New Year-New opportunities

So here I sit on New Years Eve, thinking of way to improve myself and help the team progress. Looking back over the year past I see a team that is starting to gel, we are doing documentation to assist the new members that are coming our way. I like forward thinking in the management we have (the rotation process) has all of us getting used to change in style and attitude. As the new manager is a business minded kind of manager the next more technical the styles are getting mixed together into one form with one goal.
That is pointed to the customer. When I was interviewed I explained to the department manager “when I am on the phone, there is only two people in the world” that would be the customer and me”. At first he had an idea of what I meant, then it was put into action.
I trained by reading a manual of the old product and practiced all weekend to learn the operation of the system. I was responsible for Windows based systems and had to learn Linux commands (still have lots to learn) in order to locate issues from a command line.
It reminded me of working with customers at another company (Good ‘old Windows 3.1 and Dos 6.22) I got to the phones and all I learned was a blank there were so many different configurations, systems and soft wares to understand. This took some time but I muddled through with help from the one (and only) second level tech. I learned a lot from Jeff, he is a valuable resource still.
On to the new year, we should be setting goals and setting our sights on making the customers happy, the team (s) are getting all the documentation ready for the customers portal and then hope like hell they read it, but if they don’t we are still there to help them out.
I have some customers I just love to talk to I show them the portal but still they call with the same questions and problems. It is nice to be needed in that way.
This year will give us new ways to help, new problems to overcome. The floor is ours and the second level will be down the hall but still close at hand. I hope they will remember to leave the doors open and let us learn together.
My goal last year was to get the teams to work with one another so we could all benefit from each other’s knowledge. To that end I think it went pretty well.
Happy new year!