Today, class, we are going to talk about customer service, specifically communication.

Does the following script sound familiar?

• You open a trouble ticket, have it go into the great beyond, and… dead air. Nary a response, nothing, nada, zip, zilch.
• You wonder, “Where did it go? Who’s looking at it? What action is being taken? When will someone take care of it? How do you go about getting a response?”
• Out of the blue, you receive a canned response; something like, “Please reboot your PC, this will fix your problem. This trouble ticket has been closed.” You have no contact telephone number to follow-up, and a canned message. Great.

Interestingly enough, one of the most highly sought after photos from my site is this image:

People, this is the West Coast Choppers trailer, manufactured by H&H Trailers out of Clarinda, IA for Jesse James. The photo above is located in my gallery along with some other trailer photos, and Sat-Com research photos. [Edit, URL updated because H&H was purchased By Royal Cargo Trailers.]

If you are looking for a quality trailer manufacturer, with freakin’ awesome employees, and fantastic vision — the guys at H&H are the folks you’ve been looking for (Tell Aaron Roberts that Jerry Gilreath sent you! Maybe they’ll give me one of those little tow-behinds for free! Woot!)

This article is aka: “Should I stay in the box?”

I have an acquaintance that insists on always “thinking outside of the box” and forging his own path. Normally I would applaud this thinking — as I believe all things are fine… in moderation — but in this case, perhaps not. My friend is a “contrarian“, clearly and consistently going against the grain, making decisions that are contrary to the “norm.” His high risk investments sometimes pay off, but they also come with great risk. In this particular example, my friend is making decisions not for himself, but for his company and its investors and its employees.

Why do the people who “don’t know their a** from a hole in the ground” always come up with the best, and often, most profitable, ideas?

In his book Presentation Zen, Garr Reynolds has a chapter entitled You Are Creative. He begins this chapter with a photograph of a small child on a beach drawing pictures in wet sand. Beneath this captured moment, is the following quote from Shunryu Suzuki:

“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few.”

Recently someone asked a question on LinkedIn’s Technology Leaders Association discussion group regarding “working overtime in IT.” The topic had to do with whether this should be an expectation and how to handle salaried employees that will only agree to put in 40 hours. The comment was made that these individuals “are not as invested in or excited about their career.” The question was how to handle this situation, without coming across as saying “Work more or I’ll find someone who will.”

The asker didn’t want to go down the “legalese” discussion path.