inputs/outputs

As a follow up to my post on LinkedIn, I have an idea for a cool Facebook Application.  You select two or more of your friends that don’t know each other and dump them into a shopping cart of some sort.  You’ll write info about how they will be relevant/useful to each other, and hit submit.  All of the selected friends will get an email “introducing” them to the others, and they’ll see your little blurb about why they’ve been introduced.

We could call it “indirect friend requests.”

What do you think?  This could be useful if you’re putting someone in touch with a contact a company to which they are applying, or if I’m interested in Latvian Folk Music and you happen to have a Latvian friend, etc.

One of my recent LinkedIn adds, Tom, wrote me a message when we connected:

We are SO LinkedIn.  I think we should start a new site called NowWhat?

I wish I could say that I’ve used this site to connect with relevant professionals around the globe, but unfortuantely, I haven’t gotten anything but spam.  Not to say this service will be useless for everyone, but so far, it’s been useless for me.

Maybe that’s becuase I already have  a job.  I imagine the correlation is strong between decrease in income and number of logins to LinkedIn.

The traffic directors use whistles.  Blowing hard could mean “walk.”  It could mean “stop.”  It could mean “drive.”  It could mean “brake.”

What’s the point?  It grabs my attention so much that I become completely unattentive.

Today, I bought my first physical CD in two years.  The record that made me break my streak of only buying digital music is Edgar Meyer and Chris Thile’s new album of original compositions.  It’s as lovely as I expected.  I forgot how it feels to buy a physical CD; unwrapping it, cracking the case for the first time, the coverart, the liner notes.

Unfortunately, it’s been imported into iTunes and will soon go on the iPod, which means the CD will be tossed somewhere in my room never to be seen again.  Even romantics like me would prefer a digital download, I guess.

Here’s my proposal:

For all production support which involves an interaction between consultant and user, excluding a classroom setting, there should be a 20 minute rule between the question and the answer.  Basically, the user should have:

1. 20 minutes to figure out a solution on their own
2. The ability to close their own ticket
3. Just a tiny bit of patience

For instance, if I get a request for some help on SAP, I’ll wait 20 minutes before calling them back.  I couldn’t confidently give a statistic of how many times the ticket will be closed when I check again after 20 minutes, but I’m guessing it could save some painful phone/email/research time.  Why 20 minutes?  It’s enough time for the user to use a learn-by-doing approach to solve their own problem without perceiving the helpdesk as unresponsive.

Often times, users do a knee-jerkreaction when they encounter an error.  We tell the user what to click without attaching meaning to the clicking.  (Why would we?  That’s what training is for.)  Then, when the error returns, they call us back.  More time, more money.

Question, for another post:  Is classroom training effective?  For who?