Today With Patty – July 6, 2007

by Patty

I told you a few days ago that I would get some more information to you about my favorite phone customer service provider ever, John Grider, who has not only successfully diagnosed problems with the MMI phone system but actually fixed them himself all on his own. Well, I am happy to report that I now have more details about John available to you.

In a recent e-mail to me, John explained to me his approach to his job. “Since the telephone system is the tool used for verbal communications across town or across the country, it becomes a very important component in your office. I am the guy that would be responsible for going in that dark closet with a flashlight in his mouth in order to connect the blue wire to the yellow wire so that the new girl has a phone at her new desk. To tell you the truth, that is the easy part – the remainder of what I can and want to do for my businesses never gets done for a reason.

“I am just a phone man, and that means I will never get anyone’s attention unless the blue wire gets disconnected from the yellow wire because the cleaning crew got a mop head tangled up in my telephone system install wiring. When that happens, I get a phone call and everyone is all stressed out, so I drive over and within two minutes I reconnect the blue wire to the yellow wire and everything is fine. The unfortunate thing is it was necessary to leave the business an invoice for $85. When the accountant or the business owner gets their hands on the invoice, they go into shock and say, ‘My Lord, they guy was only here for five minutes!’

“The better a phone technician is, the worse his or her reputation becomes. Phone technicians do not put on a show like the computer people do. We do what needs to be done, period. What we invoice for is not what took two minutes to do, we invoice for knowing what to do in a two-minute time frame. When the telephone was invented in 1876, General Custer was getting directions to a place called Little Big Horn. Since the telephone has been around so long, business people feel embarrassed to request assistance. They feel like interacting with a telephone guy is beneath them. So now you know what I deal with daily.”

John has big plans to improve our phone system in the near future, such as the possibility of eliminating the rings when a call goes into voice mail. I will keep you posted when they occur.

John’s photo is below, taken on his recent cruise to the Bahamas. As he put it in his e-mail, “The reason I selected the particular photo attached is because I prefer my customers and associates to recognize me as a person above all else. The guy in the photo is the underappreciated guy that every business needs for one hour at least once a year.” In my case, I have needed him more than an hour this year, and I definitely do not underappeciate John – in fact, I consider him my hero. His e-mail address is johngrider@bellsouth.net – I recommend using him highly.

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