New HUD (Head Up Display) is coming for Ubuntu

Yesterday, Mark Shuttleworth, the self-annointed Ubuntu benevolent dictator for life, unveiled a new user interface for Ubuntu called HUD, or Head Up Display.  Whether it will be accepted or not is speculation, of course.  It is innovative, especially in its integration of search within the CLI.  Check out the video.

The two things that struck me most from watching the video were the CLI search capability and the search capability within applications.  The search within applications seems similar to what we have now with Google desktop and Microsoft's desktop search, still it looks like it might be a little easier to use.  Can't wait to check it out in April.

Video: The 4 Traits of the Customer Service Masters

Just posted a new video on the four traits of the customer service masters.  Hope you like it!

Top 100 Android Apps

Internet.com has just published a list of the top 100 Android apps.  Lots of good suggestions, but not much that I don't already have.  Here's PCMag's list of top Android apps.  The ones I have on my home pages are Facebook, Defender, Drag Racing, Shoot Bubbles, Amazon Kindle, Solitaire Free Pack, Words with Friends, YouTube, Camera, Mobile Metronome, Hi-Q MP3 Recorder, Stopwatch, Google Goggles, Skype, Gallery, Documents to Go, Market, Amazon, Groupon, Calculator, Gmail, Calendar, Voicemail, SplashID, Clock, Speed Test, Dropbox, Google Maps, TripIt, and Navigation.  I also have several links to websites I use regularly.  No, I don't play Angry Birds!  :)

Gratitude

This time of year, in the United States, we celebrate Thanksgiving, my favorite holiday.  As always, I'm thankful for the myriad opportunities that have been afforded me during my crazy life filled with diversity.  I'm thankful for the opportunity to write, speak, and play music with strangers and friends around the world.  I'm finally beginning to realize that I've led a charmed life and I give thanks for that.  My friend Kevin and I put together a little video on gratitude which seems especially appropriate on this Thanksgiving Day 2011.  Hope you like it!

Memory usage in Firefox vs. Chrome

Several months ago, I started using Chrome as my primary browser instead of Firefox.  Firefox had been experiencing problems related to increasingly high memory usage the longer it was open.  It had gotten so bad that my laptop with 4GB of RAM would become unusable until Firefox was shut down.  I did some superficial research and discovered that lots of other people were having the same problems with Firefox, but not with Chrome.  Since the main browser extensions I use (Blank Canvas and Firebug) are available for both Chrome and Firefox, I decided to switch.  (Yes, I know that Firebug for Chrome is a "lite" version, but it's sufficient for my needs.)  I kept Firefox on my computer for all the same reasons that you probably have multiple browsers on your computer.  I recently was working on a website that worked better in Firefox than Chrome.  I left both browsers open and running overnight.  When I got to my office this morning, I decided to check memory usage and here's what I found:  With four tabs open, Firefox was running a single process using a total of 137MB of memory.  Check out the screen capture of Task Manager for Chrome with 10 tabs open:

I added up total memory usage for Chrome and it comes to approximately 765810KB over 21 processes.  I realize, of course, that the screen cap of Task Manager represents a snapshot of memory usage at a particular point in time, but 21 processes for Chrome compared to one for Firefox?  137MB of memory usage for Firefox vs 765 for Chrome?  Wow!  By the way, the versions are 14.0.835.202 for Chrome and 7.0.1 for Firefox.  Hmmm, it must require a lot of system resources for Chrome to keep phoning home to Google with all that data mining data.  :)  Looks like it's time to switch back to Firefox.  Oh Firefox, do you still love me?

Handling tech-support calls--a structure combined with common sense

In my customer service classes for I.T. pros, we talk about following a five-step flow for handing user calls.  It works like this:

1. Greeting:  This is where you answer the phone professionally and succinctly.  A good example might be, "Technical support.  This is Don.  May I help you?"  A couple of bad examples could inlcude something terse, such as "Support." or "Help Desk."  At the opposite end of the spectrum are those obnoxious, scripted greetings like, "Thank you for calling XYZ technical support.  My goal is 100 percent customer satisfaction.  This is Bill, MCTS, CCNA, A+, CSNY, CRIP.  How may I provide you with outstanding service today?"  Oh, please!  Lose the cheesy script and get real!  Be authentic!  Answering the phone like that is disrespectful of your user's time and, frankly, it's disrespectful to yourself to have to wade through such crap.  (If your company forces you to read some ridiculous script like this, make a copy of this blog post and pin it to the bulletin board where management might see it.)
2. Attentive listening:  More accurately called "empathic listening", this is where you listen carefully to what the user is saying.  Listen as though there will be a quiz at the end of the conversation.  Don't plan your response or solution until the user is finished describing the problem.
3. Gaining agreement:  In this phase, you repeat back to the user your understanding of the problem so the user can confirm that you understand it correctly.
4. Apologize, empathize, reassure:  Apologize, if necessary, but don't do this frivolously and don't overdo it.  Be authentic.  If the problem is something caused by you or your department or a system for which you're responsible, an apology is in order.  Otherwise, don't apologize.  It comes off as shallow and insincere.  You can certainly say you're sorry that the problem occured as a sign of empathy and/or sympathy.  That makes sense and, in fact, is a great way of diffusing emotionally-charged situations with an upset user.  You can use phrases such as, "I don't blame you for being upset.  I'm sure I'd feel the same way if I were in your shoes."  Do NOT say you understand how the user feels if you've never been in that situation and can't understand.  (That's like a man telling a pregnant woman he understands how she feels.  He doesn't and it's insulting to her intelligence to say something like that.)  Remember, it's important to be authentic and sincere.  Finally, reassure the user that you're going to take care of them and follow through to completion.  You can say things like, "Based on what you've told me, I know how to take care of that." or "I've seen that problem before and was able to fix it quickly."  I'll never forget a woman named Dixie at Sprint, who said, "Mr. Crawley, I'm gonna fix you up!"
5. Problem solve:  The final phase of the flow is where you actually fix the user's issue.

It's important to note that phases one through four may go by pretty quickly or they may take some time, depending on the user and the nature of the call.  As always, remember that everyone is unique with unique ways of dealing with the challenges that come up.  Some people just want to get right to the problem, others want to talk for a moment.  The non-technical aspect of our jobs as support providers is to develop a sensitivity to each user's unique set of needs and expectations.

This flow is based on one described in my book, The Compassionate Geek.  I would also consider adding a sixth phase to the flow and that's the confirmation of solution phase.  In this phase, we make certain that we have solved the user's problem by simply asking, "Have I solved your problem?"  This ensures that we really have taken care of the reason for their call and eliminates any chance that we missed something.

An additional consideration is that, although the above flow is certainly valid, it's much too rigid for every case.  That's why it's important to use good judgement in all situations.  For example, the flow makes sense for a support session via telephone, but not for most support sessions via email.  As with all interactions with end-users, remember to listen carefully and treat them with respect and dignity.  When you do that, combined with a sense of empathy and compassion, you'll rarely go wrong.

Website improvements

I recently took over management of my website from a company that had been managing it for seven years.  Recently, they had become very slow to respond to service requests and sloppy in their coding, so I made the decision to manage the site myself and either do development myself or contract it out when it was beyond my skillset.  Following the change in management, here are a couple updates to the site that I hope you'll like:

• We've changed the way passwords are reset.  In the past, if you forgot your password, you could simply ask the site to email it to you.  Obviously, that's terribly insecure on so many levels, so we've now implemented a new system in which the site, upon request, will generate a new random password for you and email it to you.  You can then use it to log on to the site and change your password to whatever you want.
• The second change is really just an improvement on something we've had for a long time.  When you take one of our classes, you receive a certificate of completion at the end of the class.  You can also download a certificate from the site by going to your user profile, choosing "My Classes", and printing a certificate.  In the past, the site produced your certificate using Flash Paper and the formatting looked like crap.  We've just updated it to produce your certificate as a PDF and the formatting looks much better (if I do say so myself).

We'll be making more changes to make the site more functional and secure, so stay tuned.
By the way, one of the big lessons I've learned from this experience is to never let the development company also host the site.  The former development company had installed a number of proprietary, shared scripts that were stored above my site root and which were not accessible to me.  It was just through sheer luck and perseverance that I was able to gain access to those scripts and move my site to my own server. I won't make that mistake again!