Support As A Technology
 
Author: Qazi Tariq

Empathy

02
Jul
2018

During my tenure in public sector, I was trained over empathy. This is like sympathy but not exactly. Sympathy is a very common word and many time empathy as a synonyms is used instead of sympathy.

If we go by the definition, sympathy is feelings of pity and sorrow for someone else’s misfortune. Whereas empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another, which is in other words putting ourselves in their shoes.

So why in call centers they focusing a lot over empathy? They are always calm and trying to convince us.

I strongly believe that call centers are focusing so much of empathy to make their representative to understand what exactly the person on the call is feeling while s/he is calling for support or help / assistance. Until and unless the representative will not understand the importance of caller’s time and criticality of issues, they will not be able to provide proper support. This may affect the brand value of the company in the market.

We can take an example of multinational company Ford, which is continuously taking about its upgraded support services for their vehicles. Similarly the online shopping site Flipkart, which now a well-known brand.

I think empathy is the key to success along with proving the right support. Sometimes having right knowledge, best support team may led to failure due to lack of empathy.

Think about it.

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Nano-Management

29
Jun
2018

Micro management is a bit common in today’s world. Most of the time, we don’t realize, when this micro-management turned into Nano-management. Let’s understand the Nano-management.


For me the Nano-management is, when the manager starts poking in our routine life such as what we eat, when to sleep, where to go, whom to sit, whom to follow, how every sentence of the presentation should look like, which movie to watch etc. too much of involvement in day to day life, be it on duty or off duty hours.
Sometimes it is good for the company, as the company will get the same trendy output what it was getting from the manager and now getting from us, however sometimes it is like killing someone’s personality and making him/her a toddler.

 

I don’t know what those managers have in their mind, while treating their subordinates like that, but I am sure, they want better output, quality results and on time delivery. They probably want zero tolerance in their project with superb quality of output.

 

On the other hand, what about those subordinates, who are working under the Nano-management web. I think if the duration is long, then they must be losing all their innovative capabilities and become more dependent over their managers along with hiding themselves in comfort zone, whereas if the duration is less, then these members will become a gem if they take this Nano-management properly and positively.

 

This Nano-management may help a team member to learn more from their manager’s experience along with grooming himself. This can become a booster for him / her for the new opportunity.

Now it’s up to us, how we release which type of management is with us and how we can leverage the benefits from it to groom our future.

Best of Luck!!

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Micromanagement

26
Jun
2018

Many of us might have observed during our IT tenure that we were micro-managed by our manager. Obviously many of us doesn’t liked it, but was that by any means helpful in our career path?

I am not in favor of micro-management, however I do believe that sometimes it is necessary to be in place to achieve the right and on time results. Especially for the support projects.

Micromanagement does have some pros and cons, however I am not going to discuss all that. What I feel the biggest plus of micromanagement is to achieve what the management or the manager wants to achieve. Apple is one of the best example for it, where Steve had put everything on stake to achieve what he wanted to. As a result, world got Apple products, which are almost like Gem.

In many such scenarios where team members are getting micromanaged by the manager, losing their own innovative thoughts, growth and confidence. On the other hand many of them are learning lots from their manager and keep a note of what they like, what is right as per them and what is not. Those who survives this period successfully and mug-up the lesson learnt are actually becoming the real gem in the industry.

In-short those who are afraid of being micro-managed, don’t be. Everything must come with some lesson. Grab it, learn it and move on.

 

Thanks.

 

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How to stop a crow from shitting on your brand new car?

25
Jun
2018

Do you have a solution to save your car from crow’s shit? At least I don’t. You may think what am I up to today but believe me this is one of the most irritating thing.

Let’s talk about the practical scenario, you have prepared everything for your QBR or MBR, all the SLA reports, Incident’s RCAs are intact, the sprints are on time, however there was some shift timing minor issues, which has nothing to do with the QBR or MBR.

Now your QBR or MBR started, everything goes well, all the responsible stakeholder were going with the flow until this guy spoke up about the shift timing issues. All the discussion has started circling around this topic only and you were asked as an action item to prepare the RCA for this issue, which was nothing to do with this meet at all.

As a smart Project Manager or Program Manager you might have tried to smoothen the flow, however some clients are hard to turn. So now how will you save your car from crow’s shit? Remember this crow’s gift is less in quantity but it spoils all the charm of your beautiful car.

There could possibly two ways of doing it,

  • Explain everything upfront
  • Do not avoid a single piece of information, be it minor or major, while presenting yourself in front of the world

If you have any other, options, kindly do share.

 

Thanks.

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Can a good driver will also be a successful Project Manager or vice versa?

15
Jun
2018

I don’t know how this thought crawled in my mind, but honestly I think a good project manager will definitely be a good driver.

You may agree with this, that a driver has to be very conscious while driving specially in two cases

  • While s/he is driving the busiest area and
  • While s/he is driving at a very high speed

Let’s think again. While someone among us plans a road trip, s/he start calculating everything, for example: time to start, time to finish, traffic status, road blocks, bottle neck, when to start, cost of the trip, point to take break, passengers who are riding with, backup plan, lesson learnt from others experiences etc.

In project management, a project manager is also calculating everything, time, budget, resources, back logs, sprints, RACI, Project manual, Lesson learnt, PMO documents etc. A mature PM calculate and think almost about everything and anything, similarly a good driver plans and thinks about everything, which can make his/her ride easier and on time completion without any delays.

I recall, one of my onsite client PM was once saying that he used to put 2 extra car tyres while his wife goes to her in laws so that if any tyre gets sliced, it can be replaced right away. Likewise a smart PM always strengthen the knowledge sharing and lesson learnt process to avoid and gap.

The only thing I am not sure if a driver becomes a project manager or not. Eventually s/he is a project manager though if s/he has to meet the criteria of being a Good Driver.

 

Keep thinking and let me know your thoughts.

Thanks.

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Bids Adieu to Yahoo Messenger

10
Jun
2018

Recently Yahoo has decided to give rest to world’s oldest and one of the most popular messenger service on July 17th. Yes you learnt it right, it is Yahoo Messenger only.

I haven’t used it for a while, however after knowing this, I feel sad as this was the first messenger I have used for almost 10 years. It used to have lots of great features. The video calls were working even over the 128 kbps or dial-up network back in Y2K.

Today there are so many competitors of Yahoo messenger, struggling to achieve the same respect and popularity as Yahoo messenger had. I believe it will take them ages to get up to that level, where the YM was. I think the biggest credit goes to whatsapp, which is close to the YM level. It is not providing all those features, which YM does, still it has somewhere similar thought process behind it.

What do we learn from YM shut down, have you ever thought about it?

For me, it is the “continuous improvement” phenomena, which was somewhere broken during the YM transformation journey. I think one should always think about the improvement prospective of anything and everything, that’s the key. It all together a different argument whether improvement is in the right direction or not. There is also a solution though and that is audit, customer satisfaction survey and suggestions from the users, however I’ll not go in those details for now.

I wish best of luck to Yahoo for the YM replacement “Squirrel”, but getting up to YM level will be a challenge.

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Why do we do a JOB?

09
Jun
2018

Interesting, while I was trying to search the answer of this question, “why do I do a job?” I found various answers such as;

  • A job will full fill my daily needs
  • Will help grow my career
  • Will become wealthier
  • Can purchase a new car may be after few years
  • May be in next few years, will be able to purchase a small home
  • Because I have certain knowledge so I have to do a job

 

What I didn’t found;

  • Will I be loving my job?
  • Will my family love me if I go for job?
  • Will job be able to secure my future?
  • Will I be able to full fill all my needs via a job?
  • Will I become healthier if I continue a job?
  • My friends will give me more respect if I go for a job?
  • Will I be able to spend more time with my loved ones?
  • Will I get beyond expectation rating?
  • Will I get the highest bonus and salary raise?
  • Will I be doing what I wanted to do?

The list is long of such questions.

 

In my personal opinion, one can help us by guiding and telling us about our strengths and weakness, however rest of the answers we have to find by our own.

 

Initially when we start the job, we used to be very excited, no matter whether we love the job or not and eventually all of us tried to put all the effort to learn new things and processes from the company, feeling proud to have a job. However as the time elapse, we start either loving the job or looking for other job, which we may love.

 

For those who are fortunate and get such a job, which they might love, become loyal to the company and spend most of their life in that company. This helps them eventually learn many new things and making them a process champion. However few of them later on starts looking for the answer of the above questions. Some of them are lucky enough to get most of the answers, whereas few among them are left hanging.

 

In both the cases, whether we love our job or not but if we are doing the job for almost 40 to 45 years of our life span, have we ever thought, what will happen after that? Some of us takes it lightly by saying who will live that long but the bitter truth is that almost 80% of us will. What will happen then?

 

I think this is one of the question, why so many entrepreneur are available now days. Many of them are still looking for the answers and few of them are indirectly just doing the job by only changing the label.

 

What do you think?

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Thanks for your valuable suggestions!!!

08
Jun
2018

Thanks all for your positive feedback’s and suggestions for “Saatpro” blogs.

 

Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Tariq (the morning star Venus), full name Qazi Mohammad Tariq the current author of these blogs. You can see me in the Red Tee on the home page.

My forefathers were Qazi (a public official authorized to decide questions brought before a court of justice), so the legacy continued and I got “Qazi” as my sir name. Professionally, I am more into technologies. Started my career in IT industry and spent almost 17 years before writing these articles.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/qazitariq

 

I have received many comments, some of the readers want to connect to me directly, I’ll request them to kindly drop me a note over info@saatpro.com. Yes, I am on twitter with “@qazimtariq”, however not much active there.

There were many requests about the length of the article. I appreciate and respect your suggestions. For now I would like to keep it concise and want to share thoughts in nut shell as I believe that now a days, the only thing which no one can get more or increase is TIME. I don’t want anyone to spend their precious time for me. I’ll certainly try to write some lengthy articles later.

 

The subscription option will be added later, so that if you want, you can get yourselves subscribed. The “fGymm Theme by WordPress” is used in this blog, it is freely available, if you want you can also get it and implement over your blogs.

 

The other questions were about the blog site, please feel free to drop a note to info@saatpro.com, I’ll try to revert with relative information. If you want me to get such blogs developed for you, I’ll engage someone to get it done, however it might be chargeable 🙂

Best and Kindest Regards;

S: Saapro.com

B: Saatpro Blog

F: Saatpro Facebook page

L: Saatpro LinkedIn Page

Y: Saatpro YouTube Channel

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9 hours shift

31
May
2018

Most of the offices trying to ripe most of the productive hours from their employees. Many among these offices are doing it by fixing the time in followed by spending at least 9 hours in the office premises. However post 9 hours, there is no guarantee that the employee will go home though. Some of the offices such as support centers does have fix in and fix out timing, however out of every 9 hours employee spent in office, his/her productive hours are always more than 8 hours, because they barely get time to have lunch or go for nature call. Maximum time, they used to have their lunch in front of their system.

On the same row, there is another category, which is getting very popular now a days, it is 9 hours office shift followed 24×7 on call support. It means, no matter where you are, you have to always be ready for your office calls and you have no choice but to pick the call and provide the solution then and there. Office will not responsible, whether you are in a function or at a funeral, you have to take the call.

In the past few years, we have noticed, so many doctors suddenly started talking about the health issues, sleeplessness, back pain, BP, sugar, heart attach etc. lots of articles are all over the newspapers, magazines and internet about raising such health issues. All are pointing these reasons for our health issues;

  • Stress
  • Eating too late in the evening
  • Poor sleep habits
  • Not sleeping on a regular schedule, due to work or travel
  • An irregular sleep schedule
  • Sleeping during the day
  • A job that involves working at night
  • Lack of exercise
  • Using electronic devices like laptops and cell phones in bed
  • Having a sleep environment with too much noise or light
  • A recent job loss
  • Excitement about an upcoming event
  • Caffeine
  • Nicotine
  • Alcohol
  • Drugs
  • Cold medicines
  • Diet pills

In most of the cases, lack of proper sleep is the main culprit and I don’t thing any office will pay for sleeping. Of course, offices does provide medical insurance, but will that enough for employees to put themselves on stack.

It’s time to think again, where are we heading to. We should recheck the facts about the growth rate of health issues instead of our financial status. As our health and mental stability is above all. Once we have it, maybe we can enjoy everything, but if we don’t, then everything is useless.

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VPS – Visual Position System

30
May
2018

GPS is a very common word now. Everyone even a kid knows about it. Anyone who is travelling or in transit may looking for the GPS signals on their smart phones. Most of the people know, that there is something which is called GPS helps them to reach to their destination. 🙂

 

If we go by the definition, then GPS is an abbreviation for `global positioning system’, which is a system that uses signals from satellites to find out the position of an object. Now what is satellites? And how is it sending signal to our phone? 😀 We’ll discuss sometime later on this topic.

 

Recently in Google IO 2018, we have learnt about the new GPS system, rather smarter GPS system, which will help us to know, where we are and where we want to go. It is basically using the phones camera and start guiding you about the right direction and location. It will identify the place you are at and will let you know if you heading to the right direction or not. Basically for me it looks like that Google has made their Lens smarter and integrated it with the maps

Visual Positioning System

 

Once you face the camera towards the roads and building, it will guide you, where to go from here. On the other hand the Local Guides are keep on improving the Google maps with their reviews and photos to make this VPS (Visual Positioning System) more smarter and better.

 

I think sooner or later, we’ll start talking and seeking about the VPS signals instead of GPS, eventually it will be GPS though. 😀

Cheers!!

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