We've Got a Volcano to Beat

Every business has peak periods and times when things don't go right. And in so many cases, addressing challenges and taking care of customers under stress comes down to the people on the front line. In printing, these are often salespeople and CSRs, the ones whose job it is to get the work done and keep the customer happy. They all need the same "We've got a volcano to beat!" attitude Jason and Monika had, and the commitment to just do their jobs really well. Some of this is training, but it also comes from having the right kind of people in those customer-facing roles.

On a similar note, I recently bought a new MFP for my office. The previous machine from the same company was up and running in about 30 minutes. But not this one. It wouldn't recognize the network, and when it did it would it wouldn't print. The service tech showed up and ran all the diagnostics and couldn't figure it out. A long call to two levels of tech support diagnosed it as bad memory. A new card arrives overnight and things began to improve. But there were still issues. Two levels up another tech support tree, we worked through another set of issues and suddenly all was well. About 10 ten hours of total time between the onsite guy and ones he called, but everyone was always polite, positive, cheerful and just working flat out to beat that particular volcano.

This is how it should be, but so often isn't. We all have volcanoes to beat, and one of the real measures of our businesses is how the folks on the front lines do when the volcano blows.