All Posts in Policies and Procedures

|In: Leadership|Last Updated:

For some reason, when technology enters the picture simple 80/20 economics flees the room. Here’s the latest example.

The FBI, rested now that the Clipper Chip controversy has faded, wants the cellular phone system to let them “…determine the location of a cellular phone caller within a half-second and almost instantly monitor the status of cellular-phone voice mail, conference calls and other wireless communications features,” according to the New York Times.

I’ll withhold comment on the public policy aspects of this issue. No matter how tempted I may be, I won’t give in and point out the huge potential for abuse in a proposal like this.

My goals are more modest: since prisoners teach each other how to build cellular scanners for 500 bucks, I’m wondering why the gummint (as President Reagan used to call it) can’t make do with this more economical technology.

You need to tell everyone in your company with a cellular phone about what follows: Anyone – criminals, private investigators, industrial spies, and the FBI – can easily build a cellular scanner. With it they can get voice mailbox numbers and passwords, and long-distance calling card numbers. Are you using cellular modems? Then they can get network logins and passwords, too.

That’s what the FBI could accomplish for about the cost of a color inkjet printer. I have a hard time believing the huge expenditures its current proposal would require will result in anything like a corresponding increase in effectiveness.

Personally, I’d rather reduce the deficit a bit more, thank you.

Some of you are probably getting pretty worked up about the privacy aspects of this proposal. Me too. Before you burst a blood vessel, though, stop and look in the mirror for a moment. You may just see the director of the FBI looking back at you.

No? Take a look at your company’s policy regarding the privacy (or lack thereof) of electronic mail and voice mail. Does it have an FBI-like tone? Many companies sanctimoniously proclaim these to be corporate resources, so employees have no right to use them for personal business nor have a reasonable expectation of privacy.

Well yes, they are corporate resources. Yes, companies can legally restrict their use to company business, and search through them at will. Opinion: companies need to distinguish between what they legally can do and what they ought to do.

Okay, I’ll climb off my high horse. Whether you agree with my position or not, if you haven’t created a written, well-publicized policy regarding employee expectations of privacy in electronic and voice mail, do so immediately. You need to draft it. Everyone up to the CEO needs to have their name on it. This is important.

What should be in it? First and foremost, you need to establish the company’s legal right to look through employee messages.

Once you’ve finished establishing the company’s legal rights, you should emphasize standard practice, which (in my awesomely humble opinion) should be this: Under most circumstances, employees have a reasonable expectation of privacy regarding the contents of their desks, interoffice memos, telephone conversations, and electronic and voice mail messages. Under some circumstances, though, the company may need to look through employee e-mail and voice-mail messages. A customer may call when an employee is on vacation, for example, and you just need to find a key memo or spreadsheet.

Why create an expectation of privacy? Two reasons. First, if the company treats employees as serfs or children in this context, it will have a hard time asking them to ask them to act as responsible, accountable adults in performance of their jobs.

Second, the lines between personal and business time have blurred. Personal business happens in the daytime. Employees take work home, and don’t charge the company for use of their personal desks and telephones. If a company asks for the latter, it shouldn’t complain about the former.

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|In: Organizational Effectiveness|Last Updated:

I just received my first flame. Getting real hate mail is pretty exciting.

Plenty of readers have disagreed with me before. One or two have even called me a socialist, or Marxist, or something like that. Even the most passionate e-mails, though, have identified the subject and point of dispute.

Not this one. The first two words of the message were, “You are …” The remaining nouns and verbs don’t belong in a business publication. The message, if you’re curious, described my alleged double-jointedness and unsavory dining habits.

InfoWorld‘s readers are my customers, and I’ve often pointed out that customers are always right.

So I was wrong. Sue me. Change “always” to “usually”. (Not only am I not double-jointed, I haven’t been able to touch my toes without bending my knees since 1961, nor do I eat non-traditional foodstuffs.)

People who provide service to real, paying customers sometimes take calls from people who are a bit testy. That’s part of the job … up to a point. Beyond that point, the caller is abusive and the customer service representative has no obligation to listen.

(For those of you who act this way, some questions: do you think service reps set policy? Do you think they designed the feature you don’t like or the created the defect you’re trying to work around? No? Then why are you yelling and swearing at them? Companies pay these people to solve product-related problems, not to accept the anger and frustration you’ve PKZIPped and sent down the telephone line.)

Your staff members, dealing not with customers but with fellow employees, have no obligation to take abuse either. They do have an obligation to help solve problems, even when the person needing help is less than warm and friendly. Continuing our series on dealing with end-users, this week we talk about one-on-one interactions. Here are some tips that have worked for me in the past. I’m writing them for telephone conversations; they work just as well face-to-face:

Tip #1: Defuse frustration: You won’t have a productive conversation until you get past it. Empathize, and redirect attention away from the emotional context to the actual problem. One good technique: ask for microscopic detail. “I’m sorry you’re having a problem. Let’s see if we can get it fixed. Tell me exactly what you see on the screen.”

Tip #2: Focus on the problem, not the request: A caller may insist on a site visit, even when one isn’t necessary. Neither argue nor obey – redirect attention. Try this: “I’ll need to make sure I understand exactly what’s going on so I can dispatch the right person. Let’s start with what you’re looking at on the screen.”

Tip #3: Gather information first, and don’t argue: The caller really is experiencing difficulty. Find out exactly what the user was trying to accomplish, and exactly how … and the symptoms they’re experiencing now. Remote control software helps a bunch in this situation. If you don’t have it, have the caller walk you through the steps he or she took. At each step, ask the caller if his/her screen shows what yours is showing.

Tip #4: Resolve the problem: You should have a good handle on what the user was trying to accomplish and how. It’s taken awhile, but now you get to apply your technical, as opposed to your interpersonal, skills.

Tip #5: Leave the caller smarter than when he or she called: Once the problem has been fixed, explain what’s happened and what you did in some detail. It takes another minute or two, but if you help that user avoid the next problem, you’ve helped yourself in the long run.

This is a column on management issues, of course, so I get to palm off the little details, like how to actually troubleshoot. That’s where Brian Livingston and Brett Glass get involved. Good luck, pals.

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