An “efficiency expert” was sent in by the board of directors to take a look at how Santa runs his operations, and if Santa received 3 checkmarks, would be terminated.  Like some employees and contractors, the representative from the board had nefarious intentions.

An opportune moment presented itself and the “expert” started shredding important documents.  When the “expert” confronted Santa about the missing documents and asked about his backups; Santa replied nothing like this had ever happened before so they have no backups.  This was Santa’s third check mark and he was set for termination.

Being a movie all ended well.  But you and I don’t live in a movie set and if something can possibly go wrong it will.  Don’t get caught in a trap like Santa.  Not everyone has your best interest at heart and it pays to have backups to protect your data and digital assets.

We are currently offering a free Data Disaster Audit and Review to businesses in the Clifton Park, Albany and Saratoga area who would like some options to help Eliminate HI-Tech Frustrations.  If you’d like some free tips, give us a call or fill out our online form at www.HITmanSafe.com.

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Last week a colleague was relating to me an issue he was going through.  It seems a data center he works with was facing very serious failures as a majority of their systems were offline.  My colleague used this company for all of his data storage and email.  Now with the data center not able to service him, he felt like he was working in the blind.

One could argue, how could he know the data center would go down.  Most data centers these days rave about a 99.99% + up-time rate, and the data center never had any issue before.  Well, in early August if you had asked anybody when was the last time they felt an earthquake in the Albany, NY area, the majority would say never.  Had you asked them again at the end of August and their story and frame of reference would be completely different.

Let’s take a look at one scenario which could have helped my colleague.  Being a road warrior, his laptop accompanied him everywhere.  He also had his iPhone setup for email.  His laptop was setup to access his email via a web client.  This is typically a good option, but has its drawbacks.  In this case because the data center was offline, so was his email.  Where this turned into a major issue was that his calendar and contacts were now not accessible.  Had he been using a program such as Microsoft Outlook running on his laptop, at least he would have had access to some of the critical data he needed.

My colleague is a very bright individual, he just never took the time to either sit and think of potential issues or talked through possible problems with someone.   Regardless of the reason, because the data center was down, he was unable to function anywhere near his potential for several days.  The time he lost can never be replaced.

On a positive note, he decided he should take some time and talk with me about planning for future disasters now.

Because we work with many local and regional businesses in the Albany and Saratoga Region, we have been able to put into place backup procedures to help in times like this.  If you are unable to access certain portions of your business, how will you continue?  Will this be a major or minor incident?  We are currently offering a free Data Disaster Audit and Review to businesses in the area who would like some options to help Eliminate HI-Tech Frustrations.  If you’d like some free tips, give us a call or fill out our online form at www.HITmanSafe.com.

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Earlier this week our entire area was in a so-called Internet blackout state for a period of time for businesses and individuals who use Time Warner’s Road Runner.  While we have experienced many of these outages, this one seemed to be on a much larger scale and had the Road Runner crew scrambling.

Our office fielded many phone calls and it was very interesting to hear how people were reacting.  We had one woman who was in denial and wanted a service call even though the issue related to the Internet.  The majority of people calling in to our Clifton Park IT company were glad to know the issue was not with their systems and we were aware of the situation.

Because we work with many local and regional businesses we have been able to put into place backup procedures to help in times like this.  If you are unable to access certain portions of your business, how will you continue?  Will this be a major or minor incident?  We are currently offering a free Data Disaster Audit and Review to businesses in the area who would like some options to help Eliminate HI-Tech Frustrations.  If you’d like some free tips, give us a call or fill out our online form at www.HITmanSafe.com.

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Yesterday while adding a new domain name to our account, I was asked by the representative on the phone if I would like to buy a .xxx extension for my website.  When I replied no, the representative stated it would be beneficial as it would protect my domain names.

Let me get this straight!  An organization decides to add a new domain extension which the vast majority of businesses would not want to use and they promote this as helping keep your domain names safe.  This is a form of extortion.  If they wanted to keep domain names safe all they had to do is not open up a .xxx!

Perhaps they decided to use a .xxx to help people filter, but we already have many good content filtering systems both hardware and software related available to us.  It seems this is just an attempt to extract money with nothing in value being returned.  Certainly not a good business practice by any stretch of the imagination.

This article was written by The Boss of HITman Services, a computer and IT company, based in Clifton Park and serving the Albany, Troy, Schenectady and Saratoga Counties of New York.

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Zappos is an exceptional company.  They take customer service very seriously.  Zappos provides free shipping to the customer, takes returns on unused shoes for up to 365 days, and free return shipping.  The selection of shoes at Zappos covers the gamut.  This is a great example of a company doing things right.  If you haven’t purchased from Zappos you might want to consider them for your next shoe purchase as it may inspire you to have your business achieve better customer relations.

Amazon is another company doing a very good job regarding customer service.  Not long ago Amazon added as a free bonus to Amazon Prime members, free streaming video.  Using Amazon’s website, one is able to do quite a bit with account management and purchasing.

Google, while offering some exceptional services, lacks in easily getting things done.  The issue stems from not being able to speak with Google employees without going through gyrations.  Google’s Marketplace guidelines are very consumer unfriendly.  As opposed to Zappos 365 day return policy, Google offers 15 minutes.  It is a virtually impossible task to make sure software will work properly given only 15 minutes.  Some downloads take more that 15 minutes to complete.  At a minimum, Google should provide a 7 day return policy, or if the developers really cared about empowering and retaining customers, they would offer trial versions of their software.

By learning how all of these companies interact with their customers, we can look at these as case studies and improve the companies we work for.

This article was written by The Boss of HITman Services, a computer and IT company, based in Clifton Park and serving the Albany, Troy, Schenectady and Saratoga Counties of New York.

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Business communication and cell phones can be the best of friends or worst of enemies.  Cell phones are great because they provide the ability to keep in touch with clients and customers from where every you may be.  Cell phones are horrible because if you give the number out to everyone and answer every call that comes in, you are not able to give the person the attention they deserve.

Being able to control the time and space of handling phone calls is key to having a successful outcome.  What is your plan for taking calls?  Do you even have one?  Do you answer the phone every time it rings? Perhaps it is better if you let most of the calls go to voice mail?  This would give you the opportunity to gather the information and respond properly.

Do you give the number out to everyone or just a select few?  Do you have a system in place for customers to send a text or email to your phone without having to disclose your phone number?

We developed a Web based system in place which allows customers to contact us 24/7.  This type of solution provides the best of both worlds by making sure clients can contact us when needed and gives us the time to properly prepare to help them resolve their issue.

This article was written by The Boss of HITman Services, a computer and IT company, based in Clifton Park and serving the Albany, Troy, Schenectady and Saratoga Counties of New York.

It was wonderful talking with so many of our residential customers.  While I typically don’t work on residential desktops, I did for several of our customers as it allowed them to use their computers without experiencing any downtime.  And being one of the owners, I provided their computer service free of charge.

Sometimes it’s good to get back into the trenches for a little while.

This article was written by The Boss of HITman Services, a computer and IT company serving the Albany, Troy, Schenectady and Saratoga Counties of New York.

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Recently I had intended to meet a business partner for lunch at a local restaurant which opened within the past year.  As they were closed for lunch I sent them an email inquiring if they still continued to serve during the lunch time.  That was over a week ago and as yet the restaurant has not responded.  As I was initially going to meet a friend there for lunch later this week, we will now dine at another restaurant.

Yesterday I brought my car in for service at the dealership where I purchased it.  The entire staff couldn’t have been more accommodating.  The service writer was superb, the salesman came over to talk with me, and the managers while on the phone, waved.  During my conversation with the salesman, we talked about business.  He said business was good last year and they had a great fourth quarter and they are waiting for the weather to break as they expect another good year.  This dealership is always communicating with their customers via Facebook and when I opened my email this morning, there was a nice note from the dealership regarding my service yesterday.

For years I would take my vehicles to a car wash which is down the road a bit.  As the owner knew there was a car wash right down the street from our Clifton Park office, he was always appreciative and each year would send me a couple of free car washes as a token of his thanks.  The business owner took on a partner in 2010 and the holiday season went by without any communication or thank you from the business.  Now I find myself using that car wash less.

While the economy may not be good, it makes it that much more important for businesses do everything in their power to properly take care of their customers.

This article was written by The Boss of HITman Services, a computer and IT company serving the Albany, Troy, Schenectady and Saratoga Counties of New York.

Managing a website design company, we strongly suggest businesses list their hours of operation on a website.  And hosting the website for the Town of Clifton Park, www.CliftonPark.org, we had several businesses alert us to the fact they would be closed so we could let the public know.

Even if the Clifton Park restaurant did not have the proper amount of staff to serve lunches, they could have turned this into a superb customer relations opportunity.  All they needed was one person to show up.  That person could have handed out a coupon of some type as the restaurant’s way of saying thank you for choosing us and appologizing for not being able to fulfill their duties.

Competition is fierce these days and people are much more cautious where they spend their money.  If Restaurant A doesn’t want the business, there are many more waiting in line for the opportunity.

This article was written by The Boss of HITman Services, a computer, IT and Website development company located in Clifton Park New York; serving the Albany, Troy, Schenectady and Saratoga Counties.

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As our company does a lot of website development, some of our team worked from home, but our office was staffed.  We were open from a little before 8:30 am and are still open past 5:30 pm.

For lunch I was suppose to have a business meeting at a locally owned restaurant.  As the restaurant was closed, we ended up at a franchise.  While walking to the restaurant I noticed several other locally owned stores closed, yet the big box stores were open.  It must be that the franchises and big box stores believe they offer a valuable service to their customers!

Yesterday I was talking with a salesman who was all concerned about the coming storm.  I guess he bought into all the news hype.  That makes me think; how did the newscasters get to work if it was so treacherous?  Maybe they own Snow Cats!

We also had a customer call in yesterday to cancel their appointment for today.  The ironic part of that is this company is in their off season and a business meeting would have been a great use of their time.

Contrasting all of this to a friend and business associate of mine.  He sent me a copy of an email which went out to his employees letting everyone know about the promotions which would be occurring over the next several weeks.  One person in particular stood out as this man had sales which were literally off the chart.  Anyone in any type of business would be beaming if they sold in the numbers that he had.  And the industry he is in is seasonal and subject to weather conditions.

When asked almost everyone says they’re committed to success, but when it comes right down to it, few really are.

This article was written by The Boss of HITman Services, a computer and IT company serving the Albany, Troy, Schenectady and Saratoga Counties of New York.