A One-Eyed Man is King

He who has the gold makes the rules right?  Have you seen gold prices lately?  But seriously, my mom would remind my brother and I of this (amidst eye rolling and sly punches) almost daily.  Who knew it would actually make good business sense?

This is what customer service really boils down to, isn’t it?  If I want to make an impression on a customer, I need to try and empathize with them and then treat them as I would want to be treated myself.  If I want to make a bad impression, I don’t listen, I spout off “company policy” and generally give off the vibe that your situation isn’t worth my time.

My wife took her engagement ring to be repaired recently.  (Anyone who knows her knows that this story won’t be a positive example.)  They messed it up.  Seriously.  So they take it back and say they’re going to fix it.  So she goes to pick it up – for the second time mind you – and it’s now deformed and not at all to her satisfaction.  The lackey that she’s dealing with looks at her (she’s almost in tears at this point) and says to her “What do you want me to do about it?”

Wow.  Epic fail on the service there dude.  I realize that there are times when you just can’t help the customer out.  They want you to change the laws of physics or alter the space-time continuum or connect you with an English speaking operator when you call Dell.  These things will come up and I think most customers understand and have a certain amount of tolerance for.  You lose them as soon as you treat them in a way that you yourself would not want to be treated.  It’s that simple.

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I love this holiday.  It is by far my favorite holiday of the year.  I have so much to be grateful for that I consider myself one of the luckiest of men.  From my funny, intelligent, radiantly beautiful wife to my three wonderful kids to the job that I absolutely love, I recognize my good fortune.  Someday I will blog about gratitude as one of the keys to happiness.  (I know this isn’t very techie and has nothing to do with business, but hey, it’s my blog…)

The other side of my affinity for this holiday is the food.  I love to cook this meal.  I love to share it with my family and friends.  I love to show my gratitude for them by providing not just a meal, but an experience.  Some of you may know that I have a food blog and today I’ll be posting my menu with recipes and pictures from years past.  Have a great Thanksgiving!

This (really) should be the last post in this line.  My apologies to those who could care less about my media rantings. 

In the last exciting episode, we got My Movies 3, WHS and my Xbox 360 to all play nice together.  Now let’s take the plunge and talk about how to rip and encode your DVDs.  First, you’re going to need a couple of programs.  One is free and the other, contrary to my strong predisposition towards only using free tools, is about 75 bucks.  That seems like a lot, but it is GREAT software and will make life much easier.  (Like when you’re trying to rip those damn Disney movies.)

The tools are:

• AnyDVD from SlySoft
• Handbrake

Got those installed?  It’s ok, I’ll be here when you’re done.  Ready?

1. Insert your DVD and after a second you’ll see AnyDVD spin up and tell you to wait while the disc gets ready. 
2. Once the disc is ready open up Handbrake and you’ll see a screen that looks like this:

   

3. Click on the Source Button at the top left.  Select your DVD drive and it will tell you to wait a minute while it scans the disc.  Once it’s finished, choose the Xbox 360 Preset on the right hand side.  In the Destination field, select a location where you want the MP4 file to be saved.  I put my files on a drive that’s mapped to the server, and I learned through trial and error that you have to create a separate directory for each file for My Movies to index it.
4. Once the file shows up in the directory,  My Movies will see the file, try to figure out which movie it is and add the cover art, cast info etc.  If it can’t figure it out, you can manually change it.

Now that I’ve written up the steps to do this, it seems trivial.  Handbrake does all the work and it has an awesome preset to take the thinking out of it entirely.

Reading this blog may have given you the impression that I am the ultimate support person.  OK, I am, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t have times when I drop the ball, miss things, or lose Outlook data from my wife’s computer.  (Sorry, honey.)  Don’t worry, I’m not going to go into the gory details of my domestic squabbles here. 

Before I get into my actual point, let me describe the customer interaction pattern that I preach to everyone who isn’t sick of hearing me talk about it:

1. Listen to the customer’s problem.
2. Communicate your plan of attack.
3. Act on the plan.
4. Test your fix against the problem identified in step 1 (it’s best if the customers can do this for themselves).
5. Inform the customer of the results and any further steps needed.
6. Repeat as needed.

So this wasn’t a customer situation, really.  I had a friend of mine call me and tell me about several issues he was having with his computers.  He just lives down the road a bit from me, so I went over to see if I could help.  I wasn’t going to take any money for helping my friend (even though he tries to pay me every time).

To make a long story short, I fixed the problems he was having, made some recommendations for some low cost upgrades he could do, and then asked him if there was anything else he needed help with.  He told me about what he called a minor annoyance and said it really was no big deal.  Of course, Super Tech here couldn’t let that go unanswered, so I dug in and figured out the setting that controlled what was annoying him, and changed it.  And then I packed up my stuff and left amidst a shower of thanks and praises, and <ahem> a feeling of smug self-satisfaction.  (Anyone in tech support can already hear the ominous music…)

Like I said, I think I’m a pretty good tech and very good at customer service.  I have a system, for crying out loud.  I have a whole power point presentation on it.  None of this, however,  protected my ego when my friend calls me back 30 minutes later and says “I’m not sure what you did, but I just rebooted and now Outlook doesn’t work, my desktop looks completely different, and I can’t get anything to work right.”  Wow.  Total service failure.  And it was all me. 

The moral of this story is that it’s SO easy to fall down in tech support.  Whether it’s because you’re in a hurry, or you’re overworked, or you’re a chubby computer geek who lives out his super-hero fantasies by saving unsuspecting users from the dark forces of technology problems, you have to stay focused on the person you’re trying to help and think through the law of unintended consequences.  It’ll bite you every time.

Today I came across a great series of screencasts by Brian H. Prince called “Driving Your Career”.  I went through the 20 or so short episodes and was very impressed with the things he had to say.  It seems mainly geared towards developer types, but I think anyone in technology would benefit from listening. 

One of the recurring themes in these segments is that technology folks are different than “humans”.  For example in Episode 14 “How to Communicate with Humans”, he shows a picture of some aliens from Star Trek: The Next Generation (they were Binars, actually) and says “This is what you look like to humans”.  That and what he says subsequent to that really makes sense to me.  We in the industry are very often so far out of touch with what the average user’s experience is, that we might as well be aliens. 

I always use the analogy of an auto mechanic.  I don’t understand really anything about the inner workings of a car, and yet I have to depend on it to get me where I need to go.  If something goes wrong with it, I have to rely on someone who knows a whole world of jargon and parts and systems that I have no clue about.  The people who use our technology are dependent on us to an even higher degree.  Technology is far more than transportation, for many users it enables them to earn their livelihood. 

The point is, make sure that you are managing your career with the end user in mind.

As a field tech (not to mention son-in-law, brother, cousin whatever), you have to work on many different people’s computers.  You never know what you’re going to have to work with in terms of the applications they have installed.  Chances are very high that they won’t have all of the utilities you need to help them out.  This is why most geeks carry jump drives with them. 

Here are some of the tools that I carry on my keychain jump drive:

• Firefox Portable Edition – you never know when you’re going to need another browser.
• 7-Zip – a great file compression tool.
• Foxit PDF Reader – lightweight PDF reader.
• WinDirStat Portable – a disk analysis and cleanup tool.
• PuTTY – an SSH/Telnet client app.
• ProcessMonitor – Think Task Manager on steriods.
• Eraser – secure (and permanent) file deletion too.

What tools do you pack around on your jump drive?

I tell you we get no respect, right?  I told my psychiatrist that everyone hates me. He said I was being ridiculous – everyone hasn’t met me yet.  (Rodney was great, btw.)

But seriously, I totally understand the feeling that seems to be common in IT workers.  These days we are being squeezed to do much more with far less resources.  Often we are totally focused on acquiring hard skills just so we can keep up with the avalanche of new tech that comes out daily.  And let’s be honest with ourselves for just a second, we’re always looking to beef up our resumes and make ourselves as marketable as possible.  These things have the very serious potential side effect of putting us out of sync with the needs of the business.

I spent some time with an IT department today that was a living example of this.  They were very determined on the course of action that they decided was the best one.  They were obviously passionate about technology and felt these investments would make a hugely positive impact on the business as a whole.  See if this sounds familiar:  “This is just what we need to do.  I don’t care how you pay for it, we just need to do it.  We CAN’T roll out in phases, we NEED it all.”  I hear things like this and I think: Danger, Will Robinson.

Let’s break this down a bit: 

1. You the technology worker can’t (or won’t) be writing the checks personally to cover the cost of whatever you are proposing.
2. You will NOT be the sole decision maker for any kind of large project.  (At least I never have been.)
3. Whatever new thing you think is going to turn your network into rainbows and unicorns MUST bring MORE value (basically increased revenue or decreased costs) to the business than will be plunked down to make it happen.

Hopefully these three statements will put things into perspective that technology can relate to a little better.  What it boils down to is you must play nice with others. You must know what the business wants and what it needs (different lists sometimes).  If you want to have a project funded, take the acronym ridden quote that your vendors gave you and translate it into what your business stands to gain from it.  Bend over backwards to forge the strongest bonds possible between technology and the decision makers.  Make sure that you know what is important to them and always remember to align your proposals to their strategies.

PS.  If you’re not being invited to the meetings where they ultimately decide on these matters, that’s a bad sign.  Trust me.

As someone who works for a company that is typically in the role of a vendor, it was an interesting twist to find myself across the table from one of our vendors.  It actually was a great experience for me as it gave me a renewed perspective on what it’s like on the other side.  The timing was even better for me because right before the meeting, I happened to read this great post by Steve Curtain the customer service guru.

Steve talks about the good being the enemy of the best and how many companies are content to let good (or adequate) service be their standard.  This gets them lukewarm customers that jump ship at the drop of a hat.  Few companies, on the other hand, will go out of their way to consistently give the best customer service and this results in loyal customers that promote the company to others. 

I think that when the relationship is in trouble is one the best opportunities to show your customer what kind of service is your standard.  Maybe it will go down like this:

You:  I’m sorry to hear that you’re not happy with our product/service/As-Seen-On-TV Ab-cerciser, Mr. Soares.  Can you tell me about the problem?

Customer:  Yes, I’ve written out 41 points of why I’m not happy with your company.  Shall I read them to you?

You:  Sure let’s take them one by one, and I’ll tell you why you’re wrong not to like us.  Ready go.

Have you ever had to witness something like this?  It’s painful.  How your customer feels is FAR more than the sum of the 41 points he has listed out.  It’s those feelings you have to address above all and make sure that the other person knows you GET them, really and truly understand where they are coming from, and that you will make it right.

What if the conversation started like this:

You:  I am glad that you let me know about your problems with our company, Mr. Soares.  Can you tell me some more details so we can decide on how we’re going to make the situation better?

Customer:  It boils down to the fact that I was expecting X and all I see is Y.  I really NEED it to be like X.

You:  I am very sorry about that.  I know that we can get you to where you need to be.  What if we…

Don’t believe me?  Try it on your next disgruntled customer.  If they don’t turn into a promoter for you, I’ll send you a full refund, no questions asked.

This week’s roundup of free tools is dedicated to a good friend of mine who has jumped into the entrepreneurial deep end with both feet.  We were talking a while back about online strategy in general and I realized how often this kind of stuff comes up with small business folks.  Obviously I am biased here, but I really believe that a good web strategy can be a huge part of launching a successful venture.  So here are some great free tools that help you get more out of your online presence.

 Google Analytics – This is a really good place to get started with measuring your web site traffic.  You sign up for a free account, and they will give you a little piece of code to embed in your site so it can do it’s Google-riffic magic.  Once that’s there it will give you a sweet dashboard that will tell you where your traffic comes from, how much time people spend on your site, and how many pages they hit before they leave.  If you don’t know how much traffic you’re getting now, how can you possibly know what is working to increase it?

WordPress – If you want to show your customer that you are committed to their success with whatever it is that you do, you should have a blog.  This is my favorite blogging software.  You can let them host it (free), or you can load it on your own site (also free).  It’s hugely customizable and yet is very capable right out of the box.  It is dead simple to get a great looking blog going in no time.

Feedburner – Another great free Google product, Feedburner will give you insight into how well your blog is doing.  It will track your subscribers and give you insight into what you can do to optimize it.  It will also sort of guide you along with different things you can do with your blog and your feed. 

So I didn’t exactly do everything I wanted to.  I came close though.  Close is good, right? 

I satisfied all of the requirements I set for this project with the exception of 1A which was NOT to need a Media Center PC to be running.  Since I have totally hijacked my own blog for this, I figured it was better not to sink any more hours into this and get back to our originally scheduled program. 

So here it is broken down for you in living color, my Media (not quite) Utopia.

At the end of this journey you will have:

• Ripped DVD content encoded to MP4 files encoded with H.264 at very high resolution
• A slick graphical Collection Management system
• Direct streaming from WHS to any Media Center PC
• Streaming from the WHS via a Media Center PC to the Xbox 360
• A (fairly) straightforward method for ripping your DVDs directly to the Home Server

I am assuming that you already have:

• Xbox 360 with latest updates, connected to your Media Center PC
• A functioning Windows Home Server
• At least one Media Center PC, joined to the Home Server
• Network connectivity between all of these devices (the faster the better)

1.  Download and install My Movies 3 for WHS on your Windows Home Server. I just opened an RDP session to the server (Start > Run > mstsc, then enter the IP or name of your server) and installed it that way. 

2.  While you’re RDP’ed into the server, make sure that the “Windows Media Center” Group has modify permissions to the folder D:\My Movies\File Storage or your 360 will throw a File Storage error.  (My Computer > D: > My Movies > Right Click FileStorage and then click the Security tab.  If you don’t see Windows Media Center in the Group or user names: box, then click the Add button and then type Windows Media Center and then OK.  Then in the Permissions for Windows Media Center box, click the Modify check box under Allow.)

3.  Open the WHS console and go to Settings > My Movies.  Enter in your Web Service account (you can create one at the My Movies forum) and make all of the service lights are green.

4.  Download and install the My Movies Client installer on your Media Center PC.

5.  Launch the Collection Management app on your Media Center PC, and then enter your WHS name or IP when prompted.  You’ll also have to enter your My Movies Web Service account again. 

6.  Make sure that your “Videos” share on the home server (or whatever share you are going to use to store the movies) has the Guest account set to “Read”. 

7. Now you’re ready to get some movies going.  Under the videos share, create a folder (it doesn’t matter what you call it, but I use the movie name) and copy an MP4 or a VIDEO_TS folder into it.  After just a minute you should see some additional files appear in that directory (if My Movies can identify it, that is).  My success rate has been pretty high so far. 

8.  Once the files show up, you can look at the info in the Collection Management app on the client.  If it can’t figure out what movie it is from the filename, then you can click the Change Title and Source button and either scan the barcode off of the DVD case (very cool) or manually search for the right title.

9.  At this point you should be able to launch Media Center on both the PC and Xbox and see the My Movies Menu option.

In the final (!) installment of this train wreck, I will show you how to use Handbrake to rip and encode your DVD’s right to your Windows Home Server.