Being Understood

You call this entertainment?

It's hard to be a Help Desk person. We customers only call when we're angry or confused or both.  If only we could just learn to enjoy:

• waiting (Kenny G is Top Of The Pops on "Hold" this week)
• listening to long multilingual messages that don't make sense in any language
• bouncing between service people (I suspect they have a [Random] button to send us to other departments where we will hear, "That's not my job," immediately before they ask the obligatory question, "Is there anything more I help you with today?")
• getting nowhere and taking forever to get there

In a bid to be the "ideal customer," I have started to use my problems as entertainment, for both myself and Help Desk employees. I had a great chat, this morning, with someone at Bell Canada. He was wonderful and had the customer service spirit so often missing in call centres.

The Deadbeat Harrassment System
I'm not a Bell customer, except for the occasional pay phone. However, I'm receiving daily "Pay up or die!" calls from an automated  system that asks me to call a phone number that turns out to be the credit department at Bell. It seems a former holder of my new phone number hasn't met  some of her financial obligations. I know this because Bell wasn't the only firm calling about monies owed. Fortunately, the others sent humans or included an account number in their recorded messages. These companies understand that communication requires some content and contact.

Not so Bell Canada, which is, ironically, Canada's largest communications network and has corporate communication departments in several cities. This was the sixth time I had called Bell on this matter - and the first time anyone seemed interested. This lovely agent dug into my case like detective Hercule Poirot. He revealed that, for this giant company whose business is phones and phoning, a phone number is insufficient information. He searched on all my particulars, diver's licence, social insurance nubmer, and such, just to rule out identity theft. Then he determined, to his and my regret, that there is absolutely nothing he or Bell can do to stop the system from hassling me.

A solution is found (maybe)
Firmly convinced that you can always get good service if you communicate, I didn't give up. There is a possible solution. Caller blocking! So the next few times Bell calls, I can note the time and caller phone number and my telco can stop the nonsense. 

How do I know this? You guessed it.  I called the Rogers Telecom Help Desk.

Cheers - Sue

Communication Sinners - Are You One?

I have invested far too many hours, this weekend, trying to sort out a communication mess.  A member of a volunteer board, on which I serve, has, effectively punched the rest of us in the head.

We probably deserve it.

There are sins of commission and sins of omission. Both forms are present on both sides of this particular communication mess.

The sin commtted is that of  working up a good sense of outrage, sending off the e-mail equivalent of a nuclear attack on the entire world, and sitting back to watch the explosion 

I confess.  In my younger, stupider days, I committed that very sin, myself, though on a smaller scale (and using cleaner, crisper, clearer language).  I loved being outraged and articulate about it. Later, I became a journalist, and was paid to commit that sin.

In the situation this group faces, today, it's the sins of omission that are more disturbing.

Try? There is no Try!

Many of you will know that I am in the throes of authoring a book about workplace communication.  You may not know that I'm trying to complete it by the end of February, just 13 short days and nights from this moment.

Talk To Me - Workplace Conversations That Work, blends fiction and nonfiction, weaving a story around and through the communication ideas to put them in a 'real world' context. It's a book with an accompanying learning program and a slew of downloadable recordings and worksheets to support it. Mercifully, these extra bits are not due by month's end.

This morning, as I was trying to write one of five chapters required this week, I interrupted myself to coach a young entrepreneur of unusual talent. Today was not her best day. She acknowledged that she's trying to be a certain way. And she'll try to think bigger. And she'll try to put some ideas together. And she'll try to do something about it.

And all of a sudden, I could year the great Jedi guru, Yoda, screaming at me, at her, and at the world, just as he screamed at Luke Skywalker. "Try? There is no Try! There is only Do and Not Do."