Enterprise Application Newsletter

eSharings – June 2004

current insights, objective advice, and resources for service and support professionals, given in the spirit of sharing information.

THE 2004 CONFERENCE AND EXPO FOR HELP DESK PROFESSIONALS

October 6-8 – New Orleans at the Fairmont Hotel

“celebrate with the legends of the help desk industry”

The “ORIGINAL” Help Desk conference with the most comprehensive, content-rich sessions.

No other event has sessions that are this loaded with immediate take-aways, in sessions devoted entirely to providing extensive, invaluable content. This is also the only event where you will ever see all of your favorite industry leaders speaking at one conference.

Experience our exclusive line-up of speakers including Malcolm Fry, Pete McGarahan, Patrick Bultema, Ivy Meadors, Gary Lemke, Char LaBounty, George Spalding, Kurt Johnson, JJ Lauderbaugh, Daryl Covey, Mary Kay Wegner, Brenda Iniguez, Melinda Uhland, and many others.

Save $400 with early registration by August 20^th

Use the Discount Code: DDFTL22

Sign up now! http://www.dci.com/events/helpdesk/

SHARING

I love the many aspects of mentoring and coaching. Writing eSharings each month offering different ideas, resources, and learning venues available is like mentoring, though on a smaller scale. Including information about conferences, user group meetings, books, web resources, ideas that I learn from others, personal thoughts and experiences, contributes to the hope that others are benefiting from this sharing of information.

In this month’s issue, I impart a concept that I learned from my friend, Max Dixon, an incredible, professional speaker and actor for 30 years. I have applied my own twist and examples to the idea, but it is based entirely on the initial thoughts I attribute to Max.

If you have resources, favorite books, an article or personal story to share, please email me at mailto:Ivy@hthts.com. We will share your story and resources with our readers in future issues and on our website.

Warmly,

Ivy Meadors

FEATURED ARTICLE

Be Fully Present and Focused

Being “fully present and focused” means giving all of your attention to the situation or person at the moment. So often other things happening, or going on in our mind, distract us. We have all witnessed or experienced this behavior or have been the one to exhibit it.

There are many benefits to altering your mindset to become “fully present and focused” both in the home and at work. Examples to make these points look something like this:

You arrive at work, spend the first 15 minutes of time hanging up your coat, booting your computer, shuffling things into order to start your day, look over your desk for immediate things that will need attention first, then walk off to get a coffee. You pass someone in the hall that wants to discuss their weekend with you or the problems they had at work yesterday. By the time you are ready to be fully functional, 30-45 minutes have already gone by. You get back to your desk and an employee comes to your desk to share their excitement about an idea for improving the workgroup’s performance.

You are distracted by the fact that you have been at work for over half an hour and have not started on anything yet. You start to think about what you need to do next, yet this person at your desk needs you to be “fully present” and “focused,” and you are not. You start looking at your email while the person is speaking to you, because you are feeling anxious to get back to work. You are not giving them direct eye contact or entirely listening to their message.

They realize you are not fully present or focused on their message. They start to feel unimportant, may have their enthusiasm dashed, and get frustrated. Both parties are dissatisfied at the end of the exchange.

Now let’s try the scenario at home:

You drive through rush hour traffic, after working a long day that was very tense. You pull up in the driveway. Your small child runs out to greet you with open arms, a big smile on their face and is excited to tell you about their day at school. You respond with a terse, “Mommy/Daddy just got home. I need to go do my [email/read the paper/watch my program], etc. You can tell me about it later.” They sadly walk away.

Or it could play out like this:

Your spouse/mate/friend greets you with enthusiasm and wants to tell you about something they are ecstatic about. You hear them speaking, but don’t listen because you are not focused on them and are not fully present to their needs. You are still thinking about all of the things you didn’t get done at work and now must do tonight. Their excitement is dampened by your reaction to their attempt to share part of their life with someone they love, you.

Entire days go on like this, unnecessarily impacting others. The next time someone wants some of your time, stop what you are doing, just for a moment, and be fully present and focused. It only takes a few minutes to listen and focus on their message. The results will be invaluable to both of you. Time made for others, far outweighs time rushing through life.

Assignment: The next person who walks up to your desk, stop what you are doing, turn your chair towards them, and give them your full attention. Don’t answer the phone, don’t do email, just listen and exchange information. Or the next call you take, be fully present for that particular caller.

Afterwards ask yourself, “how did that feel for you?” “How did they react to your offering your full attention in the face to face interaction?” Did the caller have a better experience?

Explore Your Options: What is the Driving Force that Motivates you?

Being privileged to be able contribute to HDPConnections, my most recent article is published in the June issue. You will find the full article in its entirety here on DCI’s website at http://www.dci.com/newsletter/hdp/article.asp?id=1985

Have you seen Troy yet? How about “We Were Soldiers?” “Miracle”, “The Last Samurai” or “Radio?” These shows all have many powerful messages about what motivates people. Pride, the desire to do a great job, the ambition to win, the hope to make a difference, the passion to fight for and represent their country and so many other aspects that are driving forces that motivate people. These movies clearly represent many of these motivators and a great deal of others.

I know that for me, while working for US West Communications, I was very proud to be working for such an outstanding employer and remain proud of our accomplishments as a team, and as a company, to this day. It felt good about going to work for a company with such a great reputation and one which took such good care of its employees. It was easy to be highly motivated to do more than just a good job for them. It increased my ambition to be successful personally but it also drove me to want to make a difference in the company and for those I worked with. I am certain I am not unique in these feelings. Anyone who has had the opportunity to work for an exemplary company, who cares as much for you as you do for them, can understand where I am coming from.

Here are four things that you can begin to do now, that will contribute to the release of all that powerful motivation inside you.

1. Be a person that shouts distinction, commitment and passion!

2. Pursue mastery by reinforcing your professional excellence.

3. Be someone who cares about others first and self second.

4. Create a roadmap for success.

Read the entire article with details outlined for each of these four guidelines here… http://www.dci.com/newsletter/hdp/article.asp?id=1985

RESOURCES

Check out Tony’s website where you will find many free resources that you will find valuable to you both personally and professionally. http://www.alessandra.com/freeresources/index.asp

Customer Service/Customer Loyalty

The Stairs of Customer Loyalty

Moments of Magic

Assuring Customer Satisfaction

Personality Assessments

How Charismatic Are You?

The Platinum Rule™ Personality Assessment

VIEWPOINT

“By many appearances, offshore and nearshore outsourcing appears to offer an impressive cost savings. But the true costs are often not all considered. We were told of a situation where the cost of a single twelve-hour outage for one company in the United States was prolonged due to lack of skills, language barriers, and miscommunications in India. Furthermore, they did not fully understand the criticality of the situation.”

“The entire cost of outsourcing a call center overseas can be about the same as this single incident cost this company, exceeding millions of dollars. All potential savings could be lost in one outage! How many companies could withstand this sort of thing happening more than once?”