Business Blastoff on a Budget

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Business Blastoff on a Budget

View more presentations from Byte Slaves Computing.

My Favorite Hobby

I enjoy lots of things outside of work, but one of the things tat I always enjoy is flying. I can't afford a real plane (yet) so I use Microsoft Flight Simulator X and planes downloaded from Fly Away Simulations to see the world. It's fun to play with different aircraft - most are modeled on real planes and handle like their real-world counterparts. I can start from any airport in the world and choose to fly in real-time weather conditions or choose my weather. If you enjoy flying I suggest you check it out!

Watch Your Phone Bill

Word to the wise: make sure someone checks your phone bill from front to back every month. There may well be unexpected and unauthorized charges hiding on there.

Last week I got a call from the folks at Verizon. Somehow the change of address notice I sent out in October didn't get processed. I expected a big hassle, but I only had to explain myself to two people with one transfer in between. Quite a pleasant surprise.

The second person I talked to, Gina, asks me a bunch of qualifying questions. But she was friendly and professional. Finally, she asked if I knew my bill was over $50 a month. I said no, I should only have the charge for forwarding my number to my AccessLine - about $20 a month.

Gina explained that there's a company who has added it's Web hosting services to my bill at a cost of $50 plus tax per month. Seems this happens frequently, and the charge shows up on the back of the last page of the bill. Obviously this slipped by us. Seems that's what these scamsters count on. Gina worked on my account for about half an hour, then called me back with the good news that I now have a $568 credit on my bill. Great work. Great service.

"Valuable" Service

I've had my Capital One VISA card since I opened my business eight years ago. Always paid on time. Always kept the balance reasonable. I've got a credit score over 750. So I was flabbergasted to receive a notice yesterday that "due to extraordinary changes" in the economy they are adjusting the interest rate on my card. They're pretty much doubling my interest rate from 8.9% to 17.9% effective 1/28/2009 (notice I got this yesterday 2/18.2009). Gotta love it. Even if I could do it, I can't imagine doing something like this. I guess they really don't need my business. I understand there's a bill out there somewhere that's supposed to curb this kind of nonsense. But in the mean time I guess greed is the top priority for these folks. Good thing they left me the right to cancel my card. The good news is my shredder accepts VISA.

What's your take?

Facebook - It's Not All Fun & Games

With the popularity of social networking (and particularly Facebook) it was oinly a matter of time before the chain letters started appearing. I was doing some research for an upcoming workshop and ran across some interesting info. This is one hilarious article. It's also a bit scary because it's 100% true. I'm not going to suggest it should be forwarded to 25 of your friends, but it may be worth if. You be the judge.

I also read a story about Facebook's new data policies that isn't quite as funny. I've always encouraged people to be careful with the information they share on the Internet. This article is a sobering reminder that you can't "un-ring" a bell. Once you share something in cyberspace it takes on the half-life of plutonium.

Just When You Thought it Was Safe

Last week I told you that the issues with our OfficeLive account were finally resolved. I actually got a call from a technician and got a general explanation of what went wrong. (see the details here). I thought to myself that the folks in Redmond were starting to grasp the importance of happy customers. There were a couple of things that we wanted to resolve - duplicate entries (LOTS of duplicate entries) in the "synchronized" contact info, and the inability to create new documents in our Workspaces. So I figured I'd get with the support folks once I got caught up from all the time I wasted trying to get them to resolve the main problem.

This morning I got a call from a girl who seemed to have a very tenuous grasp of the English language. She had extreme difficulty reading the script (and even more trouble with my name), but she finally managed to tell me she was welcoming me to OfficeLive and wanted to know if I had any questions or needed any help. So I mentioned my problems. She puts me on hold for a couple of minutes and then comes back to tell me that OfficeLive doesn't support these features. She tells me I need to go to the microsoft.com site for help/

Excuse me? Isn't OfficeLive all about synchronizing contacts and sharing documents? And shouldn't the person calling me to welcome me be a little more familiar with the product?

Maybe I just need to lower my expectations when it comes to customer service. I heard a quote today that perhaps the non-existant Customer Service Manager for OfficeLive could take to heart: If I can't do great things, let me do small things in a great way. They did such a poor job in a big way when this thing tanked last week. I would have hoped a simple welcome call would be handled a little more professionally.

So who has some great sories about support successes? I'd like to see if we can turn this tide around and tell some happy stories. After all, we want to do business with people who get it. Don't we?

A Chip of Gold

I've been having some real issues with customer service (or lack thereof) at Microsoft all week. Major problems. I haven't been able to access my OfficeLive account - or any account that requires me to log in with my Windows Live password. No one seems to be able to tell me why. And the response I'm getting from the support team has been largely "just relax and quit calling us - we'll get back to you at some point." Most of the people I've spoken to even tell me that there's no one I can even call or write to if I want to complain! That's just so wrong.

There's a local guy, Brad Worthley, that gives great seminars on customer service. He's a sharp guy who could really inspire this group to make customers happy, not angry and posting angry blogs. I was really hoping I could talk to a manager when I called yesterday. But then a funnt thing happened: I talked to someone who got it!

I called for my daily update and gripe and got a young woman named Carrie. I explained my problem for the umpteenth time and she said "I can help you with that!" I just about fell out of my chair! Brad would have been so proud! That was the first time in probably a dozen calls to this group that someone has said "I can" without the word NOT behind it. I just wish I could tell her manager how refreshing that was. Of course, that might get her fired. And, like Derek tols me, there is no manager to talk to.

Best of all,she did get me logged in! Something no one else has been able to do since I got locked out this past Sunday. Unfortunately this didn't last. I was locked out again this morning. And my call to tech support got me the usual response: "I can't help you with that - you'll need to wait to hear from our escalation department." tick tick tick

Microsoft - you need another Carrie!