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pseydtonneI was worried when I started this job that I might not be able to sweat the load as fast as they expected. Now I'm wondering whether I may be better at load balancing than other people doing the job.
I have a spreadsheet that I update every time I contact a customer. I created it because our ticketing software, which is both our company's product and a rather popular product for many companies that track customer issues, has not been configured to help me track two very simple questions: what do I need to do today, and who owes whom? (Side note: it's also weird about accepting attachments, but it's really good at keeping them and making them accessible. Having dealt with much worse ticketing software, I can't really complain.)
One thing I like about the company's ticketing product is that I can set the time for the next customer update down to the second. It offers a time based on exactly X many days from the present moment, but I can wipe that out and say "1/13 5 pm" or "1/13 17:30" and it figures that out.
Thus I use the minutes of the next customer update field to track who owes whom. If I have to provide new data to a customer, I type ":00" or just "pm" and pick an hour that hasn't already been used. If the customer just needs to update me, then I set the minutes to ":30". This way, anything at the top of the hour (and usually the end of the day) is hard work and anything at the bottom of the hour is just a phone call or a follow-up email.
This has made it a lot easier for me to plan my day. I can come in, send off "haven't-heard-from-you" emails in the morning and work on new stuff or hard stuff in the afternoon. If one of my haven'ts suddenly replies, then I can respond at 2 pm instead of 7 pm. My brain is also free to think about deeper issues more of the time.
It also makes it easier if I need to think of a ticket as temporarily urgent. I can set the time to x:15 or x:45 and realize I need to be ready for something weird.
I am getting to a point where I may have built enough redundancies into my ticket tracking and time keeping that I don't need to use the separate spreadsheet. Nevertheless, I like the spreadsheet -- it's visually more obvious what I need to do, it takes very little to keep it updated, it doesn't crash or get network problems the way the ticketing app does and it lets me see which tickets I closed as well as which are open.
If you want two useful tricks from today's post, here they are:
-geeking the organizing, Dante
I have a spreadsheet that I update every time I contact a customer. I created it because our ticketing software, which is both our company's product and a rather popular product for many companies that track customer issues, has not been configured to help me track two very simple questions: what do I need to do today, and who owes whom? (Side note: it's also weird about accepting attachments, but it's really good at keeping them and making them accessible. Having dealt with much worse ticketing software, I can't really complain.)
One thing I like about the company's ticketing product is that I can set the time for the next customer update down to the second. It offers a time based on exactly X many days from the present moment, but I can wipe that out and say "1/13 5 pm" or "1/13 17:30" and it figures that out.
Thus I use the minutes of the next customer update field to track who owes whom. If I have to provide new data to a customer, I type ":00" or just "pm" and pick an hour that hasn't already been used. If the customer just needs to update me, then I set the minutes to ":30". This way, anything at the top of the hour (and usually the end of the day) is hard work and anything at the bottom of the hour is just a phone call or a follow-up email.
This has made it a lot easier for me to plan my day. I can come in, send off "haven't-heard-from-you" emails in the morning and work on new stuff or hard stuff in the afternoon. If one of my haven'ts suddenly replies, then I can respond at 2 pm instead of 7 pm. My brain is also free to think about deeper issues more of the time.
It also makes it easier if I need to think of a ticket as temporarily urgent. I can set the time to x:15 or x:45 and realize I need to be ready for something weird.
I am getting to a point where I may have built enough redundancies into my ticket tracking and time keeping that I don't need to use the separate spreadsheet. Nevertheless, I like the spreadsheet -- it's visually more obvious what I need to do, it takes very little to keep it updated, it doesn't crash or get network problems the way the ticketing app does and it lets me see which tickets I closed as well as which are open.
If you want two useful tricks from today's post, here they are:
- Worrying about your stack is pointless. Stop it. Put the stack in order and then work on its items in that order. All other mental effort is wasted.
- If your existing way of handling your stack isn't working, build another one. The time spent working on a good stack sorter will pay you back in time free to work on bigger issues. Note the word "good". Note also that once it's working, stop messing with it and grab your next item. Yes, you.
-geeking the organizing, Dante
