An office -- Far away from Africa!!!

Dude ball it straight, else I might hit it on the monitors. Its ok, See that you dont hit it too hard

Gosh!! that was a day in office when we used to play cricket in the bay when work was less and everyone would not like to sit idle. Well our bats were the side rails of our cubic and a tenis ball.
The next day our manager would surely call us and ask who broke his cubic, well we would stand as if what on earth is he talking about.(A day in 24/7 customer care)

Thats the environment anyone would enjoy in office and you would love to be in office atleast for the mischeives you do if not for the work. Everyday would be a different day and would be challenging. Thats when I love to work to be true.

When I was part of E4E Pvt limited everyday was really challenging. My manager Jijo Joseph would call out from one side and say, "John, is that customer a lady? Your call has crossed 1 hr". I would reply politely, Customer is King, Jijo!!

Every issue with Symantec would be new and we had to research on it and find solutions. At times research would be on the customers Laptop. I would be installing Symantec and collecting logs of the Virus and the OS to know the issue. The customer would be patient listening to all the technical terms I say and would nod his head not knowing what it really meant. In between he would ask about India, our climate. I remember a client once asking me, "Is your name really John?" I replied."yes, it is"
"Oh ! Is it ?, I never knew there were Christians in India". This gave me a start for our conversations. Well I had to explain to him the religions and castes we have and that there are a lot of christians in India. He then started with his work. How he had a bad day with his wife and how he fought. I had to hear the whole thing as I knew my work on his laptop would really take another hour or so.

At times office is not just work for you. It makes you interact with your clients as if you need to help them out. Just to give you an idea about US customers. They believe that any thing has a reason and if it does not work then is can be fixed by a technician sitting in India. Yes, they have that in mind that all techncial issues land up in India.

I had a VIP customer who was very furious with his previous interaction with a technician and made a call to symantec as per the advice given to him from Microsoft. After he talked to me for a while he mentioned that he had to make 5 calls that day for different issues.
The first call was to HP as his lap top had crashed and the tech sitting in india told him that the OS needs to be re-installed. So he had to fetch the key which he didnt have and so had to make a call to Microsoft which again landed in bangalore. So he got the key which he had to purchase and then call back HP and got it installed. In the mean time he had to cancel his flight as he was getting late with his Laptop. He called the customer service which again landed in India. In the mean time the installation was over and the tech told him that Symanted too needs to be reinstalled as it was uninstalled while the OS was been re-installed. So he told he cant call again anyone else as he cant pay again for symantec softeware which he had purchased recently.
He didnt have any other option at last so he calls symantec and again the call lands in banglore. And unfortunately I had to hear all he had to tell while I assured him he would not be charged for the installation. And all he had to bear was 20 minutes before his laptop would be ready.

So what do you say? The environment is really kind of scary, right? You would not know what would be the issue with your customer calling next.

The office would be like a market where you could hear everyone talking to their customers. And a person comming form outside would think he is in the midst of a busy fish market..lol

My current office is a very silent one with just a tapping of enters here and there. Its kind of boring were you dont see anything much happening. Every day would be the same. The same job running. the same errors and the same clients you call for anything. I have been part of the UFO team for activities and I have found that no one would like to be part of UFO unless they are forced too. UFO is seen as a bunch of people with no work. Well no one understands that the team is trying to work things out to make work more fun. And one thing that does not work out is that all the activities are not part of a team or process, its always an external part. It is treated like a UFO literaly.

I remember the last few months in E4E when I was sent to Chennai as Tech lead for training and and setting up the new Symantec tech team. It was a real challenge. Me, Jijo, Yogesh, Ram, Chethan and a few more was the team ready for training the new team and to start operations of a few processes from Bangalore. Each of us were given different teams and Jijo heading us. Every week Jijo would call us and let us know the status of our teams. Initially things were bad as the new joinees were just starting to pick up. But they were a real energetic group. My team was a real good one. I dont remember most of them, But I remember them looking up to me for any issue.

We started a lot of activities in office. Deepak one of the team leads with lof of ideas suggested many team activities. One of them were anyone who gets a C-Sat from a customer has to shout it out on the floor and we would present him or her with a Cowboy cap which would be passed to the next person who get a C-Sat. The person who gets the most number of C-Sats in a week and month gets awards.

These are activities and models of actions were a person is energised to do something more than he can. He tries his best. And when you try to see things different from the usual way, then you enjoy it.

I know its been a long boring session.. but am sure someone out there would try to do something different in your work place. Think things different and be different to make a better outcome.