Yesterday, Andy and I took a leisurely jaunt through the RMNP that cleared our minds and offered us the time to discuss our objectives for 2012. This month we will be announcing schedules for free computer training sessions to assist our clients in gaining the skills to use technology more confidently for their business and social needs. We will also be offering Managed Back Up services to insure that homes and businesses have a solid cloud back up system for essential data and can confidently protect themselves from the devastating loss of data which inevitably occurs. These details and much more will soon follow – but under laying all of our 2012 plans is a fundamental commitment to be nice.
Sound corny?
Families and businesses want their IT company to be smart, experienced, trustworthy and competent. They want networking, website, VoIP and server skills. What they also need is Nice.
We are not pleased with how most IT people are acting. Arrogant and secretive sums most of them up. We are an IT company with a Nice culture. We believe Nice matters.
How do we know Nice matters?
You tell us. Not by saying “Oh, by the way, thank you for being so nice to me”. You tell us with your calls with curious and funky requests. Simple things like random pop-ups, saving photos of a new grand baby, emails that look questionable, how to plug in a printer and how to use Skype to stay in touch with a daughter that just shipped off to Afghanistan.
We know Nice really matters after we gain a new business client and are managing their servers and workstations. By the end of the first month or so we experience an avalanche of calls and emails from their employees. These calls start at 4:30 am and run through weekends, evenings and holidays.
Take Burrow Global for example. They are a Houston engineering company for the oil and gas industry with hundreds of employees in several locations. After they brought us on and their staff realized we were approachable, friendly and actually answered our phones, they began contacting us for practically everything under the sun.
Eventually they told us why. ”It was a joke contacting our previous IT guys. They wouldn’t get back with you for 3 or 4 days and then they said that it was an inconsequential and internal issue!”
This is tragic. Most companies have access to professional and competent IT help, both internally and outsourced. But most requests are outside of work stoppage issues and are considered inconsequential to IT folks. This is wrong. Every small technical problem eats up minutes and hours of every day. Whether it is a small or large company, these “little” problems add up to countless hours of interrupted productivity. These so-called “inconsequential” problems often turn into larger issues down the line, eating up even more time and productivity.
We believe our clients need to get problems fixed, no matter how small they may be. We don’t want them suffering through them. The cost of suffering through them is not just an issue of morale; it is an issue of dollars.
In a home environment, the consequences are just as important. It is important for families to be able to send photos to soldiers overseas. It is important to secure data from 11 years of family ancestry research. It is important to know how to copy and paste. It is important to know when you may be scammed from scareware or an email.
Our 2012 Nice Declaration
Declarations are essential to all relationships. They are our assertions or beliefs of something important. Here is ours:
The Millennium Group declares that we will nurture and value kindness as a core element of our being.
Nice is a value we will hire and fire for.
We will honor traits such as empathy, understanding and patience.
We will instill the discipline to act under pressure with courtesy.
We will balance IT skills with human relationship skills.
We will try and make you feel good when you know nothing about computers and have a hundred questions.
We will be nice.
Thank you.
May 2012 be a comforting and stimulating year for each of you.
Andy Pizer and Jinx Davis and the Millennium Group Staff