freethecityone.co.uk » life

The importance of listening

admin — Wed, 13 May 2009 19:37:02 +0000

Over the years I have seen a great many IT engineers come and go, after all 16 years is a long time in the trade. During that time I have also taught a number of engineers the best ways to do the job, many of which had no formal qualifications such as MCP, MCSE etc. The first lesson that I have always made a point of teaching is to listen; listen to the client. Whenever you go out on a service call you will be given a description of the issue that you are there to resolve. In my opinion, the golden rule is to sit down with the client and ask them to explain the problem and listen. There are two reasons why I always do this; firstly the information that you have been given on your job sheet will be what the help desk interpreted from the client but may not be accurate so best to check. Secondly, you will allow the client to vent themselves to you and during the discussion you can usually connect with them on some level which will invariably given you a better insight to both the issue faced and the client personally. I have always felt that this was standard, common sense in all businesses. However, those of you that follow me on twitter (@robfranklin) will have seen the experience that I had with Dell’s tech support on Friday which left me feeling somewhat frustrated. Here is how the conversation went:

Me: “Hi there, I have a problem with BackupExec for Small Business Server that was supplied with these new servers for my client”.

Dell: “What is the problem?”

Me: “When I enter the license key it says that it is invalid. It accepts the “Premium” license key but it will not accept the SBS key”

Extended period of silence…now 15 minutes in to the call and not progressed

Dell: “What license number do you have?”

Me: “The license key is…”

Dell: “That’s a serial number”

Me: “It says license key?”

Dell: “No that’s the serial number”

Me: “But it says on the front cover that it is the “Software License Key” and inside, just above the key, it says “Software License Key”. Surely it would say serial number if that is what it is?”

Dell: “No that’s the serial number, you need to go to the Symantec licensing portal and register the serial number”

Me: “But I have done dozens of these and I have always just entered the key into the software”

Dell: “They have tightened up the licensing recently”

Me: “Hmm, ok where do I go to register the ‘serial number’?”

So now we go to the Symantec licensing portal, I complete the registration in order to log on to the site. After entering the ‘serial number’ it says that the ‘serial number’ is invalid.

Me: “It says the number is invalid”

Dell: “Are you sure it is entered correctly?”

Me: “Yes I’m sure but it does not say it is a serial number it clearly says it’s a license key”

Dell: “Ok I need to speak with Symantec, can you hold"?”

Me: “Err yeah ok”

So I was put on hold, 35 minutes in to the call and I had made no progress. Needless to say I did not stay on hold as by this point I was completely frustrated by the fact that the support technician was simply not listening. The conversation above it not verbatim but I must have explained to this guy about 10 times that it clearly states it is a License Key and not a Serial Number but he was not listening.

The most important skill that any person who is in a customer facing role can do is just listen. By not exercising this most fundamental skill during this call my whole experience with Dell’s “Pro-support” was completely destroyed and had this been my first experience then I would be one very unhappy client and would think twice about buying Dell again. That said only a week before I had spoken to them and the support tech I spoke to I cannot say enough about. He listened and acted on what I was telling while verifying what I was saying was correct.

I can only assume that my bad experience was a one-off but none the less it was a bad experience. So if nothing else, don’t talk just listen and everything else will take shape.

If a jobs worth doing…

robfranklin — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 22:13:43 +0000

The old saying goes that “if a jobs worth doing, it’s worth doing well” and never a true word was spoken. The world we live in today is fast moving and sometimes you feel as through you are in the wake of an avalanche with no way of stopping. People today do not spend enough time on things and it is all too often the case that they will procrastinate until it is too late to do a good job. Sometimes it is frugal to procrastinate as it gives us time to plan the work that we are undertaking, allow the creative thought process to run so we can create the work at hand. However, more often than not this time is not required and more importantly it is wasted with resulting work being typically of poor standard. A classic example of this was this evening my son said that he had homework to do. This had been given to him on Friday but he had not done it, he also didn’t have the assignment as another child had taken it from him. Creatively enough he decided to create a document which discussed various plants as he knew this was the topic. The resultant document was not so impressive as he had copied parts from the Internet without formatting he text correctly and more importantly he had copied one section three times. The resultant document was just rushed and had no real effort put in to ensure that what was being presented was correct or of reasonable quality. This may seem a harsh analysis of his work but I was raised with the understand of “If a jobs worth doing, it’s worth doing well”. So with that I assisted him in making the necessary corrections and explained that what he had done was great but he needed to be more conscious when doing this sort of work.

The fact is that we are all judged by the work that we do for others. This could be something as simple has helping over the phone, guiding a customer to the right place in a store or it could be a new network installation. Whatever the task we, as individuals, should always try to strive to better ourselves and stand out above the crowd by going that extra mile to make our client happy. Always remember that it takes a lot to impress people today but it doesn’t take a lot to disappoint them, which do you want to do?

Service with a smile

robfranklin — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 21:32:50 +0000

I believe that the current economic climate helps us all to appreciate that we need to nurture the client base we have much more than we have previously. As businesses start to hunker down to weather the oncoming storm they need to know that their trusted advisors, whether this be IT or other services, are there to huddle up to them to help weather the storm. Part of the process is to interact with our clients on a much more proactive way than previously, getting involved in there business and seeing where you can help them to save money. Sadly some people just are not getting it.

Here is an example of how NOT to perform customer service:

We recently had to make a claim on our insurance due to a leak in our central heating system, this resulted in a number of our carpets being ruined. While that other areas are still being sorted the carpets have been ordered and I was contacted by Carpet Right over at Derby yesterday to inform me that they were in and to sort out fitting. The conversation went like this:

Me: Hello can I help?

Man: Hi this is Carpet Right at Derby we’ve got your carpet in, can we sort out fitting it?

Me: Yeah that’d be great, but I am just with someone now would it be possible to give me a call back this afternoon to arrange a time?

Man: What me call you?

Me: Errr yes please.

Man: Errr Ok I guess I will if I remember

Me: Oh..O K … thanks

I have done a course in customer service in that past and while I do not profess to be an idol to look up to on this subject I know what is poor customer service and clearly this man should not be in any job which requires him interacting with a paying customer. Needless to say that when I do want carpets in the future, which I am paying for myself, I will NOT be going to see this company and as we are always taught “If someone has a good experience with your company they may tell 1-2 people, if they have a bad experience they will tell 20+”. Guess which category I fall into! Oh and just for the record, he never rang back so clearly he didn’t remember.

Ironic is the only word for it!

admin — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 17:31:47 +0000

I wrote yesterday about doing something you normally do but different. Well yesterday, as you may recall, I decided to walk to the shop which was very liberating however today I am regretting it. For the last couple of months the car has been a little slow starting, you know how it is when you turn the key and there’s the slow churn as the engine struggles to turn before it starts. Today we all got in the car to head off to pantomime in Nottingham, the kids were looking forward to Cinderella, only to find when I started the car it briefly began running only to stutter and die. Now at that point I thought things we’re going to be difficult but little did I know; it was 12:30 and it started at 14:00 with 30 minutes of travelling. After attempting to restart the engine numerous times the battery eventually gave in and said “no more”. During all of the this our neighbor, who messes with cars a lot, saw what was going off and offered a jump start needless to say I snapped his hand off. Sadly, 40 minutes later we were no closer to getting the car started so we decided the best thing was going to be to call the RAC to sort it. Some 1hr 20mins later the nice chap arrived and within 10 mins he’d got it all running again. Said that there was two possible reasons why it had happened, either the “leak back” pipes which were cheap to replace (£1-£2 + Labour) were letting air in the fuel or the “Injector Seals” which are more expensive (approx £200 + Labour) which would also be letting air in. He also noted that our model was the one with the known fuel pump issue which happens between 80K – 150K miles and costs about £2,000 to repair, more good news! But for now the car is running again, charging to be precise, and we’ll be going to see Jule’s friend in a little while before she goes off to Australia tomorrow for about 8 months.

As for the Pantomime that was well and truly missed, £70 down the drain but we’ll see if they can sort something at the box office (doubtful but you can hope). As for me; Would I still have walked to the shop? Too right, in hindsight I just would have took the car out for a run as well yesterday to “keep it going”, ah well C’est la vie.