JdotMI's LiveJournal

Okay, so there wasn't a party. I'm one of these weird people who goes "Oh yeah, it's my birthday. Meh." I mean, I bought my birthday present for myself a month ago (32gb iPod Touch). I didn't have a huge gathering of folks over to eat way too much food and watch cheesy movies. And I didn't take the day off work. SO, yeah, it was just a regular ol' Tuesday for me. :p

Today, satyr_mi and rubicontiger start school. Should be interesting. I'm betting I'll be the only sane person left in the apartment by the end of the week. :p

Slept better last night than the night before, but that isn't really saying much. Still didn't get up early enough to work out. Did get a late start out the door, though, and wound up a few minutes late to work, but nothing huge. Now to finish waking up so that I don't sound like a total zombie to people on the phone today.

Got up somewhat early this morning. Mainly because I was freezing. Heh. left the windows all open last night and it was below 60 in the apartment. Cleared some crap off of the DVR, changed the cat boxes (and the kittehs rejoiced), went to the rec room to abuse the treadmill. Wait, what? Yes, I really did just write that. I didn't abuse it for very long, but I did have a go on the treadmill today.

Beyond that, did some minor cleanup in the common areas. We so need to replace our vacuum. It's dying big time. Beyond that, haven't done much.

Oh. I played some Star Trek Online. It's not to bad of a game. It could be better, but it's not too bad.

Now, I go feed my FarmVille addiction. Send help. x_x

So, this is a rare public post in which I talk about work. I'm doing this because of something that has been percolating in my brain for, well, years. Names are omitted because it's work, y'all.

People who go into the computer industry aren't, as a whole, those you could consider People Persons. They may be geeky, cool, and great to have conversations with. When dealing with other people in a "Professional" manner, however, they just don't have the finesse or customer service skills that people are looking for. This can be really problematic. Once upon a time, it was fine since only computer people were really working with computer people. Now that's not the case. Everyone is using computers.

Now let's talk about Tech Support specifically. There are a lot of people who get into Tech Support because they love working with computers and they want to break into the IT industry. There is a problem with this, though. What many of these folks don't realize is they are actually getting into the Customer Service industry. Yes, you need some pretty specific skill sets for it, but it is still Customer Service. And there is a disproportionate number of techs out there who just do not have good Customer Service skills.

So, I don't like to brag (Spike: Who am I kidding? I LOVE to brag!), but I give good customer service. No, seriously. I know I'm good at it and I'm not going to sit here and be all "Gee, no, it was nothing, really" about it. Why? Because there is a widespread impression, which is not entirely unfounded, that most people in the Tech Support industry give shitty customer service. Yes, I get it, we deal with people daily who have no business dealing with anything that uses moving parts, but our job is to help them so that they can do their job. That's one part knowing how to fix the problem they're having and nine parts knowing how to communicate with them efficiently and nicely.

This morning, I got an email forwarded to me from my boss that was sent by someone I worked with yesterday. She told me on the phone that I was the nicest person she's dealt with in my department. I did the polite "Thank You"'s that you should do in a case like that. Compliments are always welcome, after all! Then she mentioned nobody else in my department was as nice as I am. Nobody.

Now, in a case like this you're supposed to do the apologizing and say things like, "oh I'm sure it was an isolated incident", but my response was pretty simple: "Yeah, I know. We're working on it." And it's true. It is something my department has been working on recently, and things have improved. But like every other Tech Support I've ever dealt with, we have a way to go.

So, here's what I think the most important thing anyone looking to get an immediate improvement on their customer service skills should do: Smile. Any seminar or training you get about customer service is going to include it, and very very few people actually do it. If you smile, people will hear it in your voice. That can turn an entire incident around from "Man, I hope I never have to talk to them again" to "Wow, that was good service!" It's not corny, it's not stupid, it's not schmaltzy. It's true. It's a bit of non-verbal communication that carries over into our verbal communication so directly and easily that not doing it is akin to shooting yourself in the foot. And, let's be honest here, I know a lot of people who are shooting themselves in the foot every time they answer the phone.

Oh sweet zombiejesuschrist Holy shit get that thing away from me it's going to eat my soul!

Holy shit the last couple weeks of humidity and heat have finally done it. My allergies came back full throttle for the first time in YEARS.

Benadryl? Helpful. Left it at home. That was smart.

Clariton bought at work? NOT SO HELPFUL! >_<

http://community.livejournal.com/worldofwarcraft/8372591.html

Blizzard will no longer be requiring real names to post on their forums.

WoW's official forums are going to start showing your REAL NAME in your posts when Cataclysm launches.

Predictably, the internet is not having any of this fucking shit.

Final two episodes of Glee Season 1: AWESOME! And hillarious. And tearjerking.

First episode of True Blood Season 3: AWESOME! And hillarious. And hello thar Sam/Bill dream sequence. Sequel to that dream, please?

First episode of HGTV Design Star Season 5: ... what? Really? WTF? I'm giving this another couple weeks and then I'm probably ditching this show. Vern Yip sucks as a TV show host, and now this is turning into Vern Yip's Design Star. I get it, HGTV is hurting financially or something, but y'all couldn't be bothered to put anything resembling production values into this show? Or, ya know, class? Well, other than Candace, cuz I'd watch her read the telephone book she's that awesome. And no Clive? Really, show? I loved that the judges did walk-throughs and interact more with the contestants and that they started with the white-box challenge, but beyond that this really really sucked.

Since this clearly has me wanting to be chatty, let's recap the series as a whole, shall we?

• Season 1 had the "new show" vibe, and we got a really awesome designer out of it with his own show (David Bromstadt is now on to a new version of his show on HGTV, which makes me happy. I should probably watch that).


• Season 2 refined the formula of Season 1 and was probably the best season they had, and we got yet another awesome designer out of it (Kim Myles, and her show is fun!).


• Season 3 was another great year, until a gay porn controversy put a huge ol' black mark on the show and kept one of the designers out of the finale reunion and the awesome designer who won (Jennifer Bertrand) then got the crap treatment from the studio and her show was quietly not-launched and then apparently cancelled before anyone actually got to know it was there.


• Season 4 was a giant cluster with Tashika's classless send-off (she should have been gone earlier, but Vern was a total dick about her send-off) and it was apparently decided that America had no business choosing the winner that wasn't going to appeal to the straight male demographic or edgy female demographic that HGTV is clearly deisgned for and thus we got a winner that nobody I know has any interest in watching on television and clearly the people would have picked the runner up as evidenced by the reaction of the internet.

So, yeah, that word.

So, I have gotten back into playing World of Warcraft. The Random Dungeon Finder is like crack or something. Anyrate, this post is going to be short and to the point.

I did my first run of Heroic Occulus ever and all I got to show for it was this silly dragon!

I'd call that a win. ^_^