I've been thinking about this for awhile, but today I had one of the most convulted customer service experiences yet. I registered for a webinar online with all webinar times given in GMT (Greenwich Mean Time). You had to go to another site to figure out what your time was in relation to GMT and then do the math to figure out which session you should attend. Granted it's a click away, but I'm wondering how many people will sign up for the session listed at 1:00 and miss the time zone (for me, that is a 5:00 am session). As an aside, the company is not located in the US and I'm assuming these webinars for customers in different countires, so I get why they used GMT, but most people are not used to using GMT for a time zone designation.
This is coming on the heels of some challenges in contacting support from the various vendors I deal with. I'm now the keeper of our open URL system, our A-Z e-journal software, and I'm organizing the implementation of our ERM module and looking at that company's A-Z product (we're eventually hoping to consolidate and reduce the number of products we use). Not suprisingly, I've needed to contact customer support. It's not easy. You actually have to tell them to set you up in their system or someone from your library has to tell them, because not just anyone can open a case. Then, you log into their CRM and submit your question. One vendor handles everything through their CRM. So, I get an e-mail after I submit the case and I get an e-mail everytime they reply. But, in order to reply to them, I have to log into the CRM system, update the case, which generates another confirmation e-mail and starts the cycle all over again. So far, they've responded well, so no major complaints, just a lot of hoops to jump through.
I logged a case with another vendor requesting sample records. A week later I called to see what happened. They had it, but it had not yet been assigned. They didn't consider seven days in their queue with no feedback bad. I do. At least confirm that it's been recieved. Calling them of course routed me through a phone tree and ultimately to not one but two people who didn't know anything about the product I was calling about (which at least they acknowledged). I was also strongly admonished to open everything online and have a case number when calling. I'm still waiting to hear about the sample records request and that's a week after they bumped up the priority.
Trying to find a person knowledgeable about the product to ask questions of has proved to be daunting as well. I finally did. They suggested a time to talk which I confirmed. This was all by e-mail, which included a signature block with all my information, including phone number. The response I got to my confirmation was a request for my phone number. I've set my expectations very low for this particular chat.
I'm waiting on a response from another vendor, though the logged case was acknowledged by e-mail. And, I've sent two e-mails to another vendor's support e-mail requesting technical assistance over an almost two week period. I will try calling them today as I've received no response. I'm guessing I haven't logged my question correctly, but, darn it, I looked everywhere for technical support information and the e-mail was the best I could come up with.
I have done customer service of this nature and understand the need for and the use of CRM software. I also somewhat understand the need to designate those that can log cases. From my perspective over the past couple of weeks, though, this process seems to make support choppy and almost always involves a lag time. I need to allow at least a day for a response, which impacts my work.
October 24, 2008
October 15, 2008
CECS 5210 - Project A Complete!
I met with my prof/client today to review the edits and adjustments as a result of my implementation. Despite the fact that I was trying to accomplish something specific with the different presentation and the learning aid, it all turned out well. I redesigned the presentation, updated the learning aid, and submitted it all.
We're ready to move on to Project B. This design is going to be further developed by a team of my classmates and I. We will be taking the current static materials and breathing interactive life into them through the use of Moodle. We will be creating an online course for New Faculty. I get to meet my team next week. In the meantime, I have to pull together a project scope document. Now this is what I signed up for!!
We're ready to move on to Project B. This design is going to be further developed by a team of my classmates and I. We will be taking the current static materials and breathing interactive life into them through the use of Moodle. We will be creating an online course for New Faculty. I get to meet my team next week. In the meantime, I have to pull together a project scope document. Now this is what I signed up for!!
October 08, 2008
CECS 5210 - Pilot Implementation (Feedback)
Week 7 -- Live Evaluation
On Tuesday, I met with part of my client team and presented my materials thus far.
The presentation went so-so. I realized that I had not adequately prepared my participants. They were my secondary clients and I had made too many assumptions about their knowledge of and investment in the project. We spent a large portion of the meeting getting everyone on the same page - what is the project and why are we here.
As we started into the presentation, my major concern with my design was confirmed. By using two different paradigms for the presentation versus the job aid, I had confused my audience. What I had been attempting to do was create a stand-alone job aid as the takeaway and a typical F2F training session. My previous concept of an exceptional training session (especially one that uses PowerPoint) only uses the slide show as a prompting device, not the content delivery mechanism. Having taught PowerPoint ad nauseum, this is a design tip that I strongly stress. This might have worked however the presentation was category/task oriented and the job aid was linear. This disconnect presented difficulty to my audience following the presentation.
Additionally, I was surprised at a cultural sensitivity that I completely missed. By using the Children's programming titles, I alienated my audience with my first slide. "Who is Mr. Rogers?" It never occurred to me that my metaphor was culturally bound. Once I explained the metaphor being used throughout the presentation, my clients were able to follow more easily. But this certainly is an area ripe for revision.
So this week, I'm revising what I've created and hope to meet with my primary client next week. It'll be nice to put this phase of the project to rest.
On Tuesday, I met with part of my client team and presented my materials thus far.
The presentation went so-so. I realized that I had not adequately prepared my participants. They were my secondary clients and I had made too many assumptions about their knowledge of and investment in the project. We spent a large portion of the meeting getting everyone on the same page - what is the project and why are we here.
As we started into the presentation, my major concern with my design was confirmed. By using two different paradigms for the presentation versus the job aid, I had confused my audience. What I had been attempting to do was create a stand-alone job aid as the takeaway and a typical F2F training session. My previous concept of an exceptional training session (especially one that uses PowerPoint) only uses the slide show as a prompting device, not the content delivery mechanism. Having taught PowerPoint ad nauseum, this is a design tip that I strongly stress. This might have worked however the presentation was category/task oriented and the job aid was linear. This disconnect presented difficulty to my audience following the presentation.
Additionally, I was surprised at a cultural sensitivity that I completely missed. By using the Children's programming titles, I alienated my audience with my first slide. "Who is Mr. Rogers?" It never occurred to me that my metaphor was culturally bound. Once I explained the metaphor being used throughout the presentation, my clients were able to follow more easily. But this certainly is an area ripe for revision.
So this week, I'm revising what I've created and hope to meet with my primary client next week. It'll be nice to put this phase of the project to rest.
October 07, 2008
Trying new things...
This new job has given me the opportunity to test drive new ways of doing things, mostly by trying out new applications. And, most of it isn't earth shattering. I'm just trying to better manage my activities and time in the new job.
One of the unexpected changes in the new job was my ability to use Mozilla Thunderbird for my e-mail. The Outlook client works okay here, but Thunderbird appears to do better. This has been good and bad. I was surprised at how used to Microsoft I was and to get what is already in Outlook, I had to find several add-ons for Thunderbird. Not unreasonable, but still it took time and some of the add-ons, well in the end they don't really meet my need. The two "biggies" were installing a calendar and Thundernote. I used the Notes feature of Outlook some in my old job and for whatever reason, don't really care for Thundernote, though it's not a whole lot different from Outlook's. I had used it for various notes to myself. This past week I've begun experimenting with Google's Notebook and it looks like it might work well for my random thoughts and notes.
Thunderbird does allow for tags, which excited me until I realized it simply changes the font color in the Inbox. There is a plug-in which might help, but apparently I've gotten very used to the way g-mail uses tags and was disappointed that it doesn't stick my tag in front of the subject line. I will eventually try the plug-in and see if that helps.
The Thunderbird task list doesn't work for me either. I tried a couple of different applications, but the two I vacillated back and forth between were Remember the Milk and Toodledo. I've wound up going with Remember the Milk for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that it integrates with my iGoogle page. The iGoogle page is another recent for me. I've set up one to keep track of my work g-mail account, my tasks, calendar, etc. I've also set up one for personal stuff and the big surprise for me is that it seems to be working. I've only been doing it this way for about a month, but so far I think this will prove to be a good way for me to organize my work items.
The other thing I did was give in to curiosity and set up a Twitter account. I am totally fascinated by Twitter. Not necessarily about watching what others are doing, but seeing how others are using Twitter. I decided to see what the Presidential candidates were doing with Twitter. Both of course have Twitter accounts, but what's fascinating to me is the different ways they use them. I'm sure some folks got really excited when Obama started following them as well. I, on the other hand, thought clever, but wondered what poor worker on his campaign is glancing through updates of 98,000 plus people. Odds are no one is. I've also had several people follow me for marketing purposes, which I find curious. I know there are guides for using Twitter to market, but if I don't follow you back, what good is it? Do you just ignore the feeds of those you're following and hope they follow you in return? I guess I should read one of the guides and find out.
One of the unexpected changes in the new job was my ability to use Mozilla Thunderbird for my e-mail. The Outlook client works okay here, but Thunderbird appears to do better. This has been good and bad. I was surprised at how used to Microsoft I was and to get what is already in Outlook, I had to find several add-ons for Thunderbird. Not unreasonable, but still it took time and some of the add-ons, well in the end they don't really meet my need. The two "biggies" were installing a calendar and Thundernote. I used the Notes feature of Outlook some in my old job and for whatever reason, don't really care for Thundernote, though it's not a whole lot different from Outlook's. I had used it for various notes to myself. This past week I've begun experimenting with Google's Notebook and it looks like it might work well for my random thoughts and notes.
Thunderbird does allow for tags, which excited me until I realized it simply changes the font color in the Inbox. There is a plug-in which might help, but apparently I've gotten very used to the way g-mail uses tags and was disappointed that it doesn't stick my tag in front of the subject line. I will eventually try the plug-in and see if that helps.
The Thunderbird task list doesn't work for me either. I tried a couple of different applications, but the two I vacillated back and forth between were Remember the Milk and Toodledo. I've wound up going with Remember the Milk for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that it integrates with my iGoogle page. The iGoogle page is another recent for me. I've set up one to keep track of my work g-mail account, my tasks, calendar, etc. I've also set up one for personal stuff and the big surprise for me is that it seems to be working. I've only been doing it this way for about a month, but so far I think this will prove to be a good way for me to organize my work items.
The other thing I did was give in to curiosity and set up a Twitter account. I am totally fascinated by Twitter. Not necessarily about watching what others are doing, but seeing how others are using Twitter. I decided to see what the Presidential candidates were doing with Twitter. Both of course have Twitter accounts, but what's fascinating to me is the different ways they use them. I'm sure some folks got really excited when Obama started following them as well. I, on the other hand, thought clever, but wondered what poor worker on his campaign is glancing through updates of 98,000 plus people. Odds are no one is. I've also had several people follow me for marketing purposes, which I find curious. I know there are guides for using Twitter to market, but if I don't follow you back, what good is it? Do you just ignore the feeds of those you're following and hope they follow you in return? I guess I should read one of the guides and find out.
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