“Our Average Customer requirements exactly match our average product, but surveys say everyone is unhappy. Why is that?” Well, if the average foot and the average shoe is a size 9, does that mean we can all randomly trade and then comfortably walk a mile?

The “average” customer and product does not exist. In reality there are only individuals, and all pertinent facts about the most homogeneous group of individuals cannot be summarized by a single statistic.

Furthermore, the validity of the most complete analysis rests upon the integrity of measurement. Measurement is a process of observation and systematic comparison to a standard. If the measurement process is flawed, then the statistical summary is invalidated and has zero standing as proof or evidence.

Finally, although measurement and analysis may surprise us with unexpected results, they should never explicitly contradict what one can observe.

I describe this as a “Small Business” pitfall, but much larger companies make a similar mistake in the handling of corporate email...

Here is My Email Address. DON'T USE IT!

Many small businesses buy access to the Internet through a phone company, a cable company, or even the vendor who prepares their website. There are two avoidable and difficult to correct mistakes that are often made in the process.

It does no harm to have an email address called mybusiness@phoneco.net, or mybusiness@mywebsitehost.net, but there are serious consequences if that email address is advertised, used as “user names” or contact addresses at self-service web sites (banks, etc.). In brief, complimentary email addresses are fine as long as you do not advertise the address!

Vendor "Lock-In" Problems

The following information was gleaned from a "Black Hat" security briefing on the web, and I composed these notes to put the vulnerability into the context of our typical call center client. - Ron.

Most companies have dozens, hundreds, or more phone numbers provisioned by the phone company for use with their telephone services. Unfortunately, most companies do not manage these numbers as a corporate asset. There is an important reason to actively manage a short, "defined purpose" (e.g. 'support', 'advertising tracking', etc.) set of numbers, and to publish only the necessary and few numbers  for use by the calling customer.

Scam artists can rent and use the same, inexpensive SIP trunk, Voice over IP, and "Asterisk software-as-PBX" technology that we use to lower phone costs and improve call center metrics. If they can get your customers to think -their- 800 or local telephone 'scam' number is really -yours-, then this is what happens.

With all of the changes in office technology, I have been pondering new ways to screen qualified agents for desktop support. As we all know, "techies" speak a language all their own. The genuine article, however, doesn't need the multiple-choice crutch. They should be able to ace these essay tests WITHOUT google-ing the answer!

I would consider anyone who thoroughly and correctly answered 60% to be qualified, and an 80% score would be an ace. A wizard would get them all. Remember, NO GOOGLE-ING THE ANSWER ONLINE! (Everybody has to look up something, but a qualified support tech doesn't need to look up everything!)

Good answers to these questions indicate a good well-rounded generalist background, and I would expect that individual to pick up the particulars of this or that technology rather quickly.

Two words of caution:

Why does computer maintenance take so much time? Why are computers systems down for so long when they fail?

Computer systems inevitably fail, but you can minimize the costs, and reduce workstation down time to hours instead of days if you fully apply these strategic principles in your computer support operation.

There are four main causes of a systems failure: "domino" effects, moving parts, (hard drives), data corruption,  and configuration management issues. Electronics failures occasionally happen, but this is typically the quick failure of defective components, and heat or power issues.

The “Domino” Effect

Why should it be surprising that proper use of the tools available are part of the productivity equation? Workers who understand ten-out-of-ten of the tools for a job and act on that knowledge will always outperform those who only know three of ten.Like many people who travel as a part of their work, I often find myself in a different airport each week. Along with a change in scenery comes the local rental-car.