I know a man who can….

As this is a family site all the swear words have been deleted from the following story. It’s been a while since I’ve blogged anything but things have been a bit hectic. This one isn’t really Call Centre related but I thought the general ideas might apply.

A couple of months ago I organised a surprise party for a friend of mine, using a local pub in Watford I hadn’t been to recently. It had the advantage of being easy to get to and having a separate function room.

Whilst sorting out the details with the (new) landlord the conversation go onto entertainment and Audo Visual.

From this I ended up offering (with assistance from a friend who’s a sparks) to install and align an old 3 gun video projector in the bar. Not a problem, I’ve not used this particular model before but the principal is the same for all of them.

We arranged to go in on Good Friday to hang the projector and do the alignment. Now I haven’t done one for a few years but I’ve probably done 50-60 in the past. OK I think, ‘This’ll take 3-4 hours’, and so it should have.

This was where the fun started.

In the weeks before I’d had fun getting a remote control so I could get the alignment grid up and trying to obtain a manual. In the end I ended up with a copy in PDF format for the next model up but no problem there. For what it’s worth Seleco’s customer service is non-existent. I’d say bad, but I couldn’t even get a reply let alone an answer off of them.

So we get to site.

And the projector is already on the ceiling. Ah…

The landlord had thought he’d help by putting it, and the screen up in advance. So I spent four hours trying to align the projector using every trick I could remember o make it work.

As a technical note, the screen size and alignment is VERY dependant on the distance and angle from screen to the MIDDLE of the projector.

Now here’s the diplomacy in action. How do you explain that the down angle should be 12 degrees and he’d set it to 20+; also the throw distance should be about 8′ for the screen size and it was nearly 12. The screen top was also higher than the guns rather than level with.

Having had a crash course in projector alignment my colleague (the sparks) went back last weekend and spent another 4 hrs moving it nearer the screen, changing the height and re-aligning as I’m in Manchester and not down every weekend.

So he moral of the story I suppose is.

Sometimes it may be a simple job but it can cause problems down the line. You may be able to do part of the job but what impact is that going to have?

Whilst it added problem s the landlord thought at the time he was helping but in effect he wasted a day of our time trying to work around the problem that wouldn’t have existed if he’d let us fly the thing in the first place.

At the end of the first day the mantra was “Why didn’t he just let us hang it?”

As an additional note does anyone have a manual for a Seleco SVT150?

I suppose this applies to all trades, how many tradesmen are making a living off of DIY disasters? So it’s not bad news for all.

DaveA

I don’t know about you, but I’m a bit of a ’snooze surfer’. Nothing to do with either the sea or the web, ’snooze surfing’ is that process of hitting snooze on the alarm clock every n minutes to ‘ease’ oneself into the day.

So, it’s with a mixture of intrigue and alarm (ho ho) that I suddenly discovered that the days of ’snooze surfing’ may be at drawing to a close…

Clocky, the Smart Alarm

Whatever will they think of next?

Today I discovered a new diversion from my planned activity for the day*.

I’m not normally one for games, but this one at least has some relevancy to what Gurus is all about, so I figured I’d give it a plug. After all, we all need a break from our call centre work, and so what better way to spend our free time than with a frustratingly addictive little call centre game.

Ah, and with the most annoying soundtrack, too. Try it, I think you too will end up whittering away some time trying to reach your quota.

It makes me wonder whether we should make a Gurus game. Hmmm… now there’s an idea…

John

* the planned activity for the day was something more mundane and serious and boring, so the diversion was very welcome indeed

When a company really, truly, fundamentally annoys you - whether because of bad service, a lack of interest in you or your needs, a general lackadaisical attitude to quality, whatever - then you might have felt compelled to act. You might have thought about writing a letter, but, wait, that’s so old-millennium. You might have considered an email, but you know that they’ll never read it. You might even have tried calling to register your dissatisfaction, and ended up in the IVR maze from hell.

If you’re a normal person, you might fume a bit. You might tell your friends over a few beers and fume some more. You might even try to talk random strangers out of buying the products/visiting the store/doing any business with your hated organisation.

There is, however, another way. It’s the sort of thing that I have even considered. Me, mild-mannered janitor of mystery. Me, taker-of-paths-of-least-resistance (at least when it comes to these sorts of things). Me. Yes, your amiable host…

Some people, driven insane by the incredible short-sighted, can’t-give-a-damn attitude or intrinsic disastrous service of (generally bigger) companies, resort to a real ‘don’t get mad, get even’ tactic. One I secretly admire. Damn, cat’s out of the bag.

What we’re talking about here, people, is the concept of the Corporate Hate website. For instance, if you really hated CallCentreGurus and were really mad at us, you might send us a nasty email, which we’d ignore. Probably. Or, you might register CallCentreGurusSucks.com and try to get your own back. Now, of course, you’d never do that to us, as we’re the good guys, but you might do it for a larger company.

Bearing this in mind, I direct you now to this interesting article which I have just discovered. It’s a fascinating insight into the mindset of the truly offended, deeply unhappy, disrespected and angry customer. Customer with the time, and willpower, to really play hardball.

I have a lot of sympathy for some of these people. They’ve been driven to it by uncaring or ineffective organisations with lousy customer service. They’ve seen no option but to lash out in the public arena. They’re the extreme cases, for sure, but they’re customers no less.

As customer service and call centre people, it’s our duty to try to prevent such customers reaching this plateau of dissatisfaction. However, not everyone sees it this way, and so it’s no surprise that sites like this exist.

Links:
Corporate Hate Article @ Forbes