One of the more frequent activities of our computer help desk is to change passwords on various accounts. My network technicians often have to refuse to set passwords to specific things because they are far too simple to be meaningful. I’m not just talking about people who want to set their password to their birthdate, or anniversary, or home address, or even the names of their children or pets. At least a hacker would have to know something about the person, albeit information they can probably pick up on their Facebook page. No I’m talking about really simple stuff. And we’re not alone. An analysis of a recent data breach at web company RockYou revealed that a lot of people are unconcerned about security. Here are the top 10 passwords found in these accounts:

123456
12345
123456789
Password
iloveyou
princess
rockyou (the name of the site, remember)
1234567
12345678
Daniel

The other side of that is when my Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing customers decide to make password requirements hard, or have frequent changes. This leads to post-it notes on everyone's desk with their latest passwords on them. As biometric technology gets better, we may be able to move away from the password. I relish the day.

I recently read a blog post titled Excuses are Not a Customer Service Policy. In it, the author describes a bad breakfast experience with friends. The post wasn't as interesting as its title, but it made me think about the way in which most computer network services companies behave toward their customers. It's amazing how most people think that a customer who has been mistreated in some way wants to hear excuses for the abuse. In most instances, the customer wants an apology first and a resolution second. If these two are adequate to save the relationship, then she might want to hear the excuse.

At Port-to-Port Consulting, we recognize this and we try very hard not to make excuses for the mistakes that occur in the process of providing computer support to our Indianapolis area customers. We know that things will often go wrong in IT support services. That's the reason we have a Help Desk in the first place. However, one of our main tenets is to avoid escalating the problem by tossing out lame excuses, or worse, telling our customers what they did wrong. Sometimes the problem is created by a customer who improperly uses his computer, but it doesn't get fixed by us throwing that in his face. So we don't.

Good Information Technology consulting requires a solid working relationship. My network technicians often find themselves taking the blame for something that may not have been our fault. Finding fault doesn't fix problems. The faster we can get past that point, the sooner we can start helping our customers move forward again. Besides, if they hired us to manage their computer network services and they aren't working properly for any reason, isn't that ultimately our fault?

According to new media marketing firm Penn Olson, these are the top 10 questions posed to Ask.com in 2009:

1. How much should I weigh?
2. How do I get out of debt fast?
3. How do I get pregnant?
4. What is Miley Cyrus’ phone number?
5. What is Twitter?
6. What is the meaning of life?
7. When will the world end?
8. How long does marijuana stay in your system?
9. What are symptoms of Swine Flu?
10. What time is it?

Most of those questions indicate something bad about the confidence many of us place in the power of the Internet. The list did make me think about the kinds of questions that get asked at our computer help desk. Rather than list the top 10, I'm offering up the 10 I hope we never hear again:
 

1. I didn't do what you told me, but can you fix it now that it's broken?
2. If I didn't put in my backup tape, can you still restore my files?
3. Can I keep using my computer after the power goes out?
4. Should I have called you before I clicked OK on that popup?
5. The salesman said it would be easy. Why can't you make it work?
6. I just sent out an email to a couple thousand people and now I'm getting bouncebacks. Can you look at it?
7. So I wasn’t supposed to open that Hallmark e-card?
8. What do you mean I’m not supposed to work out of my deleted items folder?
9. Is this trojan message good or bad?
10. I didn't do anything. Why isn't it working?

Our Indianapolis IT outsourcing company fields dozens of calls every day at the Help Desk. We know that each caller us a customer with an issue that is unique to them, and we do all we can to help them. There are times when we wish we could have gotten to them sooner, but we understand that they use our IT services because this stuff is a bit foreign to them. If all of these questions stopped being asked, we'd have another 10 that we wish we didn't hear. Our favorite thing to hear is, "Thank you for fixing my problem."

 

While Apple has managed to maintain an image of being virus-impervious, most of us in the computer outsourcing business have always contended that the reason there weren't many native Mac viruses was because there just weren't enough Macs to make it worthwhile for evil hackers to bother with it when there were far more Windows PCs out there to attack. In fact, as the Mac continues to becomes more popular on the Intel platform, I imagine computer help desks all over the country will start to see more infected ones. The popularity of the iPhone (30 million sold and counting) has already attracted some attention. A young man in Australia has written a worm that infects the iPhone while pretending to be a Rick Astley screen saver. I have to admit that I didn't know who Astley was, but this is sure to raise his popularity briefly.

One of the most frequent questions from my Indianapolis small business computer consulting customers is, "What can I do to ensure that my network is safe from hackers?" I always answer the same way: "Disconnect your machines from the Internet."

That's the only way to be sure, and even then you may have a mole in your own organization who ferrets out data on a flash drive. (How about that, two rodents in the same sentence?) Data security is an important element of any good network design. We do all we can to keep our computer network services customers' data safe. The best analogy I can use is your home security. You lock the doors when you leave to keep bad people out. If you feel you're at a higher risk, you turn on an alarm as well. These measures will keep out most burglars or thieves. They'll just move on to the next house in search of one without an alarm or with an unlocked door. However, if the burglar is looking to get something from you in particular, your locks and alarms become a nuisance to him. He'll have to plan better and it will take longer, but if he's committed, he'll get around your reasonable precautions. The same holds true for your network. Practice safe computing and avoid upsetting anyone who might have crazy tech skills.

If those infected iPhone users had practiced safe computing, they wouldn't have jailbroken their phones, and the worm wouldn't have gotten in.

As the customer service rep for our Indianapolis small business computer customers, I listen carfeully to anything they have to say.  I listen to the praise as well as the complaints.  As much as we love the praises, we analyze every complaint or concern from our customers.  One of the issues that we experienced lately relates to our computer help desk.  The service the clients were receiving was fine. The problem was when they received it.  For example, when someone at their office comes in early and finds there is a problem, they would call into the helpdesk.  The helpdesk does not open until 8:00 so the person is not able to get assistance until the helpdesk would call them back about 8:15-8:30.  Port-to-Port has listened and we're changing our hours to start the helpdesk at 7 am. 

Our computers, like our cars homes and bodies, need to be taken care of.  They need regular attention.  It's all too often that we get a call from someone in a panic because something has "crashed".  Luckily Indianapolis small business computer support is alive and well in the form of Pertingo Computer Support Services. 

Pertingo Computer Support Service offers the all-around care for the hardware and software that keeps your business running.  It not only includes IT Support Services but Business Planning, Project Management, Help Desk and Remote Support, Vendor Support, Disaster Recovery, Training and Disposition. 

Our Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing customers benefit from a single source for all of their IT aches and pains.  Just one call is all it takes. 

Let Port-to-Port Consulting be your source for computer consulting services.  Check us out at www.pertingo.com or www.port-to-port.com. 

Its funny how random events change the way you view things.  My sister got married this weekend and at the reception, the specialty tap for one of our kegs broke.  I eneded up having to leave the reception and drive 45 minutes each way to get a new one.  It wasn't exactly how I envisioned spending my time, but it was necessary so that everyone else would have a better experience.  On my way back to the reception I got to thinking, how often do we really go out of our way to help others?

In our Indianapolis Small Business Computer Support Business we are often called upon to assist others.  Whether its driving out to a client's office to drop off a laptop that we purchased for them, picking up a cable from a supplier so a technican can stay in the office and reboot a server, or even picking up lunch for someone who is busy answering phones on the help desk, we all try to help each other serve our clients better.   None of these tasks fall under my job description, but sometimes they are necessary to make sure our clients get the best service.

Its something that we should all strive to do better at each and everyday.  I know that I am as guilty as others about getting too caught up in my own day to day tasks.  While signing up new clients is my job, I also can't that it is everyone's job here to assist our current clients.  At Port-to-Port Consulting, we endvor everday to help each other however we can, because that ultimately means we are providing the best IT Support Services to our clients.

Several years ago my children introduced me to the movie Good Burger. It is a silly Nickelodeon movie about a local burger joint that is about to be put out of business by the mega chain Mondo Burger...until one day Dexter gets a taste of Ed's secret sauce and they start putting it on the Good Burgers.

I believe that most good small businesses exist against their Mondo competition because of a secret sauce of some sort or other. In the Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing arena, our secret sauce is customer service. We understand that most of our customers don't care a bit about what the technical competence of our help desk or our network
technicians. Of course, they'd care if we were incompetent, but once we know just a tiny bit more than they do, our competence becomes a given. After that, we have to work to keep them happy so they will continue to use us for their tech support.


At our Indianapolis computer services company, we are constantly adjusting our internal processes and procedures. There are two, sometimes competing goals behind the changes. First, we want to be as efficient as we can be in performing the routine computer network services. Second, we want to make the things we do as invisible as possible to our customers. Often these two ideals conflict. When they do, we choose in favor of our customers' convenience. My technical support team often moans about the choice, but they recognize that, in the end, it is the right way to provide IT support.

Our office has been without air conditioning for most of the last week. We called an HVAC company because some areas didn't seem to be as cool as others. $6,000 dollars later, everywhere in the building was hot, and the HVAC people were telling us things that didn't do much to cool us off. They've promised to come back tomorrow to get it all working again.

I often take an objective look at the interactions I have with service providers. I think about the way in which my network technicians deal with our Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing customers, and wonder if they'd do better than the level of service I'm experiencing. Most of the time I think they do. First, we always practice the rule of "First do no harm." If we can't get the issue resolved, we do all we can to ensure that our help desk customer isn't worse off than when we got there. More importantly though, we take responsibility for the things we do, even when they turn out to be a bit bone-headed in retrospect. It's the bone-headed technical support that puts us into the frying pan.

In the end, we're human and we make mistakes. We don't compound those mistakes with attempts to pass the blame. This way, we can at leasy be sure we don't end up in the fire.

I tend to be a reader of the genre I call "Pop Business." I trace its roots to Tom Peters and In Search of Excellence, but it probably goes back to Machiavelli or thereabouts. Generally, these books tell about a good idea upon which the author has stumbled. After describing the Earth-shattering impact of this usually obvious idea, the author goes on to provide examples of his idea in action, usually quelled from other pop business books. I only deride this genre because it can cause damage to a good company if the leader decides to swallow the idea whole without applying a little common sense and knowledge of her own situation to it. From each of these books, I learn something that I believe can be applied to improve the way in which we provide computer network consulting in central Indiana.

One always needs an exception to prove the rule. Here it is. Hisashi Sakamaki, the CEO of Canon has written a book in which he proposes that you not allow your employees to sit down. That's right! He's taken away all the chairs. If that could be overlooked as an idiosyncrasy, how about the sensors in the hallways that alert workers if they walk too slow? Even better is the sign on the floor that tells employees: "Lets rush - if we don't then the company and world will perish."

Currently, Sakamaki's book is only available in Japanese. I can only imagine that it will get published in English at some point. The computer help desk technicians on my staff don't have to worry about me trying to pick up good management tips from that book.

I recently read an interview with JJ Abrams, the director of the new Star Trek movie (highly recommended by the Port-to-Port Consulting crew). In the interview, he talks about how the Internet has created an Age of Immediacy. He discusses how we no longer feel compelled to get good at anything that takes skill or effort. Shortly after reading this article, someone sent me a link to a video of Louis CK on Late Night with Conan O'Brien where he make a similar point, albeit a bit more humorously. Both of these gentlemen bring up an issue that seems to be coming to a tipping point as our economy becomes more volatile. People cannot stand to wait for even the smallest amount of time to get gratified.

In our dealings with the Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing customers that use Pertingo, this immediacy manifests itself in our quest to determine the severity of the issue at hand when they call our computer help desk. We know that in a perfect world, most of these calls would never take place. We also know that on many days we live in a far from perfect world. It's on those days that we try to do a bit more triage to determine where best to focus our resources in our attempt to keep all of our computer support customers working productively. In recent times, our customers took that into consideration and helped with our effort to prioritize their concerns. Today, we are always told that, "This is an urgent problem and it is having an enormously detrimental effect on our ability to work."

Now we understand that we are all living in stressful times, and we don't expect that our computer network services customers are going to call us with truly trivial issues. Perhaps it's too much to ask that everyone remember back to the days when everything didn't seem to happen immediately.

A recent article by Clive Thompson in Wired Magazine talks about the idea of group solving of games and puzzles. In my day we called these things "Cheats". Today they are called walkthroughs. Essentially, the idea is that people begin to tackle a puzzle (or a video game) and they document their success. Other people can then use this documentation to get to the point where the earlier people failed and attack the problem from there with a fresh approach. It's been done forever, but the Internet has allowed the collaboration to become global. The hive mind can attack a problem and solve it in an instant compared to what a lone problem solver can do.

At my Indianapolis computer support company, we use the walkthrough approach to most of the issues that come to our computer help desk each day. In fact, all of our tech support staff sits in a large room with no dividers so we can eavesdrop on one another's conversations and add whatever knowledge we can bring to the topic at hand. It's difficult when a new person joins our computer services team, but it doesn't take long before the benefits outweigh the discomfort.

Thompson's article suggests a similar conclusion. He says that game designers should build the kinds of puzzles that require a hive mind to solve rather than complain that people are taking this approach. That' the big lesson that our successful network technicians learn quickly. While it feels really cool to solve a business computer support problem on your own, many of them require a team to solve successfully. The problem one is seeing in Carmel may have recently been solved by another in Greenwood. More likely, the solution to the Greenwood problem suggests an approach to solving the Carmel problem. The actual solution to the Carmel problem will add to the collective knowledge. It will enhance the walkthrough for the next guy.

Port-to-Port Consulting is an Indianapolis Information Technology company.  But what do we do exactly?  I think the best description is that we are an IT department for companies that have significant computer related needs, but don't want the hassle or expense of managing an entire computer department.

Our typical tasks include network support, answering computer help desk phone calls, going onsite for required support, managing updates and upgrades, dealing with Internet service providers and telephone providers.  We also work with our customers in planning for new technologies and helping them use technology as a competitive weapon.

These are things that any IT Department must do.  But what separates us from internal staff?

Experience is a key thing.  For companies that have more than just a couple of computers, the breadth of competence needed to make them an asset to the company is rather large.   Internal staffs can't keep up with technology when the get they opportunity to try something new only once every few years.  For example, servers typically need replaced every 3 or 4 years.  We replace on the average about 2 servers a month.  We can be much better at server deployment than an internal staff because we'll replace about 100 servers  in the same time an internal staff will replace 1.

We see things, plan for and correct things everyday that internal staffs might only see a few times a year.  Volume gives us experience that make us an efficient IT staff.

In an effort to provide the best service to our Indianapolis IT consulting clients we have made changes to our organization.  Through the years we have realized that anyone can fix a computer problem eventually but it is the relationship that makes the difference. 

Port-to-Port has had a computer Help Desk for many years.  Part of the functions of the help desk is to take phone calls and email requests from our customers.  The help desk technician attempts to fix what can be done remotely.  For those items that can't be completed remotely, a technician is scheduled to go visit.  For the last year we have attempted many different variations of the help desk.  We went from having a dedicated person on the help desk to rotating through our technical staff.  We have found that in order to have a good computer help desk we need to have a person dedicated to doing the help desk and embrace it to make it work.  So in order for our Indianapolis computer services clustomers to have a relationship with us they have to know that the person on the help desk really cares about them.  So, we have stopped having a rotating help desk and gone back to a dedicated person.  Our primary help desk person is now Chris.  If you would like some additional information about Chris, check him out on our website. 

In order to have a relationship you have to have communication.  When you think about an office full of technical people communication isn't a word you would normally associate with them.  Port-to-Port is trying very hard to make communication a word that you would associate with us.  As staff we are strongly encouraged to communicate to the point of over communication.  We aren't there yet but we are working on it.  Our help desk has started scheduling things instead of letting things sit in the queue.  Even though we aren't able to get it addressed as soon as we would like, we are at least letting people know what is going on.   Not only have we made changes with the help desk but we have made changes so that Damon and I function as the Client IT Managers.  One of our functions is to be the client advocate with vendors, our technical staff and whenever it is needed.  Damon, owner of our company, has direct business experience that allows him to bring additional insight that many business owners find helpful.   If you would like to know more about Damon check him out on our website. or check out some of his thoughts on his blog.  We are all trying hard to communicate more with our Indianapolis computer services customers. They are starting to see us change and are pleased which is a great sign.  But with every change other problems surface.  How we respond to those problems shows us what we are really like at the core.

 

In the March edition of Fortune Small Business, KC Ifeanyi writes about the online bookseller betterworld.com. The thing that makes betterworld stand out against much larger competitors is their unique way of notifying their customers about the progress of their orders. Instead of the typical impersonal email, betterworld sends an email from the book itself. Sure it's gimmicky, but it engenders some serious devotion on the part of the buyers.

So what if your computer could email you about its condition and the way it feels about the network consulting and technical support it receives. I imagine most of you would get something like this as an introduction:

From: Your PC  
Sent: Friday, April 03, 2009 10:39 AM
To: You
Subject: Taking Care of Me

 

Hello,

 

I just want to take a moment to let you know how much I appreciate you taking the advice of our computer help desk and removing all of those little streaming applets. The weatherbug alone was driving me nuts. Now that those things are gone, I have some free processing cycles to do more work for you. If you could learn to type faster, that would be great.

 

Otherwise, I like working with you and the computer tech support guys. You keep me clean, and they keep me operating. I’d much rather be here under your desk than in that office down the hall where the guy keeps spilling food and drink on his computer.

 

Thanks for your time,

 

Your PC

Perhaps a little note from our computer every now and then might be helpful for all of us to start treating our IT services and equipment with some dignity and respect.

The amazing thing to me about technology is how people use it in ways that are quite different than the creators original intent. This isn't true of just computer technology, but all kinds of things. I read an article recently in Fortune Small Business about a Tennessee man who is using DNA analysis to let you identify which dog left poop in your yard. I don't imagine Watson and Crick had that in mind when they discovered it. Other examples abound. My favorite is Play-doh, which was originally created to clean wallpaper.

This leads me to think about all the ways in which my Indianapolis small business computer support customers might "discover" to use their Information Technology. Most of these successful, or unusual, uses of technology come from someone playing around with it. During these hard economic times, the opportunity to play around at work is gone. Everyone is so worried about losing their job that they are nose to the grindstone all day long. If we don't find time for people to play at work, we'll never discover the use of our computer technology that will make the difference for our businesses when things start to get better.

Face it, things are slower now than they have been. Why not take advantage of the extra time to seek efficiencies in your operations -- to tighten up your processes. Doesn't sound like playing around at all, does it? Yet that's the best way to get it done. My staff has been playing around with all kinds of different solutions to problems we encounter every day at our computer help desk. Already, we've introduced a new and better method for data backup and email archiving. None of these solutions would have come to us except that someone started playing around with possibilities.

A poll in the same issue of Fortune Small Business claims that more than 20 percent of small business owners believe the area with the highest growth rate over the next four years will be something no one’s dreamed up yet. Start playing!

 I have a long time customer who used to refer to me as his "fucking genius" when he described me to others. At the time Port-to-Port started providing computer network consulting to his company, he hadn't done much with PCs and our knowledge amazed him. Today, he regularly tells me about things that he discovered about computer consulting that I didn't know. He has become his own computer consulting genius. Whether it's true or not, he considers himself more of a peer to me in his computer tech support knowledge.

That word genius has always bothered me, even before Apple gave that appellation to its computer help desk people in their stores. I don't think anyone who truly is a genius would ever refer to himself that way. I certainly haven't met anyone who describes himself as a genius with whom I would agree, but I have met some real geniuses along the way. The problem with topics like computer outsourcing is that the field is so vast that it's just not possible for any one person to know all that is needed to make a small business most successful -- not even the smallest of them. Yet, for the same reason, it's possible for any one person to know more about a single topic in technology than even the brightest of all the business computer support experts you can round up.

In the years that I've been providing computer services to Indianapolis small businesses and Not For Profits, I've become a lot more humble about what I know and don't know. There has never been a time when I would have described myself as a genius, but I was willing to toss around the word expert with wreckless abandon. I won't even try that any more. The PC based Information Technology industry is still less than 30 years old. New things happen every day. Significant new things happen every month. If you could know all there is today and didn't continue to learn, your knowledge would be nearly useless in about a year.

At Port-to-Port we're not computer experts, but we continually strive to be.

The website Slashdot, which uses the tagline "News for Nerds," conducted a poll of its visitors recently in which it asked them, "How many hours do you REALLY work each day?" The results of this unscientific poll that got 27,000 responses showed that 40 percent of the respondents admitted to working less than 4 hours per day. That' right. Less than four hours!  Another 24 percent came in at four to six hours, meaning that nearly two thirds of those working in computer network services aren't putting in the standard work day. Not at my Indianapolis computer services company.

I imagine that the majority of the respondents were internal IT support people. We've found they tend to have more time on their hands than the computer outsourcing companies do. I have the opposite concern with my staff. I often find myself throwing my Help Desk techs out of the building at the end of the day because they are trying to get just one more thing done before they go. It's not that I mind them putting in a little extra to keep our Indianapolis small business computer support customers happy, but I also want my techs to stay happy too. They need to spend time with their family and friends so they can come to work recharged and ready to tackle the challenges that each day presents.

I can't say that we spend every single minute at work, REALLY working, but I assure you we do more than most Indianapolis computer tech support workers. And even the time we waste gets wasted in a way that makes us better at what we do.

How many times do you hear there is nothing to eat?  You check the pantry, refrigerator, freeze and they are full.  Yet there is still nothing to eat.  You think about all the different things that you can fix and they don't quite meet your need.  You try nibbling on several different things and that doesn't meet your need either.  So you finally decide to go out to eat.

That very same thing can happen with your computer network services.  You can have an internal IT person who doesn't quite meet your need.  You might have an internal help desk and you still aren't quite satisfied.  So you decide to try something different: computer outsourcing. 

A good computer outsourcing company should be able to provide you with the same things that you had with an internal person...computer help desk, network support, as well as so much more.  As an Indianapolis IT consulting company, we try to provide  the business with all the functions they had with internal staff.  Since we have more than a single technical person on staff, we can provide new ideas, another way to think about things and someone to always be around.

So, when the people who provide your technical support can't quite meet  your needs, think about going out.  Try computer outsourcing. It might meet that need you have.

Port-to-Port Consulting, an Indianapolis Computer Consulting Services firm, provides Computer Help Desk and onsite support for our central Indiana clients.  One of the things we examine is the warranty status of our clients computer equipment. 

How important is the warranty on my computer?  It's only as important as the work you do on the machine.  As budgets get tighter and tighter we are forced to become more and more efficient.  How efficient can we be if the machine where our spreadsheets, documents and other files becomes unusable? 

Keeping the warranty current on your machine ensures you can get the hardware support and parts in a prompt and responsive manner.  Getting you back on track and focused on your business in a matter of a day or two is much more palatable than seven to ten days to replace the system.  It's also much more cost efficient.  

We recommend renewing the warranty on all servers through their end of life, generally five years.  For workstations, we recommend at least a three year warranty.  If the machine plays a vital role in your business practice or runs a specific application, it should remain under warranty for it's life. 

If you have any questions about the warranty status on your machine, please let us know.