Archives: Blogs

I am more of literary person, I like spinning words more than writing codes. So, I am your friendly neighbourhood “Javaman”. Just like superheroes, my race also has a unique identity for the common man, I am a Java programmer. What the mango people don’t know is that I come from the planet “Javanoid” and there a lot many of us hiding in plain view like the “autobots”.
We mostly live in one room or shared apartments and eat last night leftovers for breakfast. We make very good colleagues with the race of “Cubicle Wallahs” who come from neighbouring planet “Cubanoid”. Our natural habitat on maturing shifts from the computer lab in high schools to one chair cubicles in Tech Startups. We have cool super powers too, ranging from building super strength data structures to coding all sparking algorithms.
We have found much use of our unique skills in this world that humans call earth. More than 9 million of us are here now, powering laptops to datacenters, game consoles to scientific supercomputers, cell phones to the Internet.
Like any old race our ancestors believed in the assembly language (16, 24 and 32-bit, big endian) and others.The times changed and in the “Age of Objects” like other beliefs we were also split into being Javamen and “DOT-Netians”. More like foster brothers, our races survived often conflicting and sometimes converging to lead this world further into technology.
But no one is a born Javaman you need to prove yourself in the Java arena and show skills of mastering the thought that is JAVA, it is comparative to an earthlings attaining Nirvana. You are a Javaman, as soon as earthlings call you professional Java programmer .
“Moral of the story”: If you have never worked as a Java programmer and are studying for Certification, spend time coding useful programs instead and make them available freely for your prospective employers to see. If you already are a paid Java programmer, you probably don’t have a need for Certification. Hence making your entire exercise of studying for the certification a waste like this blog.
Cheers!!

One of the best strategies for building sales in a difficult economy isn’t lower prices loyal customers. Strong customer relationships can be cultivated by focusing on customer service from the first touch. Infact, offering an outstanding customer service is what every organization aims for. It is the best differentiator for a business. Providing customer service has a basic principle. The customers should be treated in a manner one wishes to be treated. As it is said Charity begins at home, this process starts with the way one treats and trains his employees in his own organisation.
Continue reading “Endowing customers with outstanding services”

Shifting my practice from Law to HR does shift my focus at times changing an interview into an interrogation. At times if the interviewee goes hostile, I resort to cross examination as well. Laughs apart, but it does make me question the validity and logic of an interview. Okay, lets stick to the word – and focus on the definition of an interview. Interview – Well! it may be defined as a conversation wherein questions are asked and facts or statements are elicited from another. But are these questions always open ended? Yes, there comes, a similarity between Interview and Interrogation that you always tend to ask.
Open ended questions help you in gauging the far horizon till which the candidate can imagine and how much he is able to make out of what you mean to ask. Such questions always help the interviewer in picking those little flaws from the answers provided which is almost always believed as a story. Here you apply your wit and hit back at the candidate as an interrogator. Practically, I would fail to differentiate between the two.
You cannot call people over to your office for an interrogation, owing to which we resort to the milder version of it, without losing the real essence and call it an Interview.
Sticking to the basics and coming down to define interrogation will be something commonly employed by officers of the police, military, and intelligence agencies with the goal of obtaining information. Huh, so what? that’s what we do. A candidate is showered with questions and is urged to answer to them.
Our goal as an interviewer also stays to obtaining information, moreover, we would also try to see between the lines and make that information work somehow, or the other. Above that, we do have the liberty, as against the interrogators, to validate it with the body language and gestures of the interviewee.
Having written the above said in a state of trance, I have believed in the fact that I am no less than a hiring interrogator (ego boost) who would be seen with love by the one interrogated as against those petty criminals seated in the interrogation room.
Hence, I am in the same role with the a spirit of benevolence. Perceptions can change everything, one just needs to look around. Where are my serendipity shades ?!

Why are your customers calling? A lot is riding on the answer. Depending on the industry, 30%-80% of customers call a company per year costing companies millions to hundreds of millions of dollars in customer service, be it in-house or externally managed through a vendor (e.g. Call center, BPOs, Captive units etc.) A complete breakdown for all types of calls that any customer service process handles is strangely not available, this is probably due to the fact that most calls are unique hence an umbrella categorization is a mammoth task. Hence, we limit ourselves only to scenarios based in a customer service setup wherein the customer calls you.
Continue reading “Identifying reasons why customers call into customer service”

When it comes to any industry to achieve breakthroughs, it is heavily inclined towards its agents. An agent, with his utmost devotion works for the organization which in return fetches name, fame and prosperity to it. Therefore, there is no doubt that an agent is an important aspect for an organization. However, inspite of this, agent attrition has become a rife in the corporate world. Work pressure, non-competitive salaries, lack of proper training, unsatisfactory work ambience have been some of the reasons leading to attrition soar high. Companies incur significant dollars, time and resources in training the employees. Hence, it has been realized that the need of the hour is to grip the attrition rate and restore its smooth operation.
Continue reading “Reducing Agent Attrition”

Customer is KING
Most often than not, you are not the only one offering whatever you have to offer to your customers. There is competition everywhere (and is only growing), no matter how you augment your product / service to position it differently. Your clients/customers will not hesitate in comparing you with others in spite of best of service and relationships.
Continue reading “Retaining Customers”

Consumers and Information Workers today are increasingly being characterized as tech-savvy and self-empowered. Gone are the days when devices like computers and smart phones exclusively belonged to the Information Technology departments arsenal in big corporate houses. Today, a typical employee owns an assortment of laptops, smart phones, tablets and PCs which are far more advanced than what most IT departments can offer.

Continue reading “BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) A corollary of IT consumerization”

Pink Elephants and Purple Giraffes
Consumers these days have all the choices in the world, these can range from the very basic to the more intricate. Let’s take beer for example, there are the traditional beers, the light variants, the ones that make you brawl and the flavored variants, with banana, strawberry, bacon or even steak flavored beer for buster the pitbull to give you company.
Continue reading “Pink Elephants and Purple Giraffes”

Call Center Agent
After a tiring day of back breaking gossip and failed growth plans, what a cubiclist needs is well only a hammock, a beach view, some mojitos (only lime, shun drinking !) and a few hula hoop dancers around. However there is a God, hence all of this is not ….in fact none of this happens. So the world is filled with cribbing cubiclewallah’s such as me.
Cribbing leads to comparisons, who has it better? who has it worse? who’s got it made? and the likes. So I went around looking for people who crib more. Case in point call center agents. A certain Sam I know works as an agent and cribs like a child I mean he is at it all the time, even in his dreams he is cribbing so I did some MI6 funded research of my own on the call center agent and how his clock works.
Apparently they are all bare faced liars !! why? No job on the planet can get as fun as that of an agent. Case in point true story from a Novel Netware SysOp:
caller: “Hello, Is this tech support ? ”
Tech: “Yes, It is. How may I help you ?”
caller: “The cup holder on my PC is broken and I am within my
warranty period. How do I go about getting that fixed ?”
Tech: “Did you say a Cup holder ? ”
caller: “Yes ! it is attached to the front of my computer”
Tech: “Please excuse me If I seem a bit stumped, It’s because
I am. Did you receive this as part of a promotional,
at a trade show ?”
caller: “It came with my computer, I don’t know anything about a
promotional, It just has 4X written on it.”
At this point the tech rep had to mute the caller because he couldn’t stand it He was laughing too hard. The caller had been Using the load drawer of CD-ROM drive as a cup holder and snapped it off the drive.
Who has that kind of fun at work I certainly don’t but then again I don’t interact with customers hence do not have to face the perils of providing excellent customer service.
However if given the job the first thing I would do is figure out how to have myself explained better and know a dumb joe is calling me when he does. Anyone up for a few laughs ?

Campus recruitment
Campus recruitment. This little phrase would send shivers down the spine for numerous students hoping to be a part of their “Dream Company”. What is a dream company? It is for sure that all of us have different priorities while categorizing from the basket full of corporate multinational giants to being entrepreneurs, but what helps in prioritizing one over the other and finalizing the same are usually hear-say opinions shared by our peers and often those that we think are the stand-apart people who have achieved what they wanted.
Continue reading “Holding on – the dream or the job”