challenge and response: the joys of taking on improvement skills....
After finding out that I have been actively absorbing the FISH! philosophy and Nonviolent Communication skills, the boss called me into his office, and tasked me to call back a frustrated customer. I was initially skeptical, but I was shocked to learn that the customer was much friendlier than I had anticipated (I prepared myself for the phone call by reading over e-mail exchanges between the customer and an engineer, and I was afraid that I would be thrown into a middle of verbal carnage). Using empathy and plenty of analogies, the customer and I were able to exchange ideas and thoughts, and she even inspired me to add her issue as an agenda item for Thursday morning's meeting (which I am co-chairing). That was a timely discovery, as I was afraid that there wouldn't be many agenda items at the meeting, but now it looks like we have plenty of items to discuss at the meeting, thanks to the callback customer.
I also put aside the negative effects of making stereotypical assumptions ("Oh oh--I have to call back a customer whose primary language is not English. How is he going to understand the technical troubleshooting steps?") to effectively handle my first callback of the day. He had all the information that I needed when I called--I didn't have to painstakingly extricate bits of information from him. The call went very smoothly, and we were able to gather enough information to escalate effectively (I later discovered that this issue could have most likely been fixed by a simple reboot).
I have to stay an extra half hour during e-mail server downtime.
Current Hair Product: d:fi Firm Hold Hair Wax
Current Boxed Lunch: black beans, mango salsa, cheddar cheese, and rice; Field Roast smoked apple sage vegan sausage; Brown Cow maple yogurt
I also put aside the negative effects of making stereotypical assumptions ("Oh oh--I have to call back a customer whose primary language is not English. How is he going to understand the technical troubleshooting steps?") to effectively handle my first callback of the day. He had all the information that I needed when I called--I didn't have to painstakingly extricate bits of information from him. The call went very smoothly, and we were able to gather enough information to escalate effectively (I later discovered that this issue could have most likely been fixed by a simple reboot).
I have to stay an extra half hour during e-mail server downtime.
Current Hair Product: d:fi Firm Hold Hair Wax
Current Boxed Lunch: black beans, mango salsa, cheddar cheese, and rice; Field Roast smoked apple sage vegan sausage; Brown Cow maple yogurt