The Day the Computers Died

          The hard drive on this awesome Apple MacBook died.  I took it to the Apple Store. Three hours later, I walk out with a fully repaired, awesome Apple MacBook.  In between, I sat at the Apple Store.  Sure, I did some work while I sat there.  Mostly, though, I watched people.  I watched the people who worked at the store and I watched the customers.  I noticed a lot of things.  The first thing I noticed is that there were a lot of people in the store.  There were shoppers, there were people getting their equipment repaired, and there were people taking classes.  That was only half of the people in the store.  The other half were Apple employees.  That's right - half of them were Apple employees.  Not one person entered that store without being approached by an Apple employee.  Ordinarily, that would annoy me, because I hate feeling pressured.  They didn't pressure anyone; they appeared genuine in their desire to help, and the customers responded in kind. Not all of the employees could actually help, but it didn't matter.  In the back of the store, where all the folks who needed repairs were situated, you would imagine the mood to be a bit tense.  It wasn't.  The customers were just as calm and, dare I say, happy as everyone else in the store.  Why?  It was because they felt that the people who were there to help them really were, and they cared about them and about solving their problem. Even when the item couldn't be repaired, the Apple folks talked them through options like a team.
         Contrast this with what happened to another intrepid member of the Trenches.  The week before my laptop died, hers did the same.  She took it in to be repaired.  It was dead.  So sorry, they told her.  The computer was dead.  They told her she might be able to go somewhere else and save some of her data, but she needed a new computer.  She left there with no computer, no idea who could help her, and no clue about what kind of computer to replace it with. She was adrift, and even the intrepid She wanted to cry.
          Oh goodness, isn't this just like the Trenches?  People come to us when their lives, not their computers, are broken.  They are beyond tense.  They come to us to help fix their lives.  We know they're on edge.  They don't need us to make it worse.   They need us to be calm, positive and reassuring.  Sometimes, there is not a lot we can do to make their situation better at any given point in time.   That makes our clients even more nervous, we know.   We're looking at the end game, and some points in time are not that important - to us.  To our clients, every point is important.  It would be easy for us to be impatient or to be matter of fact.  That would make it worse for our clients.  Like at the Apple store, we make sure to answer the phone with a smile on our faces and in our voices.  We really listen, even when it is the 10th time we've heard what the client has to say.  We ask questions to see what we can do.  We try to make them feel better and work toward a solution to their problem.  Most of all, we make sure they know we care.  Clients know when we do and it makes all of our lives easier at a really hard time in the client's life.   Can't we all learn from Apple?  Here in the Trenches.