b.cognosco
Where leaping to conclusions is my primary form of forward motion.
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Tuesday, September 13, 2005
Find A Human
Zip past those annoying Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems using the Find-A-Human Quickbase by Paul English.What does this mean? IVR is the insidious way big companies avoid talking to you. Hire some woman with a robo-voice and get her to record layer after layer of idiotic droning that changes depending on which button you push. Of course, it's always prefaced by "Please listen to this entire message as our menus have changed." The menus have never actually changed, they just want you to wait on the phone until you get frustrated and go away.
Paul's Quickbase has direct bypass sequences for more than 75 companies. Better, if you discover the bypass sequence for a new company you can add it. Here are a few samples:
- Delta Airlines (utterly clueless) - Say "agent" four times - every time it asks for a response from you
- Dell Customer Service (an oxymoron) - option 1, xt 7266966, option 1, option 4, option 4
- DISH Network (clueful) - press "0" during menu
- Comcast (unnaturally clueful) - Customer service, but an IVR wants your number first.
Terry Frazier at 2:02 PM
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Saturday, September 10, 2005
terrywfrazier@gmail.com
I have added a gmail and google talk account to my ever-growing list internet communications addresses (I think it's up to a dozen now.) The number of comm points is getting silly. Thank goodness for Trillian, the all-in-one chat client for Windoze. Otherwise managing all these things would be even more difficult than it is.I've had a jabber account for a year or so, terrywfrazier@jabber.org, but the public Jabber network has never achieved the reach or stability that the bigger services like AIM and Y! have. I hope google talk will bring both. We'll see.
Terry Frazier at 8:22 PM
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Thursday, August 25, 2005
Three Keys to Motivating Personal Change
Knowledge Jolt author Jack Vinson captures three keys to driving change in personal behaviors:
One motivation to rule them all
Is there a core problem that explains all of these behaviors? What motivates me to do anything? Conviction that it is important to me. At the same time, I need to see a path to change, and have some confidence that the path is going to lead me the right way while not creating any additional problems (or that I can overcome obstacles). But without that critical conviction, I am not going to be interested in making the effort to change.
Vinsons observation comes while considering Dave Pollards Nine reasons we don't do what we should do, an excellent summary of tendencies, traits, and trends explaining why we never seem to accomplish as much as we think we should.
I like Vinsons three keys. They apply to all personal change, whether directed at ourselves or others. One challenge many of us face, as working professionals in knowledge-based industries, is getting our companies, colleagues, and customers to embrace the many new collaborative tools blogs, wikis, IM, presence, etc. that we have found so beneficial. We struggle to explain this new paradigm and toolset, but we dont often succeed because we dont successfully turn all three keys.
We can generate some initial motivation, because we have a critical conviction that the tools are good, right, and will help them. But we fail on the other two. Conviction is contagious, but fragile. When we dont show a clear, simple path or dont have a believable plan to remove or overcome obstacles our most impassioned arguments lie fallow and die.
Clearly then, the work must be done to better understand the customer or colleagues perspective, and too supply keys that have been carved to fit their circumstances.
Terry Frazier at 4:22 PM
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