Frying in the PanOur 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.