Amy’s kingdom at Third Tier keeps on growing:

Yesterday Third Tier announced a formal relationship with Calyptix for support services. Calyptix has found that in working with partners that often times the project involves areas outside of the expertise of their support staff. Calyptix core competency is their Access Enforcer product. Third Tier provides the Calyptix partner access to a wide variety of technical experts that can work in a holistic manner across technologies and products to get the project done or the problem resolved.

Amy and Eriq are good friends and I am not sure what more I can say other than to make a point to check them out. With foaming at their mouth about NOC services and outsourcing their helpdesks, there is still a ton of really complex technology out there that is eventually going to blow up regardless of the tools, gear and monitoring in place… and it’s nice to know there is someone you can call when that happens.

So while I can’t recommend you ever look at Calyptix, Amy and Eriq definitely need to be on top of the speed dial list.

Today is “Beat Vlad” day at Own Web Now, where everyone brings me their problems and I solve them. I haven’t really booked anything else so I’m at my desk just answering questions. I made a mistake of opening the public IM client and the following ensued. Basically, client asked for help with the FTP permissions.

Vlad Mazek says:
  ok
Vlad Mazek says:
  fixed
Bob says:
  It wouldn’t be such a big deal, but he tells me he has a 30,000.00 deal riding on this.  I don’t know how you sell that much in pictures.
Vlad Mazek says:
  porn
Vlad Mazek says:
  by the amount, I’m guessing it’s specialty porn
Vlad Mazek says:
  midgets and such
Vlad Mazek says:
  anyhow, I’m gonna go work on your Frontpage now.

Another day, another satisfied customer

My buddy Schrag is noticing that the latest bit of self-inflicting gunshots to the head that Microsoft calls it’s marketing program is not terribly inflammatory towards him. So he says here: http://davidschrag.com/schlog/413/with-partners-like-this

“What’s that, Microsoft? You’re saying I can be replaced by college students!?!?!?!”

Personally, I think you could be replaced by a monkey, jar of peanut butter and some software but let’s not get into name calling.

Microsoft flourished in an environment where it had a ton of friends and at times only one or two enemies. Apple. IBM. Corel. Netscape. In the new world, which Microsoft has scorched by entering every market imaginable, the old rules don’t apply.

When will Microsoft realize that it is not Google, that it cannot behave with google because at the end of the day Microsoft software is too damn expensive, cumbersome and complex – and it requires a technology expertise to use because Microsoft made it as such!

And then they wonder why they are failing….

Here is something to brighten up your weekend.

Last week I chatting to my buddy Erick in passing on IM (apparently both of us need clones and secretaries but if there is a problem with a hotel reservation or ExchangeDefender both of us waste our valuable time instead of sacrificing the underlings). A while back one of Erick’s star employees moved to Central Florida and was looking for a gig but my schedule has been all over the map and I just didn’t get a chance. The following conversation ensued:

Erick: You gotta talk to him.
Vlad: I know man, I’m sold, I just need to find some time.
Erick: He is loyal, dedicated, really cares about the customer.
Vlad: Oh. He won’t fit in here at all.

You see, Popcopy skit from the old Dave Chapelle show is one of the staff favorites at Own Web Now. I have to admit that it is about the only thing that can resurrect my day after I’ve had to spend ten minutes on a phone apologizing for stuff that is not our problem, trying not to get straight to the point and as my Beverly Hills guys say: “Go all Vladville on him.”

There are days that you just want to grab the computer from the customer, hand them classifieds and say: I don’t know who lied to you but this computer stuff is not for you. Look for a career that doesn’t involve reading comprehension.

Alas, can’t do that.

So I indulge in the guilty pleasure of living vicariously through the skit. Click below to play it (if your reader is not showing the video preview please visit vladville.com directly)

Occasionally you may get snagged by one of these customer people.
Your job is to frustrate them and make them feel unwanted.

You know, a lot of people ask WHY? WHY treat a customer this way?
Why? Cause fuck em, that’s why!

And should you ever doubt yourself and treat a customer with respect, just remember this: you’ve graduated from grade school and you don’t have to take shit from anyone!

Just as everyone prepares to go green my buddy Erick Simpson takes out another huge chunk  of Brazil with the latest masterpiece – the best IT Service Delivery Book Ever. You can preorder it now and save $50 on it.  I’ve already placed an order for mine and might get a few more for my team as service delivery is pretty much what we do around here.

I’m really looking forward to seeing what Erick drops in this book, if its like the other ones it will be packed full of useful templates and humor. We’ll even try to give a few away @ OWN so if you want to try your luck first go at it

I’m also well on my way through my own book on Service Delivery but it will be quite different than what Erick has written. Take a moment to review his table of contents, it’s COMPREHENSIVE and thats even selling it short. So you should pretty much get both.

What am I up to? Well, in the past ten years of managing and building the service business and working with thousands of people doing it (with random degrees of success) I’ve found it that the culture of service is a little more important than the process and forms and basics. Even if you got all the right templates, even if you hired the right people, even if you’ve targeted the right audience and got everything together one PSA side and accounting side….. you’re still doomed to fail if the people and processes you’ve put together are not on the same page you need them to be. To provide consistently exceptional service you have to understand your service teams needs, problems and issues and you have to constantly teach, motivate and mentor your team to do their best with the people that trust their business to you.

If you’ve hired a person that you’ve had to let go, or if you hate the idea of having to manage techs, I’m gonna be taking your money pretty soon But to get to that point you need to have your corporate goals together and The Simpsons will help you do it for $100.

Succumbing to peer pressure, I have setup a FriendFeed account. For the voyers among you, here you go:

http://friendfeed.com/vladmazek

Personally, if you want to chat I’d rather you either email me (vlad@vladville.com) or MSN IM me (vlad@vladville.com) but if you’re on the Friendfeed crack I’m right there with you.

I have to note though that I find the amount of information this site delivers quite disturbing. I tied in a few of my services and if you follow the trail line you can probably guess what I had for lunch from it too along with a full dental record. My god, that is a lot of information available completely anonymously and it even sucks all my friends in too so you can tell exactly the kind of relationships I have with people. Scary. I guess I’ll have to curb my habbit of ordering brides on eBay and befriending little girls on MySpace in light of all this! Damn it! And I just got good at it, too!

Earlier tonight we went to Hooters for dinner and we just couldn’t get over our waitress. Is your last name Wakefield? Do you know Jen Wakefield?

Since I couldn’t get Jen on the cell phone I am just convinced she got a night gig and didn’t want to fess up to it. Here is a pic of her when she is not wearing orange shorts:

Oh, and the hot Jenn is a Gator, friend Jen is a nole

Earlier tonight I was chatting with a friend of mine and we were comparing and contrasting some of the truly ridiculous individuals in our business. Such total outright whores that pretend to be one thing but the money trail reveals them to be nothing other than shills for anyone with a check. On one hand, we have people that have been successful in the business, share what they think will improve their community, but aren’t shy to stick the barcode forward and ask to be compensated for the content that has been thought through, organized, delivered in a consumable way (Karl, Erick, Dana). On the flip side, we have people that pretend to be like that but when you scratch the surface you only get the infomercial. I have made my dislike for those pretty open. My friends advice?

“Forget about them, they don’t matter.”

True. However, when everyone agrees not to say anything, when everyone just turns their back onto the unsuspecting public getting screwed, when everyone is a closet hero that is mad, tired as hell, and not going to take it anymore… okay, well, maybe just a little bit more… okay, well, never mind.. that dear friends is how the people get empowered and allowed to continue until the only thing that is left is them and people to aspire to be like them. 

Now, friends, it doesn’t matter who I’m talking about, it doesn’t matter if it’s in IT, it doesn’t matter if it is happening or not – in order to be right with yourself, your community, your world and be able to sleep at night you need to be able to distance yourself from the herd, think for yourself, and when something bothers you do something about it.

Thats what the blogs, podcasts, video blogs, conferences, group meetings, peer get-togethers, peer chats, 2AM IM sessions on the toilet and being a decent human being are all about. Thats why I encourage people to blog, to speak, to lead. Enough crap has gotten by, IT or otherwise, when the few agreed behind the closed doors not to discuss the problems in hope to save face and the trouble that might ensue if they made their thoughts known.

Remember, you are entitled to nothing and you have everything you deserve. If you strive for more, well, it takes some courage. And it won’t win you a Miss Congeniality award either, but maybe, just maybe, you’ll leave this place a little bit better than you found it.

More on this tomorrow from a very special guest on Vladcast #12.

Erick Simpson Conference Call
First 20 get a free cane and a foam pimp hat. Learn how to sell managed services from the guy that not only sold it to his clients but a bunch of my clients as well.

Date / Time
Wed. Jan 16, 2008
9:00 AM Pacific Time
Dial Conference Bridge:
(319) 279-1000
(U.S. phone number)
Your participant passcode is 1024518.

Last weekend we rolled out Office Communications server to go along with our existing Exchange 2007 and SharePoint infrastructure. What an awesome, awesome product. Unfortunately, bringing in IM on a wide-scale like this to the entire company calls for some rules and I need to play ball as well which means pruning a few hundred contacts out of my MSN contact list and keeping it business only.

I hope I don’t offend many of my friends and associates with this move, it’s not that talking to you is a giant waste of time, I just need to limit my corporate exposure to our clients only in much the same way that I wouldn’t take a personal cell phone and chitchat while people expected me to be working.

Anyhow, I hope you don’t take it personal. I will still read your email if you need to get in touch with me throughout the day!

P.S. If you’re paying us, you’re staying on the list. If we are paying you, you’re staying on the list. If you’re not paying us and we’re not paying you, you’re off the list. Update: If you are paying us and you don’t have any of us on your contact list but use MSN or AIM.. contact me and I’ll make sure we get you on.