HDI

Rudeness Made Easier

Source - http://www.wwj.com/Be-Polite-While-Staying-Connected/2128679

Along with the widespread acceptance of wireless devices comes new ways for people to be rude. Of those surveyed, 18 percent admit to being reprimanded for having bad manners when it comes to their wireless devices. This behavior extends in and out of work with another 39 percent saying that they respond almost instantaneously when they receive a professional email or call outside of business hours.

As wireless devices become further cemented into corporate culture, a spectrum of acceptable and unacceptable behavior has emerged. Inappropriate wireless device etiquette includes:
Answering a work call or email during personal time after work hours.

• Talking on the phone while in close quarters (such as on a train, plane, bus).
• Talking on the phone while in the restroom.
• Answering the phone or emails while at a business dinner.
• Accepting a personal call while in a meeting or presentation.

It is a pet peeve of mine that people answer the phone in a restaurant, though I can see the need to answer a business call, while in a business meeting if it is relevant. What are your thoughts folks?...Dan

Widespread Use of Wireless Devices Not Creating Anxiety, Survey Finds

A few weeks ago on this blog, I discussed taking a real vacation and allow yourself to disconnect. I found this article from wwj.com and found it relevant.

Source - http://www.wwj.com/Widespread-Use-of-Wireless-Devices-Not-Creating-An/2128632

Does being “too connected” to your boss, colleagues, spouse and others stress you out? Or is your wireless device your lifeline?

A recent survey finds that, for many people, the electronic leash is actually comforting and being out of touch is what really makes them crazy.

According to the Yahoo! HotJobs annual virtual workplace survey, 37 percent of employees feel more relaxed than stressed when they are connected to work by a wireless device. Another 42 percent of those surveyed are altogether indifferent to their wireless devices, feeling neither relaxed nor stressed by them.

With 38 percent of respondents describing their wireless device as a necessity, these gadgets have become exponentially more integrated into workplace culture:

• The majority, 55 percent, of respondents use more than one wireless device to stay connected when outside of work.
• More than half, 55 percent, of respondents say that their office supports a virtual workplace culture – allowing employees to choose from where they'd like to work.
• Twenty-eight percent, of respondents say that having the freedom of remote access via a wireless device helps them work more effectively than when they are in the office.
• Almost one quarter of survey respondents admit to only putting their wireless device down when they are sleeping, and only 5 percent of respondents admit to being 100 percent offline when not in the office – down from 8 percent last year.

What are your thoughts on the article and the gift and curse of being connected 24x7?

If you could, would you?

For a long time, I have debated the question, “if I knew the solutions contained in my Self-service portal were used successfully by 25% of my user community and I consistently high on my customer satisfaction rating, why wouldn’t I stop taking calls for that subject matter and redirect them to the web for self-service success. Think about it.

I was attending a knowledge management session at the HDI 2008 conference in Dallas recently when I asked the presenter who was getting 30% adoption, 90% success rate and a high customer rating when they planned to make the automated Password Reset tool the ONLY option for resetting passwords.  She said that they were giving it some thought, but were hesitant to make it mandatory. A young lady in the audience said, “You probably don’t want to force your customers to ONLY use self-service rather than calling, it might impact customer satisfaction.  I thought about it for awhile and said, “You know, I think I would take the hit on customer satisfaction, knowing confidently that my self service solution worked consistently for a statistically valid sample of my user community.” She looked aghast! I further stated, that if I was basing my value on a Customer Satisfaction Index (CSI) based on resetting passwords, then I should think differently about what services I could offer that would be of higher value to the organization.

Think Differently

At what proven point, should calling the Service Desk for requests, password resets, status calls and simple “how to” just in time training no longer be an option? Who will make the tough call? What service leader will defend the position that the self-service portal offers a more reliable, consistent, successful customer experience – and at a lower cost! Think differently about your current service and support situation.

§         Are you doing all the right things according to industry best practices and ITIL processes?

§         Are you satisfied with your current level of respect, resources, funding, tools and scope of services?

§         If you had a successful self-service solution, would your require your user community to always check the self-service repository for their answer before calling the service desk?

§         Would you make the phone queue only available to critical business impact incidents with a high level of urgency?

Let me know your experiences and thoughts!

Pete McGarahan is founder and president of McGarahan & Associates. Pete just completed his two-year term of Chairman of the IT Infrastructure Management Association, a sister Association to HDI. Pete value the service and support industry is in his thought leadership. As a practitioner, product manager and support industry analyst and expert, he has influenced the maturity of the service and support industry. His passion for customer service led the Taco Bell support organization to achieve the Help Desk Institutes Team Excellence Award in 1995. Support News also named McGarahan one of the "Top 25 Professionals in the Service and Support Industry" in 1999. Support professionals voted McGarahan "the Legend of the Year" in 2002 and again in 2004 at the Help Desk Professionals conference for his endless energy, mentoring and coaching and his valuable contribution to the support community.