Service Leader's Corner: Elevating Customer Excellence

When it comes to making business decisions involving employees, things can become a little difficult for any business, no matter the size, to navigate. If one is very involved with the employees, it can be difficult on a personal level. Even though studies have shown that getting to know employees on a personal level, and not just in a business setting, increases happiness in the workplace. However, management of all forms and levels are often discouraged from getting to know employees on a personal basis for this reason.

This difficulty is often amplified when a business needs to be letting go of employees. Whether it is in the process of downsizing, or simply has to cut out employees because of technological advancements and integration, here are three things to keep in mind:

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Sometimes it is necessary to apologize. Apologies usually come after a mistake has been made. The idea of acknowledging that there is something to apologize for is off-putting to many businesses, but the fact is, mistakes sometimes happen. Whenever your company is dealing with customers who would like an issue addressed or have a complaint to make, an apology is a good place to start.

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Feeling unimaginative? Needing a new way of looking at your business and how you lead it? Giva's recent article "How to Inspire the Mind of a Company Leader" looks at how to view your brain as an asset that should be managed with care.

Your brain is the key to your business. How you treat your brain will determine the value of the ideas that come from it. Giva's article takes you through a series of questions and makes suggestions for investing in your brain as an asset. The ROI from your brain may be greater than you realize!

Conflicts between colleagues are inevitable. However, there are several measures to help avoid and mediate conflicts. Through an interview with CIO.com, Kumud Kalia, former CIO of Direct Energy (now CIO at Akamai Technologies), details why conflicts arise and how to deal with existing and potential conflicts in the future.

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One generally presumes businesses and corporations when they think of IT department support. However, IT support for colleges and universities in the U.S. is growing exponentially in light of the technological revolution.

One such example is San Jacinto Community College (SJC). Based in Pasadena, Texas, SJC serves approximately 30,000 credit students and 2,500 faculty and staff. The IT department has 115 employees supporting three campuses, a District office and several extension centers.

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MetroHealth System, a hospital system providing quality care for over 175 years, has a history of constant growth and expansion. With humble beginnings in 1837 as the Cleveland, Ohio city infirmary, serving a population of 6,000 people, it experienced exponential growth with the arrival of the industrial revolution. Today, MetroHealth is one of the largest and most comprehensive public health systems in the country.

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With the advent of new technology comes the heavy responsibility of providing customer support and bandwidth to keep ahead of the dynamic growth of that technology. And even nano-second delays count in this day and age. Enter Dataram, a leading independent manufacturer of memory products and provider of performance solutions guaranteeing the performance of their products. Over the course of several decades, Dataram has developed premier memory, storage and software solutions to support its ever growing database of customers.

Dataram hit a bump in the road to continued success when preparing to launch RAMdisk, a new high volume software product.

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Unlike the plot of many sci-fi movies, the human race has yet to be dominated by artificial intelligence. And since we are not living in the world of I, Robot or The Matrix, we still need smart individuals to work alongside the technology we use. Neither can achieve maximum efficiency without the other.

Integrating people and technology is a critical step in constructing efficient collaboration within a business. A lack of integration might hold any business back from achieving its maximum potential growth.

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Colleges present different challenges for IT help desks than businesses. For starters, they have different customers and different hours. Students are extremely tech savvy, much more so than the average working adult, and possess high expectations not only for the technology available to them, but also for support.

In addition, students often use their own technology and work away from a physical campus. Unlike in a traditional business setting, in which employees mainly work on the company's devices, IT help desks must contend with compatibility issues more often.

Given these distinctions, it is not particularly surprising that a successful help desk for an institution of higher learning is fundamentally different from that of a business.

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