Metamedia

On Uncustomer Service

Recently, I argued against the use of the word 'customer' in educational contexts.

I concluded that that are many aspects of Service that can be of value, without bringing the baggage of the terms 'customer' and 'customer service' from a business environment.

For lack of a better term, I will call the opposite of that Uncustomer Service (on analogy with unconference.)

Rather than focus an a predefined relationship where one party is labelled the 'customer,' Uncustomer Service focuses instead on the qualities of the interactions that lead to positive results, whatever the relationship. Uncustomer Service is not about predefining a role or what someone else may say good service is, but rather learning from your own experience what those qualities are.

Here is a positive way to find out for yourself how to better your Uncustomer Service. It has only three simple steps. You can do this by yourself, but it will be even more effective if you do it as a group.

And I'm going to get Ben Franklin to help me out.

Collect

For one week, keep track of every single service interaction you have - shopping in a store, eating a restaurant, ordering something on the phone or online, asking for directions, trying to find out something, asking your roommate to bring you something, or any request you might have of someone else.

Just note down the date and time, what it was, and anything else of interest, including what you liked or didn't like about it.

But the most important thing is to collect every single one; not just some, but all. Write them down.

Analyze

Review the list of your service interactions. Go through them all and make of list of the qualities which made the service successful or not. Put them in two lists: Good and Bad.

For example: speediness, pleasant attitude, feedback, accuracy, one stop shopping, making alternate suggestions, and so forth might show up in the Good List.

Come up with a Good Service List of good aspects of service, about 7 to 10 items.

If you have trouble with the good ones, use the bad ones as a guide and then list the opposite. For example, if a salesperson was surly, then list its opposite, friendly or pleasant, in the Good list.

Implement

In his Autobiography, Ben Franklin (yes, that Ben Franklin) explains his system for helping himself improve.

He uses a chart with a list of his preferred thirteen virtues down one side, and the days of the weeks across the top. Franklin's method was to record his violations of these virtues for each day with a dot: the fewer dots, the better.

You should do the same.

Make a chart or borrow one but adapt it by putting your own list of the Good Service types down the left.

Then each day of the week, keep track of all of YOUR own service interactions for others. When you are are not friendly, timely, responsive, communicative, or whatever you have on your list, put a dot.

After a month of this, go back and do a review of the dots: Where are the patterns? What areas need improvement?

Then proceed as you think useful with any variations you think will help. Franklin's own system was to pick one virtue each week to concentrate one, then move on the next one the next week.

The most important goal has already been reached: you are doing your own version that is based on your situation, not just taking an off-the-shelf generic system and attempting to half-heartedly graft it.

The chart should be a way to see how you behave in comparison to the ways you wish to behave.

And that was exactly why Franklin devised it.

Links:

• Franklin virtue and blank DIY Planner Charts
• Flamebright explanation of Ben's system

More Backwards Into the Future

Post today from the Chronicle entitled A Surprising Win For Privacy.

A network administrator at the University of Wisconsin at Madison was entitled to view the contents of a student's computer remotely without first getting a warrant because the student posed an immediate threat to the campus network, a federal appeals court has ruled.

But college legal experts said the court's decision, rather than limiting students' privacy, broke new legal ground in support of it.

That's because the ruling says the student had "legitimate, objectively reasonable privacy expectations" concerning the data on his computer even though he had connected it to the university network. University policies, no matter what they say, "do not eliminate [the student's] expectation of privacy in his computer," the decision said.

A Win for Privacy -- but is it?

Here's a link to the decision itself -- the pertinent sections are II.1-5. The fine print as always makes for some fascinating reading.

Obvious questions off the top of my head:

• So students have this expectation of privacy (despite in loco parentis ?) but faculty and University staff do not because they are employees ?

• Is a student's laptop a "home computer" (II.2) because it was a residential dorm room, but a faculty member's is not because their laptop is in an office ?

• How does this affect a University's ability to require things like anti-virus software and other safe computing practices on a laptop before allowing it on a University network? What about University needs for software licensing compliance when University software is installed on student owned laptops ? And so forth for software management...

For decades the courts have long been confused about how to handle digital data because they are using concepts fundamentally based on the search and seizure of physical objects: books and papers.

A book, a piece of paper, is either here or there, either an original or a copy. But an email is both here and there and in between, original and copy and copy of a copy all at the same time.

Extending this physical metaphor to the digital realm isn't working so well, is it ?

How do we go beyond this? Legal scholar Andrew Taslitz has one intriguing answer, just along the lines I have suggested: overcome the presuppositions of a print based world, or as he puts it:

The main danger posed to Fourth Amendment freedoms by technology stems from the Court's unduly narrow, overly cognitive conception of privacy.

He proposes a move from the "cognitive" -- that is, a rational, metaphorical extrapolation from the legal view based on the printed medium's physical characteristics  -- to what he calls the "affective" -- that is the feelings (affects in the old fashioned sense of the word) and results of the behavior.

It may take some time for the courts, or indeed most people, to grok onto this important idea.

In the meantime, I bet there will be a resort to the good old fashioned way to deal with this problem:  Send lawyers, guns and money.

[Addition: Article by an attorney once involved in the case]

 

Doctor Who Does Support

I have been watching my own personal "Doctor Who-athon" for the last few weeks. This was prompted by watching the DVDs of the recent revival of The Doctor on the BBC.

Unfortunately, being an American, I missed out on most of the Doctor Who years the first time around, though for a while in college the local PBS station did carry some the shows from the Tom Baker years.

Fortunately, I have found a couple of terrific Dr. Who resources to 'catch me up': the astonishingly complete Outpost Gallifrey website, and a nice discussion forum on imdb discreetly tucked out of harm's way of the big boards.

For my Who-athon, I have over 40 stories to view, chosen after a good deal of research, arranged in chronological order, using a combination of my local independent video store and Netflix as sources. I am now up to the close of the Third Doctor's tenure (and the appearance of Sarah Jane, my favorite companion.)

The Seeds of Support

In the episode The Seeds of Death (1969) we learn a most valuable lesson about technical support.

The story is set in the future when the Earth's transport is managed through a system called 'TMAT' which materializes and dematerializes matter from key transport centers, on both the Earth and Moon. Rockets are not longer needed, and presumably planes, trains, and automobiles aren't either. When the Icemen from Mars attempt to invade the Earth by first commandeering the TMAT relay center on the Moon, chaos reigns on Earth as the world-wide transport system grinds to a halt.

During this crisis, which forms the backbone of the story, key plots points occur because there is only ONE expert on the TMAT system. This one expert, Kelly (a woman engineer as hero in a 1969, yeah!), has to travel in person to the center on the Moon, because no one else can fix it, but while she is on the Moon, meanwhile there is no one left on Earth expert enough to fix the system there.

Her knowledge makes her the single point of failure. More generally, the lack of distributed support makes the system vulnerable to sudden catastrophic failure.

And in addition to this poor support plan, the system has an architecture designed only for success and intolerant of failure (rather like its ancestor, the interstate highway system).  Also noticeable is the complete lack of a disaster recovery plan.

Of course, with the help of The Doctor and companions, all ends well, and the last scene shows Kelly arguing for a better support plan for the future.

Those who ignore future history...

But we aren't that dumb, you say. Everybody knows you shouldn't do that, you say. Can't happen here, you say. And yet it does. It happens to me everyday.

Education is the business of colleges. It is their only business, performed by faculty, paid for by tuition, engaged in by students, and so you would think that Learning Management Software, an extension of the classroom, would be at the top of the priority list for support.

I'm sure it is some places, but where I am, I play the role of Kelly -- almost every day I am shuffling from the Earth to Moon by myself, sometimes snarking SQL settings, sometimes training faculty how to do set gradebook percentages. And not in one, but two LSM systems, I am the sole Kelly: I do everything from configure the LMS web servers to answer phone calls to remind students to click the "Lost your password? Click here." link. And I am alone in this. When I am not here, it just waits.

Of course, just as in The Seeds of Death, no one cares until something catastrophic goes wrong.

I'm sure that Kelly had pointed out the flaws in her system many times, and each time the administrators said, "Yes, but you know the system is working well, and we really need that money for some other worthy project in the budget this year."

Hopefully, it won't take an attempted invasion of the Earth by the Icemen of Mars to get a good support plan in place for you where you work, but those who are ignorant of future history do seem predetermined to repeat it.

Meanwhile, if you are a support person, check out Gia Kelly, heroine of The Seeds of Death, and perhaps consider showing it to the Eduministrators you work for.  Maybe it will get them to see the light.

But in case not, keep practicing up on the magic mantra of support: "I told you so... I told you so... I told you so..."

Rules of Conversion Club

An original contribution for technologists doing software conversions.

1. You always talk to users about the conversion

2. You always talk to users about the conversion

3. If someone has a problem, fix it before you continue

4. Some users will always complain about it no matter what

5. Only one conversion at a time

6. No holdouts: everyone converts

7. The conversion takes as long as it has to

8. If you’re in management, you have to get converted first