from everywhere, anytime goes from a luxury to an unspoken requirement.

Before, I worked at a place where Macs, Linux, Irix, Unix and Windows all worked in harmony to support an overall mission. Now, I’m in a place that views anything outside of Blackberries and Dells as alien technologies. I’d forgotten how limiting it is to try to pretend half a world of technology doesn’t exist.

My new role is no longer straight IT Support. I describe it as part event planning, part troubleshooting and part evangelism. And everyday I have struggles with technology here. I realize I am one of the edgiest edge cases because I work directly with all parts of the agency where I am. And it’s clearly not setup for that.

It’s 2015 and I’m still fighting battles in trying to move 1GB files across our network to other agencies. I’ve done my part in working around the limitations of my job to better serve my customers. But it’s a struggle that shouldn’t exist.