Friday, February 19, 2010

Please Read This Important Information:

no matter what you do for your company the outcome of your work boils down to how well you process information understanding your role as a processor of information will help give you a keener understanding of your own specific work responsibilities while allowing you to see how information in a broader sense influences the failure or success of your company your primary objective as an employee is to take in information filter it apply it and then finally analyze and evaluate it whether or not you are the president of the company a member of the marketing team or operations team or working the night shift in customer service each of these people has the equal task of being presented with information and acting upon it EXAMPLE say a frustrated and angry customer calls in to complain about a certain feature your software company we’ll call your company a software company in this example provides in one of its applications with good training and good instincts the customer service agent will quickly categorize this complaint in a number of ways is it a user end hardware problem a user-end operations system problem a poor description of the feature in the applications literature or is it a flaw in the software design his is the phase of taking in and filtering information after diffusing the caller’s exasperation the agent recalls a similar scenario documented a week earlier involving a different client the case was nearly identical to the current case and after going over past notes the agent is able to quickly resolve the customer’s complaint and close the case with a happy and satisfied clienst is this agent’s work completed now two scenarios where customers have expressed dissatisfaction about inadequate feature descriptions in the software literature the agent sees a pattern developing and out of diligence reports this deficiency to the supervisor his is the analyzing phase of the information path and it serves the company in the agent’s perspective to stave off further complaints and to generate better customer service now someone else has information to take in filter apply analyze and evaluate the supervisor with good judgement and good training now has to filter this information and decide what course of action to take can the agent now consider his or her work on this case finished did notifying the supervisor of the pattern of disgruntled clients produce any significant result this is the evaluative phase of that source of information a good agent may with a comprehensive understanding of the company’s communicative pipeline wait to see what the results of his or her report produced are there an increasing number of callers sounding out the same concerns another report to the supervisor …and still no modification to the literature or online update at this point the frustration level of the agent might be forgiven and a couple of outcomes may result first the agent a quality employee may grow increasingly indifferent to acting on important information and eventually seek employment where his or her services receive greater respect second the employee grows indifferent to discovering and identifying critical developing issues with products and becomes a ZOMBIE employee the employee is there out with no heart in the game or third the employee may find other ways to circumvent the supervisor’s inability to influence the necessary changes there may be an internet forum where some of these problems can be addressed or the agent may have a friend in another company department where concerns about poor literature can be vented and acted upon what we will never understand in the above scenario (looking at it from the agent’s perspective) is what the supervisor was experiencing in other words are other more pressing problems occupying the supervisor’s list of things to get done regarding the software that the agent is unaware of or is the supervisor running into a brick wall—getting nowhere—as he or she tries to relay to the product development team the importance of the agent’s advice it’s hard to tell but the third option for the agent—going through an internet forum or talking to someone outside of customer service—seems like one of the best ways to constructively approach the problem so there you have it follows then that information equals power—when applied good information i.e. filtered information once accurately analyzed and evaluated gives the power to inform decision making and informed decisions determine whether a company is able to sink or swim in the precarious and ever shifting landscape of the marketplace

We hope you understand what was said in the above text...

KWA

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