More from the "Fischbowl"..

The next blog I read from the "Best (?) of the Fischbowl 2007" was best of May called "Customer Service". I thought this blog was not only interesting, but so very, very true! It starts off with a YouTube video of a customer service call to HP. It is literally the entire call, with captions at the top, and then followed up by a survey call about the service received. First the caller gets connected with a computer, then the computer connects the caller with a technician, then the technician connects the caller with another techician, but before the caller even talks to the second technician the call is disconnected. This is so typical nowadays when you call for customer service on a product you have. About 99% of the time you are going to talk to a computer for a large part of your call. Then about half of the time and with some bad luck you will also end up getting disconnected. It just seems to be the way things go now with the massive sizes of companies that there are. I have to say, while I was watching the video and reading the captions up top, I really did start laughing because the video is just so true. Also, during the video, after the call was disconnected and the person called to survey the man who had called customer service, the percentages they showed of how he spent his call were ridiculous. "16% of the call was spent on listening to music while on hold, 15% was spent talking to a computer, 44% was spent with the customer looking up model and serial numbers (when in actuality the technician should have those things right there in front of him with the open file), and 16% was spent actually talking to the technician about the problem." Absolutely nothing was done to help the customer out!

Karl Fisch then goes on in the rest of his blog to talk about how "customer service" can relate in the education field. He works as a technology technician at the school he's employed at, and he says the majority of this job is spent helping faculty and students out when they have a tech. problem. With as busy as he gets, and the amount of work he has to do, he says that sometimes it just gets easier to fix the problem without explaining to whomever he is helping how he actually fixed it. He goes on to express how, while it might be making his job easier at the moment to do that, he is not helping out those people in the future who will still have no idea how to fix problems that may come up with their products. He believes by explaining what he does to the person he's helping it could help them out in the future and also help future teachers to be "technology literate". He believes when working in customer service you should be familiar with the problems and people that you are working with on a daily basis. Relating this to the video, in short it just means don't take the easy way out, be familiar with what you are doing, and even if it takes a little extra time, explain what you're doing to help others out in the future also.