Cobweb

You learn something new every day

I had an interesting review with a recent new customer of ours this week - which has opened my eyes a bit...

This customer is truly global with near 1000 mailboxes running some 2GB mailboxes, Email Archival and BlackBerry.  They are very smart with their systems and we've been dealing with some very technically versed people, and have been undergoing a fairly lengthy and complex migration from their legacy mail servers to our platform.   There have been some challenges along the way - co-ordinating their resource and activities in remote offices, with the activities of our engineers in setting this up, combined with the impact to the end users, have given us both a few teething problems. But, we've worked these out and generally found that communication is the key to making this work (it usually is!)

So, I was expecting a few challenges about some of the slips along the way, but when it comes to platform availability and performance, generally things have been OK and there are no worries here... or so I was thinking. 

I heard about some of the real issues that have been causing pain to their administrators of the system - those IT admins that make our system work for their end-users.   I was to hear about issues that I thought were fixed, resolved, dead and buried - or so I thought...  These were not showstopping issues, the service still worked and mail still flowed, but some of the real-time admin data and interfaces used to administer the services or a provisioning action was repeatedly incorrect or failing for these administrators.    I heard about one issue that we've been having on and off repeatedly for many months, which on reflection is something that we will resolve for good now. 

So I learnt that fixing a problem and moving on, doesn’t necessarily mean that others (my customer in this case) has moved along with you.  Reflection is important, it’s easy to assume that a technical fix affects the customer perception when in reality things may be a little different.

Funday Friday - Beachwear day

Hello all - we try and relax a bit on Friday at Cobweb... still lots to do but we have some fun while we're at it.   Today's been particularly good with a Beachwear day - shorts and sunnies all round despite the somewhat overcast weather!   

 

Be Positive

“Call me Old Fashioned”   ……. My own personal view, great customer service stems from the basic values of life itself. Personally I have an outlook to life that is simple, treat others as I would like to be treated myself. In work, as in life I follow a few simple rules, honesty, and openness, respect, polite and approachable; never promise what I can’t deliver. Sticking to these basic guidelines has not let me down.

Experience through life, is in my opinion, something to be valued, and if something affects your personal life you truly learn from this, more so than something learnt in a classroom.  We all remember the bad experiences when making purchases, for example, the gum chewing person busy chatting to their associates about their exploits the night before, or the way you were treated when complaining about a faulty product. Not being listened to completely, so that you have to repeat yourself, leading to a great deal of frustration.  I could go on…..

However, on the other hand, good customer service is rarely reported but should be applauded.  Have you ever had a good experience and let the person or company know.  I must admit, I never used to, but in the many years I have been involved in Customer Service (too many to say) I have reported on good customer service a lot more, making the experience a lot more enjoyable, only through being positive about an issue rather than negative.  So no more Mrs Grumpy, my grievances are approached with a smile and never made personal.  What’s the benefit of that, you might ask.  Well, experience has shown me that, firstly, I don’t get frustrated or stressed about the situation, next comes the buying into helpfulness, the more agreeable I am the quicker issues are resolved, the other party listens more carefully so that removes the repeated conversations.

Go on, report good customer service, being positive is great.  Why not tell the person behind the counter or on the phone that they have done a good job.  Spread the “feel good” factor, I know if I feel good I do a better job, you never know, it might just catch on!

Val Wilson

More losses of data

These sorts of things seem to be in the news almost daily now but when are things going to get to a point where it becomes a legal requirement to actively have a system in place to protect customer data? It almost seems now it's become accepted that peoples private data is going to be lost at some point and that is inevitable. Obviously some government departments are as guilty (if not more so) than private firms so maybe that is what is holding up the need for this legistlation?

Here's some more stories that have been appearing in the news that you may have missed!

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/20/virgin_media_banking_loss/

http://www.epolitix.com/latestnews/article-detail/newsarticle/government-accused-over-new-data-loss/

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/08/hsbc_hk_data_loss_snafu/

http://www.computerweekly.com/blogs/stuart_king/2008/05/data-loss-epidemic.html  (interesting read)

And something a bit closer to home which is something that could potentially happen to anyone :-

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/hampshire/7461409.stm

Mark