Author: Andrew Sutton

Three of our cats simply adore me. They follow me around the house, they sit on me when we’re watching TV, they’re often not too far away from me, seemingly afraid they’ll miss out on some much-needed attention.

The reason for this is because of the relationship I’ve formed with these cats. I pay attention to them. I know just how they like their ears scratched, and which ones will have their tummy rubbed. (And which ones will snap at me when I try to do that!) I know where they like to eat their treats and which toys are the favorites of each of them. What I mean is, I pay attention to them, and I cue off the ways they communicate with me.

My customers aren’t much different. They have work style preferences and like things done in certain ways. Some don’t want me to touch their computers but would rather have me show them what needs done. Other times, they’ll get up from their chair and sit down on the other side of the office until a problem is fixed.

Knowing their preferences and how to interact with them is all about relationship building.

I frame almost everything in life in relational not transactional terms. Life to me is all about the relationships that I form. Not just the relationships with my cats, but also my wife, my auto mechanic, the person who’s serving my food in the restaurant. And also the relationships I have with my customers. Knowing their preferences and being able to anticipate their needs enables me to provide them with better service, so I seek out opportunities to interact with my customers. I don’t usually pass an opened door without stopping to ask how things are. I do things to try to drive foot traffic into my office so more people will stop by thus allowing me to touch their machines and check for updates and things.

The people I support are pretty important in my eyes. Not only are they educating the next generation of leaders in this country, but we’re also an R-1 research facility where some world class research occurs that has the potential to be life changing! (If you think I’m kidding, the Rice Krispy Treat was invented right here in 1934!)

Life isn’t a series of transactions where you conduct your transaction then move on. The relationships we form are what’s going to pave the way for us work more closely, be more collaborative and resolve conflict more efficiently.

There is a lot of discussion today about returning to work and not being able to work from home anymore. In a lot of those cases I feel like Management is not trusting people who work from home to do the right thing or worries that they don’t have the right equipment so they won’t be as efficient or effective as they once were or could be.

To be honest, that’s a fair concern. There’s a lot of people who don’t work with the diligence that they do in the office, and I think that’s a shame, and I also think it’s like one rotten apple spoiling the whole barrel. I think there are many more workers who work perhaps more diligently when they’re at home than they do in the office. I’ve heard of people working two and three full time jobs because they can roll out of bed and sit down at the computer in bathrobes and bunny slippers, and they’ll sit there till 10:00 at night. I’m not sure that’s quite the right balance either but you hear the stories.

For me personally, I’m not an advocate for working remotely in my current role. I have had roles where I’ve worked remotely, my current role just isn’t one of them, but I’m getting away from what I wanted to share in this post.

It is vitally important when you’re working remotely to have a setup that’s going to motivate you and keep you engaged. A place that’s going to work for you ergonomically and functionally and every other way.

I believe the setup that many users try to use when they’re working from home is to their detriment and what makes them unproductive. I saw a social media post from one person who had and old monitor that they had laying around sitting on top of a stack of books that was on a TV tray and they were sitting in a folding metal chair. You don’t have to guess how that worked out.

The photo that leads this blog post is my WFH setup and also where I play, study when I’m taking classes and do work for others if I’m building a website. It’s actually more comfortable than my office at work, and I’m more productive when I work here, but the nature of the work I do from 9:00 to 5:00 doesn’t lend itself especially well to that.

I should preface by saying that I’m not really a sports guy, but I think if you’ll read to the end you’ll get what I’m saying and you’ll find out you don’t necessarily have to be a sports fan to get where I’m going.

A number of years ago I was having a conversation with a boss of mine who was wondering what it would take to come up with a Super Bowl winning support team.

In a very broad sense, when you speak of a Super Bowl winning team, it’s worth considering that within a football team, there are other “little teams”, like defense, offense, and special teams.  Following this analogy, consider tier 1 the defense.  They’re the ones who meet the end users when they (the users) are on offense, calling, and demanding.

Having a great defensive line that can effectively deal with what’s being thrown at it is essential.  They allow the other teams to do what they need to do with considerably more precision.  If the defense isn’t doing it’s job, pressure is put on the offense to step up and get more aggressive and do more to win instead of being able to carry out their game as planned.  They get forced into a reactive mode, having to make sure they score because the defense isn’t preventing the opponent from scoring.

An effective defense, or a good tier 1 team is the communication pipeline between IT and the organization. Whether systems are being upgraded, or there are unplanned outages, to have a Super Bowl winning team it’s essential to have a world class tier 1 team that can shield the rest of the IT team from the end users, and allow them to do their jobs.  When customers are being communicated with, and expectations are being set, that relationship is much easier to manage.

The tier 2 team would be like the offense.  They’re the ones who go out to where the users are, away from the IT caves and the server rooms and score the points by solving problems.  Whether it’s a new installation or something that’s broken and needs fixed, this is the “face” of the support team.  If tier 1 is the communications conduit, tier 2 is what the users see of the support  organization.

Tiers 3 and 4 would be like special teams, doing the punts, and kick off returns that aren’t necessarily part of the everyday routine.  They’re solving problems that are out of the ordinary scope, and planning for things that need special execution.

With that as background…

Each of these little teams is critical to the function of the team as a whole.  You can have the best defense in the NFL but by itself, that won’t make you a Super Bowl winning team.  Similarly, the function of the individuals who make up the smaller units is equally important.

As the smaller teams have different roles within the larger framework of the team, so the individuals have different roles within their little teams. 

Not every offensive player is well suited to be a quarterback, but the quarterback can’t do well if he doesn’t have good receivers and guys that block him from the opposing team’s blitz.  There are tasks that are specialized, and some people are better suited then others for a given task.  Sometimes that’s a natural fit, and sometimes it’s because of training that they’ve experienced over the years, by the time a team gets to play in the Super Bowl, there’s been considerable professional development, and people are sure of their role, and know it backwards and forwards.  They’ve trained for it and received special instruction.  They also know what to expect from their team mates, and how they’re going to react.  This intimate knowledge of the other members of the team is because they’ve worked together, and know each other, and know what to expect from one another.  

If each of the players was to try to get equal time in every role, professional development suffers.  The quarterback for example, only gets to spend a small portion of time working on passing.  During the time he’s learning other roles, he’s blocking, tackling, kicking, running, and doing other things besides passing, but not developing his primary role so he can continue to improve on throwing.  Beyond that however, people aren’t just picking jobs and doing them, they’re doing things that interest them, that they have a passion about, and that they’ve trained for.  Probably when a ball player was in high school or college, he had the opportunity to try different positions and do different things, but he had an aptitude or a passion for doing one thing or the other and so that skill developed.

These individuals aren’t the only ones on the team who can do their jobs, there is always a backup quarterback for example who is learning and growing into the role, being mentored by the lead quarterback and so forth.  So when that lead player can’t fulfill his task, there is someone there who can.  It would be silly of a team to go into the Super Bowl with only one quarterback, regardless of how good he is.  So there needs to be some sort of cross training or a backup plan.

There is a certain amount of pride in accomplishment when someone specializes in their role that they may miss out on if they generalize and spread themselves to thin.  When people specialize in a role there greater responsibility.  If there were a different quarterback in every time the team had the ball, it would be easy for one of them to not feel as committed, and let the others pick up the slack when it’s their turn.

So there isn’t a secret sauce or a magic bullet to having a Super Bowl winning team. It’s about practice, dedication to the team, devotion to your role, trust in your teammates and faith in your management. If you’re on offense, you don’t need to worry about how the defense is doing what they’re doing. You just need to know how to score points and let the other people do their job.

In my experience things seem to work when there’s a degree of specialization and everyone knows their role and does their job and let’s everyone else do the same!!

I am a support professional. I have been for most of my 30+ years working in IT. My job is to enable my customers to do their jobs, not tell them how to work or what they need to do their jobs. Don’t get me wrong, I certainly can function as a solutions provider, and I have, but when I hire a contractor to do some work in my home, I trust he has the skills and the knowledge to know what tools he wants to use to get his job done. It isn’t my place to tell him that he should use this tool or that for accomplishing the task at hand.

But supporting customers is at the heart of me. It’s what I enjoy and what I do well. I know my customers. I understand generally what they do and have a good idea of their work styles, so when they need something I can get them what they need because I’ve anticipated their need.

If I worked in hospitality, would be a concierge. A good concierge can have an incredible impact on the people they serve and I can too.

I know a lot of people who think of support roles like mine as entry level or who think I lack ambition because I’ve not gotten into networking or system administration which are often seen as the natural progression from support roles. I make a significant impact on my customers every day, and would miss them if I were not customer facing. And here’s the thing, I’ve been in those other roles. I’ve built servers and authored white papers for IBM, I’ve architected solutions when none existed, I’ve been that engineer on call at 2:00 AM when the mission critical piece of equipment fails, and in none of that do I find the satisfaction of being able to help someone complete a task that they need to complete.

So, if I’m entry level, or if I lack ambition let it be my customers who benefit from that. I’m right where I like to be.

I’ve been in IT now for more than 30 years and during that time customer service has always been one of my hallmarks. As the old adage goes, if we don’t take care of our customers, someone else will, right?

So it was with interest that I read issue #19 of Inside Link, the newsletter of an author and agency owner I know on line, Jonathan Jernigan. Click on his name to go to his site, he’s a pretty insightful guy, and really sharp. He knows his trade very well. He writes about a recent experience at an urgent care that he visited…

I arrived shortly after they opened and it was dead quiet.

Of course I wrote down all my symptoms on the check in paper, told them to the front desk staff, and then was immediately asked again what the problem was by the doctor right as I was seen.

During this time, the doctor was rushing from the second he got in the room. It was like he had somewhere else to be and wasn’t really paying attention, yet there was one other person in the waiting room after me. Just a single person in a facility that could easily see 4-6 patients at once. 

All in all, the doctor spoke to me for probably 4 minutes or less. I couldn’t even think of my questions before he was rushing out the door. 

Did I do something to inconvenience him? Did I not pay enough upfront for him to feel I was worth his time? 

I left there with medication that basically did nothing and a lingering resentment for that interaction. In fact, I will (obviously) never go back there and it meant I had to go to someone else to get a proper medication. 

These types of interactions always make me think about my own business and our line of work. 

Clients come to us and pay a lot for our expertise. What are we doing to ensure they don’t feel like a burden or like they aren’t getting rushed out the door? 

I think it’s the little things. I would’ve been fine if the interaction with the doctor was brief, but he was slower and I had a chance to ask all I wanted to without him opening the door on me. 

Same goes for our clients. Taking even just a few extra few minutes on that email or call is a subtle sign we care about them and aren’t just there to collect a check.

I don’t say it as concisely or eloquently as Jonathan does, but when did we get away from paying attention to our customers and not meeting their needs in a way that communicates that we really are earnestly looking out for them, that we’re on their side, we’re in their corner, we want them to succeed and for their businesses to flourish! That’s why they partner with us!

The other old adage that comes to mind when I read things like this is, everybody has a customer!

I’m very customer centric in my 9:00 to 5:00 job and I work hard to make sure my customers know how important they are to me, and how grateful I am to have them to take care of. I have a mortgage and four cats at home, after all!

There are so many different spokes to this topic. I may very well have to use this for the catalyst of more posts, but I’ll leave it there for now.

To Jonathan, thanks for the time you take with all of the Inside Link newsletters and the thoughts they provoke!