The Service Council's Blog

I love to gather my thoughts following our annual Smarter Services Symposium and reflect on the excitement which I believe resonates beyond the event to the broader service and customer support market. My colleagues will cover the strategic and tactical observations stemming from the event in a series of blogs which will be published in the next week+ leading up to next week’s Smarter Services Symposium Recap Webcast (Please Join Us September 27th @ 11am Eastern: Complimentary Registration). To kick this off, Sumair Dutta authored an initial summary blog (Three Days of Service Learning: Three Initial Takeaways). Our blogs and coverage of the event will aim to help you assimilate the ideas, methods and strategies we uncovered at the event which we believe to be groundbreaking.

Meet Joe. Joe is one of the most attentive and focused service technicians I have encountered in my life. What’s cool about Joe? He isn’t motivated by compensation. His focus is just a part of his DNA. Would compensation make him more motivated to be customer-centric? More on this in a few moments.

The fourth of four symposiums I have attended was kicked off by John Carroll at noon on Tuesday, March 10th. No complaint on the weather or the venue in San Diego they were both beautiful. Ron Kaufman was introduced as the MC for the three days. Ron performed an admirable job of learning the background of each of the speakers he introduced which enabled the attendees to better know each presenter. Our first keynote, Erica Javellana of Zappos!, discussed the creative beginnings of Zappos! by their founder Tony Hsieh. Tony was looking for a certain type of shoe to purchase and when he couldn’t find them, decided to start a company and make them. Erica went on to discuss the ten core values that the employees created which shaped their culture and a set of values that they could then use to hire and fire. The processes, values and culture that Zappos! has put in place give us a solid look at what we will be experiencing with upcoming generations entering the workforce. Following Erica’s talk there were several captivating panel discussions to choose from and enjoy. Karl Hohmann of ServicePower and I chaired a breakout session discussing Hybrid Workforce Strategies to accommodate Third Parties and Contingent Labor. We enjoyed interacting with twenty attendees, 10 having had previous experience with third parties. The discussion was lively and could have gone much longer with good discussion on the pluses and minuses of these topics.

Its Superbowl week, and as always we’re spending a lot of time talking about the teams, strategy, matchups, snacks, and more. It's a fun time, especially if you’re a fan of the New England Patriots or the Seattle Seahawks (sorry Packers fans). However, this year, there seems to be way too much attention being paid to Deflategate and the atmospheric conditions that impact ball pressure. It's all a little media circus.