Archive for January, 2010

It’s snow joke…

Thursday, January 21st, 2010

Yes, I know. I apologise for the terrible pun but it just had to be done.

Seriously though, I don’t know what has gone on with the weather this year. Climate change? That’s for another discussion I’m sure.

Did you suffer much disruption? Did you have to send staff home? That must have been very disruptive for both you and your customers.

Luckily, FOT were well prepared and initiated “Operation Snowman”.

Terrible name for what was essentially a great exercise in mobilising our workforce to maintain continuous cover during a time of massive disruption for half the country.

Our customers noticed no change to our high level of service and we have worked out we lost approximately half an hour a day while we put the plan in place.

We had sufficient office cover while the rest of our staff remote worked over VPN and VOIP phones.

If you would like to know more on how we could have helped your business then contact us to find out more.

We also have a special offer running at present, this is very time limited so get it while you can below.

January Offer

Keep Warm!

Mark

Tags:
Posted in Business | No Comments »

Zen and the art of Help-desk.

Tuesday, January 12th, 2010

“I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.”
–Ernest Hemingway

Most of the funny help-desk stories you read are fiction based largely in fact. They make good reading and can bring a smile to your face, but there is often an underlying issue. The customer has a problem with X but does not have the technical know-how to communicate this sufficiently to the help-desk and a lot of the time the engineer doesn’t help the situation; either by not taking the situation seriously, or latching onto an idea and running with it without considering the whole picture.

In an ideal world a help-desk operative would be one-third engineer, one-third mind reader and a final third psychologist!

Our help-desk services have grown over many years into the company you see before you and a lot of this success is down to the fact we really listen. With comprehension comes understanding and once a problem is understood it is well on its way to resolution.

Often the best way is to take a step back and look at the situation from a high level. It can be quite easy to get lost in detail. Sometimes it really is a case of have you turned it off and on again. Yes, you may laugh but you would be surprised how many times this fixes a problem.

Being a good listener is not the be-all and end-all either. You must know your limits.

Stubbornness can often be a mixed blessing when it comes to help-desk work. You want to see the problem through from the initial customer contact to a successful outcome but you are pushing your knowledge to its limits. This can cause the problem to drag on longer than it ought to.

There is nothing wrong in saying you have tried to resolve the issue but it has beaten you. Pass it over to a colleague with more knowledge of the issue and learn from the experience.

Finally you need to understand that the customer is not calling deliberately to annoy you (well, not all of them…). They genuinely have a problem that is interrupting their ability to work and you are their lifebelt.

So it’s not always about the technology. It’s about the people.

“Only those who respect the personality of others can be of real use to them”
–Albert Schweitzer

Posted in Technical | No Comments »

The secret to keeping the fizz?

Saturday, January 2nd, 2010

For many, Thursday 31st was a time to celebrate. What had gratefully been, what was thankfully behind, and what was hopefully to come.

And among the various bottles opened here was a very special example of Ruinart champagne. But what to do with the part bottle left over? Too special to throw away or leave to go flat. So I had recourse to an old trick. Insert dessert spoon (business end upwards) into the neck of the open bottle – replace in fridge and it’s good until the next day, and even the following one. Try it some day – it will save your bacon … or your champagne anyway.

So tell me – what do you do when you need to prolong the fizz in your customer relationships? When your sales people have moved on to the next opportunity, and your support staff are overstretched and have no time (or no answers)?

If you don’t have any little tricks up your sleeve, ask us. We don’t just know how to keep champagne fizzy – we can also keep the sparkle alive between you and your customers.

Want to know how?

Posted in Business | No Comments »