When I was young, if I wanted to talk to my best friend Randy without going over to his house or meeting him somewhere, I had only one choice - call him on the telephone. Of course, I could only call him if he had previously given me his phone number or if I knew the last name used for setting up...

A few years back, I wrote an article on ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) and I even interviewed an expert on the subject. ITIL has always been thought of as the best practice library for big corporations, but it is folks like myself who are trying to pull that curtain down all...

I’ve been meaning to blog about this thing I call the Pyramid of Purpose and Value™ for the longest time. Well, I ended up writing about it extensively in my book Getting To The Next Level, so I’m taking advantage of that and posting the introduction to the Pyramid directly from...

By my definition, it is the most valuable intangible asset of any organization. The Human Element is the actuator, custodian, and perpetuator of the organization’s culture. It is the single most powerful determinant of success for a healthy and viable business. Only with a healthy company...

Have you ever wanted to put on a small event to showcase or show off your product or services but just don't have the budget? Then you should know about what is called the Marketing Development Fund or MDF for short. It is the term used for funds available from vendors and partners of products...

Are you running a help desk, service desk or a call center? And do you know the difference? I find it odd that so many small companies try to run some version of a help desk as if they had infinite technical resources like a call center. They say, “We want a real person to answer the phone...

You have to learn how to filter your world to stop the interrupts and in today’s business world that means everything from your phone, the people around you when you’re in an office, to the content that's stuffed into your face as you do your job. And now in the 21st century,...

Having worked with so many service companies over the years I've seen and felt the pains of the roller coaster that is the tech workforce. The smaller your company is the more you feel it when someone even gets sick let alone has to part ways with the company. I say you should always know who the...

One of my measures of the maturity of a service team is their ability to have a weekly stand-up meeting every Monday morning. Rain or shine, good or bad, fire and flames or all quit. By the way, I actually prefer the term Scrum as it is an Agile term and it really is more appropriate for how I...

Jeff asks...

In The Ten Golden Rules of PSA you indicate Rule #8 is – All work is scheduled in 3 days in advance.
I understand that if everything is a priority then nothing is, but How do you arrive at the "3" days?
Also, I assume the 3 days out is for field service only? We also provide a...

Most small and medium-sized companies address customer service issues related to the mechanism we call Service Delivery as just part of the day-to-day ongoing workload and never really track it. The only tracking is the recent relevant memory of those involved. And if it was a particularly bad...

Stop me if you've heard this one…

I’m no longer surprised by the number of companies that end up with the wrong people working for them, and for a ridiculously long time at that, before it is remedied. What else would you expect if your behavior is to wait until the last minute to...