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July 2008
In this issue
►Welcome
►Managed Services
►Customer Service
►Microsoft Sets Deadline
►Spotlights
►Customer Satisfaction
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Microsoft sets 6/30/08 deadline for sales of XP Operating
System
Microsoft
appears to be sticking with its announced deadline of 6/30/08 for sales
of their Windows XP O/S. There is a grass-roots effort to convince
Microsoft to extend that deadline, and despite Microsoft CEO Steve
Ballmer’s comments in Belgium that “If customer feedback varies we can
always wake up smarter, but right now we have a plan for end-of-life for
new XP shipments," the company has yet to budge on the June 30th
deadline. (see this link for more details.)
What
does this mean for you? K & R Network Solutions will be able to order PCs for clients with XP
Professional for some months to come. If we see any change in that
policy, we will send out an alert to our client base immediately.
The
deadline does seem to indicate Microsoft’s determination to phase XP out
in favor of Vista, but with a little planning, businesses can time their
equipment refresh schedules to keep XP as their predominant PC O/S for
long enough to ensure they won’t need to switch to Vista until it’s a
more mature product.
The really happy man is one who can
enjoy the scenery on a detour.
-Anonymous
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Just for Laughs
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Welcome
Many
small businesses believe that their product alone sets them apart from
the competition. Find a niche, corner your market segment, and stay in
business forever goes the rationale. The reality is that your customers
decide how long you stay in business. Statistics say that 68% of customer
defection takes place because customers feel poorly treated and approximately
96% of unhappy customers will not tell you that they are unhappy. They
just stop buying. With information like that we simply must turn our
focus to the most important and often neglected aspect of your business,
customers! There are several ways to keep a customer, several more to
attract new ones. The bottom line is that your customer service makes all
that possible. Here at K&R, we’ve rededicated ourselves to customer
satisfaction by adding a client relations position, proactively
soliciting feedback, and implementing new metrics and processes to truly
raise the bar. See how far you can take your business by realigning your
focus as well.
The
K&R Network Solutions Team
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Newsflash: K&R
Recovers Stolen Laptop!!!
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The Unforeseen benefits
of Managed Services
 We recently received a call from our
client who had been the victim of a home burglary the night before. He
was calling to tell us that one of the workstations that we managed for
him had been included in the items stolen from his house. Immediately
upon receiving this unfortunate news our team began working on customized
scripts to deploy to our monitoring agent on the workstation.
Jeremy
Kurth, CTO and Co-Founder of K&R said this about our response:
“We
immediately deployed proactive scripts to retrieve family pictures and
personal documents from the laptop when it checked in with our systems.
We also setup a customized alert to notify our engineers whenever the
thief used the laptop so that we could silently log in and record all the
information police would need to recover the stolen goods.”
As the
alerts began rolling in, we tracked and monitored the thief’s activity.
Using the information gathered by our custom scripts we successfully
gathered the personal data of the culprit and submitted it to the police.
As a
result of this crucial information not only was the laptop recovered, but
the thief was apprehended as well. K&R was very happy to have been
able to help our client in a time of need and even happier to have been able
to assist in the arrest of the offender. What a testament to the value of
being a managed client. Don’t let your personal information, private
documents, and memories become lost in an unfortunate event.
Contact
K&R for more information on becoming a managed client today!
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The Customer Service
Experience
- An Imperative Focus for Your Business.
The
Golden Rule, "do unto others as you would have them do unto
you,"
may seem self-evident in the way we try to conduct our personal lives.
Yet this life-rule is assuming new importance as a guiding principle in
the world of business.
The
climate of the recession in the early 1980s, when customers were quick to
trade away high-quality service in exchange for price reductions or
convenience is no more.
Instead,
customers are demanding quality customer service again. And companies of
all sizes are realizing that their strongest selling point can sometimes
boil down to treating customers as they would like to be treated -- or
better.
"Consumers
are beginning to feel that their needs haven't been met," explains
Bonnie Jansen of the U.S. Office of Consumer Affairs. "They're sick
of getting poor service all the time."
And the
message is getting through. According to John Goodman, president of the
Technical Assistance Research Programs Institute (TARP):"In the past
few years, companies began to realize that customer service was really a
very competitive factor, and began to view it as an integral part of
their product."
The
growing significance of meeting -- or exceeding -- customer demands for
quality service has special implications for small business. For it is in
this arena that small companies can, in the least expensive way, set
themselves apart from their competition.
Read more
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Aimee Halfpenny
Aimee
is the service administrator here at K&R. She grew up natively
in sunny San Diego, CA. and graduated from UC Irvine with a BA in
Psychology. Prior to becoming the accounting/administrative powerhouse we
know today, Aimee worked on New York’s infamous great white way, a.k.a.
Broadway. She has also worked in various third world countries with
nonprofit organizations facilitating programs for underprivileged
children. A real humanitarian!
Read more about Aimee
The Power of
Perceptions in Shaping Customer Satisfaction
by Adele Sommers, Ph.D
Is
the glass half empty or half full? The definition resides in your
customers' eyes.
Isn't
it interesting how our perceptions rule our beliefs and actions? So much
of the brain research today seems to support the idea that what we
perceive defines our reality. This article examines the role that
perception plays in the minds of consumers.
People Perceive Quality in Many Ways
Regardless
of how good you believe your offerings or project solutions are, your
clients and customers will be responding to "quality in
perception" even more than "quality in fact."
Quality
in fact refers to the features that we believe we're paying for, such as
how much something weighs, how fast it runs, or various other
characteristics.
Read more about Customer Satisfaction
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