This Blog Is Written By A Guest: My Father

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I write this update as I sit in a parking lot, looking at the beautiful Kempenfelt Bay. While I am sure I could have done a better job of articulating and constructing the message. This is raw emotion.

When I first joined a large Fortune 500 Company in 1998, the hiring wasn't an easy process. I was not successful during the first interview, however, I was given an opportunity to re-interview a week later. For that week, you can't imagine the amount of studying I did.

When I was hired, I took on the role of a product specialist supporting desktops. I must say this was a challenging role as I knew nothing about technology at that time. At Least from a practical sense. My knowledge was limited to what I had learned the previous week. My knowledge was based on books that I had read. I had no hands-on experience. Suffice it to say it was a significant struggle, mentally, emotionally, and physiologically.

I was under tremendous pressure to succeed as I needed to provide for my new family. I was emotionally stretched in trying to navigate the rotating shifts, the long hours, being there for my pregnant wife, and supporting our young family.

What compounded the situation was feeling extremely sick and nauseated at the thought of that next call that I would have to answer.

What if I didn't know what the issue was about? What if the person berated me because their product was malfunctioning or they did not know how to use the product properly?

What made the situation worse was that some of the lead product specialists weren't really helpful when you reached out to them for support. So at times i felt as if I was completely on my own, listening to the customer get upset at me for a product that was not working, and getting messages from my management about spending too much time on the phone.

All the studying I did wasn't really helpful.

It wasn't until I started spending my personal time going through the various call records, that I began to feel some comfort. I tried to understand the types of issues the call centre was receiving, what the agents were doing with those issues, when the issues would come, how long on average agents were spending on those types of issues, etc.

The more I mined the data, the more I started to develop a sense of confidence because I knew with a high probability what that next call was going to be about, what questions I needed to ask, what verification checks I needed to perform, and what actions I needed to take to either resolve the issue or to forward it to the appropriate group.

This combined with further research and study into how the hardware and software were working together, helped me to better understand the cause of the underlying issues and how I can appropriately explain the situation to the customer.

It is at this point the job became enjoyable.

Over the course of the next 22 years, I applied the same approach in all of my global roles and the hundred plus accounts that I have touched worldwide.

The approach was to obtain a much deeper understanding of behavior. Whether it's behaviour of systems or behaviour of people.

Understanding the behaviour led to an appreciation of what was in front of me, why it was in front of me, what could be in front of me, and more importantly, what actions I needed to take to ensure what actually ended up in front of me, is exactly what I expected.

Take the time to learn all aspects of what you do. And most importantly, enjoy what you do!

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