While our goal in providing outsourced IT services to small businesses in central Indiana is to have computer networks that work all the time, it really doesn't happen that way in small business networks. In fact, it doesn't happen in large, fully redundant networks either. All of the major Internet services have had outages that made the news.
The difficult thing for my small business computer support team is to determine how to react when something goes wrong. I was reminded of this today when I went to check on the status of my car. A little over a week ago, I got into my car and found that I could not turn the key in the ignition. I've since come to learn that this is a common problem in Chrysler Crossfires (but not common enough for a recall). After a week waiting for a part, the shop tells me that they can't install it because they can't get the old part out since the key won't turn. Here's where we get into trouble as professionals. We define the problem too narrowly. These guys were trying to get the ignition lock out so they could replace it.
My problem was that I can't drive my car! When they take me into the shop to show me the situation, I see my entire steering column sitting on a bench. I ask, "Can't you just replace this whole piece?" The room fell silent and I could tell they were restraining the instinct to slap their foreheads. The replacement column is on the way.
The same thing happens when my computer help desk guys dive expertly into solving a problem that can be more easily solved if more broadly defined. "I can't print to that printer" doesn't mean we need to fix that printer. We have to get the person printing, then we can move on to fixing that printer.
Sometimes it pays to look at problems as a novice.
A recent Nielsen study indicates that the number of telephone calls we make has been dropping since its peak in 2007. In addition, their duration has gone down by half. The replacement: text messaging. It's an amazing thing for me to grapple with. I've been on several windmill tilting campaigns (See my post about the
lowly penny). I've advocated for the elimination of the fax machine for two decades (yet we installed two new ones for a couple of our Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing customers in the last month). Never would I have thought I'd be trying to save a piece of century old technology, but here I am, begging you to use your telephone a little more. I've admitted to fighting a losing battle against texting. I even bought a plan for my phone last month.
I even recognize how interrupting a phone call can be. People of my generation were trained that a ringing phone has to be answered, regardless of what we're doing when it rings. I still have to turn off the ringer when I want to avoid telephone interruptions. I'll also admit that I spend the first hour or so with a new phone doing
everything but making a telephone call.
But there's something about live conversation that contributes to our humanity. If we start doing all (or most) of our communication by text or email, a huge piece of the conversation is going to get lost forever. As the good people who run our computer help desk can tell you, talking to a person goes a long way to understanding their needs. The message is carried in more than the words.
We believe in voice communication so much at Port-to-Port Consulting that we have "Talk to Them Tuesday" every week. Each Tuesday, we commit to starting all of our new communications via the telephone or in person. I hope we don't reach the point where something like this has to become a national holiday.
I write about smart phones a lot. Part of that is because I love these little devices and covet the chance to play with a new one. Amazingly, placing a call is way down on the list of things to do when one first gets to use a new phone. I got to spend 10 minutes with an HTC EVO 4 the other day. It never dawned on me to place a call during that time.
The bigger reason that I write about smart phones so much is that they are one of the fastest changing areas of technology. I consider my phone to be a one year device because in a year there will be so many new phones on the market that do more (or better) than the phone I've chosen to carry. And while I'm carrying the iPhone 4 now, I keep my eyes open for the latest Android phones (especially from HTC). I can't wait to see what Microsoft does with Windows Phone 7. This is their last chance to play in this market and they know it. I expect something spectacular.
The pain of smart phones for my IT support services company is that they change so frequently. My Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing clients want (expect) me to tell them which phones to choose from. Unlike the more settled aspects of the technology industry, there are lots of choices available. The world may or may not be divided into Mac and PC people, but it is definitely not divided nicely among the phone players. Palm, who arguably invented the smart phone, is now a division of HP and will likely disappear entirely by year end.
The other pain of smart phones is that they are so truly personal. Two people with the same phone will want to do different things with them. My Indianapolis computer consulting company doesn't charge for support of smart phones, but my Help Desk spends a lot of time working with our customers and their phones.
I can't wait until the other players introduce their competitors for the iPad.
In the world of sports, it's common for competitors to prepare for a contest by studying video of their opponents previous performances. Peyton Manning is famous for reviewing game photos during the game. My favorite boxer of all time, Thomas "Hitman" Hearns used to find weaknesses in his opponents thru film, then test for those weaknesses early in a bout. He became the first fighter ever to win titles in four different weight divisions.
At Port-to-Port Consulting, we obsess with review of our performance. We know that we can only get better if we identify what needs to improve. We survey each of our customers after they have an interaction with our computer help desk to see what they think. We ask the Indianapolis
small business owners who've hired us to tell us what they hear from their staffs about us during our frequent business reviews. We constantly debate about whether we're taking the best approach to the routine network support activities that we perform. All in the name of improvment. We understand that big improvements are made of little ones. Thomas Hearns once described the way in which an opponent "signaled" that he was about to throw a jab. He confirmed the signal was true, then proceeded to knock out his opponent the next time he threw that jab.
While we don't have the benefit of video, we do all we can to review and improve. When we find little signals that things aren't going as well as we think, we pay attention... before someone else does.
I had a sales call recently that was scheduled, at the prospective customer's request, at lunch time. When I arrived, they sneaked me into a conference room away from the main lobby. I was told that their guy was dating the receptionist and both were out at lunch so we had to hurry. Can you imagine being that afraid of one of your employees? Maybe you can. This isn't a new occurence for me. I often find that Indianapolis small businesses looking for outsourced IT support services are in a situation where they are afraid to tell their current provider that they're unhappy. This is even the case when their current provider is
not an employee, but an outsourced computer support provider.
The number of humorous references made to the frightening help desk technician must mean there is some truth to the idea that people in companies have a fear that their computer network services provider can wield almost magical power over them. I suppose it's possible, but that's no way to run a railroad. If you keep your guy only because you're afraid of the damage he might do if you tried to fire him, then you should fire him right away. He's already done more damage than he should by creating that fear factor in your organization. He's empowering others to try bullying you in their respective areas as well.
All you need is a good, ethical business computer support company. They will be able to help you extricate this evil network support tech from your midst. Once you have accomplished the task, make sure that you don't end up in that situation again by requiring that everything about your system be documented in a manner that will be easy for you (or your next IT guy) to understand.
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:
- How much should I weigh?
- How do I get out of debt fast?
- How do I get pregnant?
- What is Miley Cyrus’ phone number?
- What is Twitter?
- What is the meaning of life?
- When will the world end?
- How long does marijuana stay in your system?
- What are symptoms of Swine Flu?
- 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:
- I didn't do what you told me, but can you fix it now that it's broken?
- If I didn't put in my backup tape, can you still restore my files?
- Can I keep using my computer after the power goes out?
- Should I have called you before I clicked OK on that popup?
- The salesman said it would be easy. Why can't you make it work?
- I just sent out an email to a couple thousand people and now I'm getting bouncebacks. Can you look at it?
- So I wasn’t supposed to open that Hallmark e-card?
- What do you mean I’m not supposed to work out of my deleted items folder?
- Is this trojan message good or bad?
- 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.
I know it isn't spring time and no one really wants to do any cleaning, but just think about how much you enjoy the nice clean straightened out space. That is exactly what we do for our clients. We try hard to clean out things as time goes by for our Indianapolis Small Business Computer support customers, but for one reason or another it doesn't always happen.
I had a meeting with one of my Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing customers. She mentioned that they had some old computer stuff that needed to be removed from their office. A couple of techs were scheduled to pick up the equipment from their office. Boy were we surprised to find
filing cabinets and shelves filled with old IT equipment...two vehicles full of stuff! It took 3 hours and 3 people to go through the stuff to see if there was anything of value. When we finished, there were a few items that we are keeping for spare parts ( a couple USB keyboards and mice, software and spare monitor). The client wants to help other organizations as much as they can, we will be formatting the laptops and desktops to be reused at another of our Indianapolis small business computer customers.
Just like at home, the rooms need to be cleaned out in your offices as well. And even though my boss still has a couple of Apple Newton's in his desk (He says the portable device technology is headed back toward this idea.), most of the stuff you stashed away has no usefulness after it's been put away for more than a few months.
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.
Enjoy reading our blogs? 
Powered by Compendium Blogware