@nasimson - yes I agree some interviewers tend to penalize honesty - but that was the point of the article - they may be turning away an excellent employee.
It's good to see that there are some people who actually think this way .
You readily appointed that student because you found her honest which,in your opinion,was the first priority while selection, but this honesty and
straight forwardness sometimes become a misfortune as disclosing your flaws when you are not supposed to do so specially at the time of interview is like getting yourself into hot water.
plus as you have mentioned in your article that the girl was more interested in the other two internships .THUS If she would have been interested in this job, she would have shown a different traditional attitude.
Exactly, Kim. Too scripted, too polished, too inhuman. If a cust. serv. agent or tech. support person says that to me, I'm immediately expecting him/her to be a total nincompoop whose supervisor I'm eventually going to have to speak to.
@Joe: You're quite right. College education these days is no longer an easy decision. It used to be a pretty straightforward choice for people when college education was directly proportional to income levels. However, we see plenty of cases today where people do well even without degrees and many college grads unable to get good earnings. Certainly makes things confusing.
Hmm, depends on the context, I think, Kim. "Challenge" can be an exciting choice, especially in writing, but in the customer service context, it implies a sense of adventure that somebody with a customer service issue/problem/challenge simply does not want to go on.
Think about the most frustrating customer service issue you had to deal with for yourself. Now think about how much more frustrating it might have been for you had it been reframed for you during the call/correspondence as a "challenge."
("Challenge," after all, denotes reward -- some sort of fulfillment after a hero's journey. Very Joseph Campbell. Most customer service calls don't offer that.)
"Challenge" only works, I think, if you're taking a Seth Godin "Purple Cow" approach to it and using your horrible customer service as a unique marketing tactic, treating your horrible customer service like a marathon or a competition like "Tough Mudder." You could give out T-Shirts that read, "I survived a phone call to BigCompCorp's customer service line!" or beer glasses that read, "I got Bank of Frustration to refund a fee!"
@Joe - thanks for bringing up the issue about problem vs issue. I favor the term problem. Like you, I believe problems have solutions - root causes - which is the goal of a problem solver in the IT field. The problem does not have to be a person and usually is not - although, have to admit, sometimes it is someone. But if we do not identify how a problem happened, how would we prevent future problems? I think issue has too many political nuances and issues may never have solutions. Risk management has issues. User support has problems to solve - something that used to work and does not work anymore - there has to be root cause and a soul satisfying solution!
It *is* interesting. For me, part of it is the wannabe writer in me. So I have more than a passing interest in word choice.
The training I got in customer service, though, explained it as, and I'm paraphrasing:
You want to keep the customer focused on getting to a fix. So don't use words that induce conflict. Never use the word "problem," for example. Problems to most customers have causes that are to be blamed on someone. And the customer is going to make sure they aren't it. Find words that don't lead to blame. "Issue," for example, acknowledges that something is happening, but it's broad enough that you and the customer can move forward to a resolution without getting involved in a blame game, or a confrontation.
In a customer service situation, made complete sense to me. I get what you're saying though. And, actually, excellent example. :)
The ThinkerNet does not reflect the views of TechWeb. The ThinkerNet is an informal means of communication to members and visitors of the Internet Evolution site. Individual authors are chosen by Internet Evolution to blog. Neither Internet Evolution nor TechWeb assume responsibility for comments, claims, or opinions made by authors and ThinkerNet bloggers. They are no substitute for your own research and should not be relied upon for trading or any other purpose.
The smartphone market reached a significant milestone, a breakthrough that may cause vendors to celebrate but could strain the capabilities of IT service desks.
In the fall of 2011, around 160,000 students in 190 countries enrolled in a Stanford-sponsored online course about artificial intelligence. About 23,000 completed the course and got certificates, including 248 who got a perfect score. The university offered the same course the old-fashioned way to students sitting in Stanford classrooms. None of the those students got a perfect score.
As Mitch Wagner discussed today, Yahoo is acquiring Tumblr. The big Internet debate at the moment is whether Tumblr will be good or bad for Yahoo. Regardless of their stances on the future of Yahoo itself, many claim that Yahoo will somehow ruin Tumblr.
Has China stolen a march on the West, developing an Internet architecture that is not only based on IPv6, but is also inherently secure from both internal and external attack?
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
While NFC's original goal was to enhance mobile commerce applications, it is finding its way into a number of other uses, which is creating both opportunity as well as challenges for IT departments.
Enterprises would like to move to cloud computing but are hesitant because they are concerned about providers’ ability to secure company data. Here are some tips that help to ensure that if breaches occur, the business is not left holding the bag.
Edmunds separates customers into segments based on the info it collects on its site and from partners, and uses that to push out custom content, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
The automotive website uses propensity modeling to target ads and customer registration forms, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
At this morning's opening general session of the IBM Smarter Commerce Global Summit, there was clearly a consistent and pervasive theme: The Chief Executive Customer has arrived and expects to be treated as such.
Expert Integrated Systems: Changing the Experience & Economics of IT In this e-book, we take an in-depth look at these expert integrated systems -- what they are, how they work, and how they have the potential to help CIOs achieve dramatic savings while restoring IT's role as business innovator. READ THIS eBOOK
your weekly update of news, analysis, and
opinion from Internet Evolution - FREE! REGISTER HERE
Wanted! Site Moderators Internet Evolution is looking for a handful of readers to help moderate the message boards on our site – as well as engaging in high-IQ conversation with the industry mavens on our thinkerNet blogosphere. The job comes with various perks, bags of kudos, and GIANT bragging rights. Interested?
To save this item to your list of favorite Internet Evolution content so you can find it later in your Profile page, click the "Save It" button next to the item.
