Testing Zulip
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@scottalanmiller said in Testing Zulip:
@stacksofplates said in Testing Zulip:
There isn't a universe where having more helpdesk people to answer the phones makes less sense than the highest paid people in the company.
You know, I used to work in restaurants and our regional manager used to say essentially the same thing. He felt that the managers should manage, the workers should "do" and that you got your best results by keeping them separate, that if the manager wasn't always actively managing that they were wasted. They were, after all, paid more than any worker.
My shop always ignored this, for a few reasons. One, just the math showed that it didn't work. Not at a restaurant scale, anyway. And it missed a few key concepts, like that the manager managing but never doing was often lost and not able to manage well. And that it made the workers feel like "us vs them" and not like a team. It also meant that you needed more workers.
My team was the highest performance team in the franchise group, which was state wide (like sixty restaurants.) We eventually were used to go into other restaurants and save them when they were failing. Our secret?
I treated the workers like they were valuable, I did as much work as them (okay, not quite, they were just better than me, but I tried), they saw us as a team and knew we were there for each other, and we didn't staff the place with people who weren't doing anything. When things were slow, they cleaned and I did paperwork. When the rushes hit, I was in the trenches with them whenever needed, in any position needed. We weren't just faster, but we also had less waste, and less staffing cost. We were the highest profit margins.
I avoided micromanaging, and managed by leading instead of by instructing. The difference that it made was significant.
The thing that I learned, and still apply today, is that there's no job beneath me. I do whatever is needed to make sure that the company runs smoothly - which is primarily making the team run like clockwork. Sure, I earn more than most of the team, but what makes me valuable enough to be paid that isn't that I'm normally doing some magical work that no one else could do or that I'm better or anything, it's that I magnify the people on the team to best effect. As great as it would be to be spending every moment of the day closing million dollar deals, there just aren't that many deals to be closing. When those happen, yeah, that's where I focus. When those aren't happening, I look for strategic opportunity. When I'm not tied up with that, I lead by example. I'm in the trenches, shoulder to shoulder with the team(s) whether they are management, engineering, customer service, sales, finance, etc.
This is different. A: Different type of business. B: you were a local manager, not the CIO (which is what the website says but you said COO so whichever). This would be like Valentina taking calls directly with the team, not you.
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@scottalanmiller said in Testing Zulip:
Better than having them sit idle and not know what's going on in the company because they are so disconnected. At some point, those roles have to have jobs.
Yeah idk what this means. Their job is to drive the direction of the company. Sure in 5 person landscaping companies the "CEO" is doing some of the work. But if the company is as big as you are alluding to, the CEO should be driving the company forward and meeting with potential customers (if you guys don't have a sales team, I have no idea).
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@scottalanmiller said in Testing Zulip:
Low, maybe, but let's stick with them. Sure, a $3/hr person is only $500/mo.
You said almost a thousand for an engineer. That's $5-6 an hour without taxes because I have no idea how these taxes would work.
Would the helpdesk people be making the same?
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@scottalanmiller said in Testing Zulip:
I took one those calls tonight and am hoping it's over $100K of benefit because I did so. I definitely don't have many hours that make more money than that. Now, is it certainly $100K? No. Likely, actually yes. Keeping tabs on operations can have value.
That sounds like a sales call. What are the circumstances where a helpdesk call was over $100k in benefit?
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@scottalanmiller said in Testing Zulip:
That's $125/hr that I'd be covering versus hiring a customer service person. But I'm not only covering for customer service, but for an engineer. I'm often solving a ticket fast without having to transfer. So I'm really covering more than $250/hr.
I don't understand this. You're at $125 an hour, and you're covering for a helpdesk person and an engineer. So they also make up $125 an hour?
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@stacksofplates said in Testing Zulip:
@scottalanmiller said in Testing Zulip:
Better than having them sit idle and not know what's going on in the company because they are so disconnected. At some point, those roles have to have jobs.
Yeah idk what this means. Their job is to drive the direction of the company. Sure in 5 person landscaping companies the "CEO" is doing some of the work. But if the company is as big as you are alluding to, the CEO should be driving the company forward and meeting with potential customers (if you guys don't have a sales team, I have no idea).
I don't know. I've known a Presidents/CEO of multi-10s of million dollar companies with 200 employees go out and load trucks if they needed to, or package goods if they needed to. It is, or was when he was running it, a wildly successful company. 1000% growth year over year in many cases.
I know college is meh, but the graduate business classes that I participated in did case studies on organizational leadership, successful companies often have leaders who are able to lead from the trenches as well as from the war room.
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@scottalanmiller said in Testing Zulip:
@Dashrender said in Testing Zulip:
@scottalanmiller said in Testing Zulip:
I'll give another example that I think shows a similar case that "feels" different. We use MeshCentral for remote access/support. We don't charge for it as a line item for our existing customers (or new ones, lol.) The cost of it is crazy low on a per machine basis. Just having one conversation with a customer about where they want to pay for it and where they don't would waste an unacceptable amount of money for no gain. It's heavily to both our benefit and our customers' to have it in place. Everyone wins by making it universal and keeping the cost so low that no one notices.
If we broke it out, the cost of managing the accounts, tracking where it is deployed, discussing with the clients would easily cost $1/machine or more. By not doing that and simply deploying all/none on a client by client basis keeps the cost to a few pennies. It's deployed by script, it's managed in a blanket way that makes cost really, really low. So instead of a dollar per machine, it's more like a dollar per customer. Background noise. Everyone benefits.
Yes, I completely get it, this is no different than what I mentioned above - but it's still not zero cost to you. So you put it in the whatever GL catagory, instead of direct passing the cost down to the customer, no different than intel putting the cost of fabrication equipment into some general internal line item, because you could never break it out on a per items type basis, that's, as you mention, not cost effective... BUT you still have to have an otherwise higher end user fee because of that service than if you didn't offer that service, and if not higher fee, then lower profits, tomato tomato..
Sometimes. It may not actually be higher, it can be lower. But either way, the cost is so low on a per customer / user basis. That's the important part.
how can providing a service to your client be lower cost to you than not providing it? It is possibly lower because it lowers expenses in other places? if so, what other places?
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@scottalanmiller said in Testing Zulip:
@stacksofplates said in Testing Zulip:
@scottalanmiller said in Testing Zulip:
We have a separate team that deals just with customer service handling. We try hard to never let phones go to voicemail, and I think we only see that once every several months (like two to three times a year.) We have a tiered desk that answers the phones, then their managers and a few techs who have volunteered take calls if the front line is overwhelmed, which is rare since Paul and I ring with the front line so if they are swamped, we tend to know and can grab calls before they go to managers like @valentina and then we typically, depending on the path, have a third tier that can catch most calls if they fall through both of those levels and if, by some unbelievable situation, it makes it all the way through the third tier, it goes to voicemail that automatically emails everyone to find someone to deal with a customer that's tried to call and couldn't get through. THEN a tech might respond immediately because they couldn't get to triage. But like I said, 2-3 times a year. It's rare and we staff up to make sure it stays at about that rate.
Generally the front line takes a call, puts in a ticket while on the phone, finds the right tech, and transfers (along with the ticket and notes) directly to the tech. It's not a delaying tactic, it's to allow the triage layer to find the right resource that both has the right technical skill set and is currently available to step in. Otherwise, we'd have techs grabbing the phone and you might be calling about a printer and get a storage guy or something.
The CEO and CIO are taking helpdesk calls? That cannot be a good use of company money? That just seems crazy.
Better than having them sit idle and not know what's going on in the company because they are so disconnected. At some point, those roles have to have jobs.
I took one those calls tonight and am hoping it's over $100K of benefit because I did so. I definitely don't have many hours that make more money than that. Now, is it certainly $100K? No. Likely, actually yes. Keeping tabs on operations can have value.
You're saying you would have totally missed that opportunity had you not taken (answered the incoming call, not got a call passed onto you by a help desk rep) the call?
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@scottalanmiller said in Testing Zulip:
@Dashrender said in Testing Zulip:
@stacksofplates said in Testing Zulip:
@scottalanmiller said in Testing Zulip:
We have a separate team that deals just with customer service handling. We try hard to never let phones go to voicemail, and I think we only see that once every several months (like two to three times a year.) We have a tiered desk that answers the phones, then their managers and a few techs who have volunteered take calls if the front line is overwhelmed, which is rare since Paul and I ring with the front line so if they are swamped, we tend to know and can grab calls before they go to managers like @valentina and then we typically, depending on the path, have a third tier that can catch most calls if they fall through both of those levels and if, by some unbelievable situation, it makes it all the way through the third tier, it goes to voicemail that automatically emails everyone to find someone to deal with a customer that's tried to call and couldn't get through. THEN a tech might respond immediately because they couldn't get to triage. But like I said, 2-3 times a year. It's rare and we staff up to make sure it stays at about that rate.
Generally the front line takes a call, puts in a ticket while on the phone, finds the right tech, and transfers (along with the ticket and notes) directly to the tech. It's not a delaying tactic, it's to allow the triage layer to find the right resource that both has the right technical skill set and is currently available to step in. Otherwise, we'd have techs grabbing the phone and you might be calling about a printer and get a storage guy or something.
The CEO and CIO are taking helpdesk calls? That cannot be a good use of company money? That just seems crazy.
Well, he's not alone - my boss constantly takes phone calls, she can't allow technology to do it's job - i.e. go to VM, we'll call them back.
Well, she could argue that VM's job is to catch when IT can't get to it, and by picking it up, IT did it's job and got to it. So the VM was still doing its job, it just didn't have to do anything because IT also did its.
When and how did IT come into this? I wouldn't have asked this question if you said CIO/CEO because that's what we are talking about. But you just mentioned, "better than sitting idle." Well sure OK, if you as the CIO are sitting idle, absolutely answer the phone - but my boss is anything but, she has 3 weeks worth of work sitting on her desk. Answering the phone puts her further and further behind.
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@scottalanmiller said in Testing Zulip:
@stacksofplates said in Testing Zulip:
@Dashrender said in Testing Zulip:
@stacksofplates said in Testing Zulip:
@scottalanmiller said in Testing Zulip:
We have a separate team that deals just with customer service handling. We try hard to never let phones go to voicemail, and I think we only see that once every several months (like two to three times a year.) We have a tiered desk that answers the phones, then their managers and a few techs who have volunteered take calls if the front line is overwhelmed, which is rare since Paul and I ring with the front line so if they are swamped, we tend to know and can grab calls before they go to managers like @valentina and then we typically, depending on the path, have a third tier that can catch most calls if they fall through both of those levels and if, by some unbelievable situation, it makes it all the way through the third tier, it goes to voicemail that automatically emails everyone to find someone to deal with a customer that's tried to call and couldn't get through. THEN a tech might respond immediately because they couldn't get to triage. But like I said, 2-3 times a year. It's rare and we staff up to make sure it stays at about that rate.
Generally the front line takes a call, puts in a ticket while on the phone, finds the right tech, and transfers (along with the ticket and notes) directly to the tech. It's not a delaying tactic, it's to allow the triage layer to find the right resource that both has the right technical skill set and is currently available to step in. Otherwise, we'd have techs grabbing the phone and you might be calling about a printer and get a storage guy or something.
The CEO and CIO are taking helpdesk calls? That cannot be a good use of company money? That just seems crazy.
Well, he's not alone - my boss constantly takes phone calls, she can't allow technology to do it's job - i.e. go to VM, we'll call them back.
Is your boss the CIO/CEO? They are taking the calls so that the manager doesn't have to. Does your CEO take calls so your manager doesn't have to?
That's what I do. I mean I'm COO but potato potahto. I take calls when I'm not in the midsts of something if it is going to interrupt managers who likely are. But if I'm in the middle of something, I let them fall through.
Now that doesn't really make sense - putting yourself at a higher likeliness to be interrupted than the managers I assume you pay much less than yourself - plus, we outsiders assume answering the overflow calls from their team is a managers stated duty.
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@scottalanmiller said in Testing Zulip:
@stacksofplates said in Testing Zulip:
There isn't a universe where having more helpdesk people to answer the phones makes less sense than the highest paid people in the company.
You know, I used to work in restaurants and our regional manager used to say essentially the same thing. He felt that the managers should manage, the workers should "do" and that you got your best results by keeping them separate, that if the manager wasn't always actively managing that they were wasted. They were, after all, paid more than any worker.
My shop always ignored this, for a few reasons. One, just the math showed that it didn't work. Not at a restaurant scale, anyway. And it missed a few key concepts, like that the manager managing but never doing was often lost and not able to manage well. And that it made the workers feel like "us vs them" and not like a team. It also meant that you needed more workers.
My team was the highest performance team in the franchise group, which was state wide (like sixty restaurants.) We eventually were used to go into other restaurants and save them when they were failing. Our secret?
I treated the workers like they were valuable, I did as much work as them (okay, not quite, they were just better than me, but I tried), they saw us as a team and knew we were there for each other, and we didn't staff the place with people who weren't doing anything. When things were slow, they cleaned and I did paperwork. When the rushes hit, I was in the trenches with them whenever needed, in any position needed. We weren't just faster, but we also had less waste, and less staffing cost. We were the highest profit margins.
I avoided micromanaging, and managed by leading instead of by instructing. The difference that it made was significant.
The thing that I learned, and still apply today, is that there's no job beneath me. I do whatever is needed to make sure that the company runs smoothly - which is primarily making the team run like clockwork. Sure, I earn more than most of the team, but what makes me valuable enough to be paid that isn't that I'm normally doing some magical work that no one else could do or that I'm better or anything, it's that I magnify the people on the team to best effect. As great as it would be to be spending every moment of the day closing million dollar deals, there just aren't that many deals to be closing. When those happen, yeah, that's where I focus. When those aren't happening, I look for strategic opportunity. When I'm not tied up with that, I lead by example. I'm in the trenches, shoulder to shoulder with the team(s) whether they are management, engineering, customer service, sales, finance, etc.
This completely makes sense. Though as I mentioned, my boss has so much to do, that taking calls puts her behind, period. and if it was only 30 mins/week, 2 hours/month, we wouldn't even notice this, so we wouldn't mention it. But in her case it can be an hour plus a day.
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@stacksofplates said in Testing Zulip:
@scottalanmiller said in Testing Zulip:
Better than having them sit idle and not know what's going on in the company because they are so disconnected. At some point, those roles have to have jobs.
Yeah idk what this means. Their job is to drive the direction of the company. Sure in 5 person landscaping companies the "CEO" is doing some of the work. But if the company is as big as you are alluding to, the CEO should be driving the company forward and meeting with potential customers (if you guys don't have a sales team, I have no idea).
Sure, but how does one do that? You can't fill every second with "meeting with clients." Business isn't magic. If that were really true, we'd not even have offices, right? We'd only be talking to potential clients. But then to keep that schedule full, that would imply that we are basically an outbound sales team only, and doesn't that bring us back to square one?
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@stacksofplates said in Testing Zulip:
@scottalanmiller said in Testing Zulip:
I took one those calls tonight and am hoping it's over $100K of benefit because I did so. I definitely don't have many hours that make more money than that. Now, is it certainly $100K? No. Likely, actually yes. Keeping tabs on operations can have value.
That sounds like a sales call. What are the circumstances where a helpdesk call was over $100k in benefit?
That's the thing, helpdesk calls are often sales calls, when someone high enough to have the crossover knowledge is the one answering the phone. So one of the best ways to make sales (or you know "business development") is to keep doing some customer relationship / tech stuff. It's an amazing time to often get "chat time" with customers.
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@stacksofplates said in Testing Zulip:
@scottalanmiller said in Testing Zulip:
That's $125/hr that I'd be covering versus hiring a customer service person. But I'm not only covering for customer service, but for an engineer. I'm often solving a ticket fast without having to transfer. So I'm really covering more than $250/hr.
I don't understand this. You're at $125 an hour, and you're covering for a helpdesk person and an engineer. So they also make up $125 an hour?
No, we use $3 and $6 as the example.
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@scottalanmiller said in Testing Zulip:
@stacksofplates said in Testing Zulip:
@scottalanmiller said in Testing Zulip:
Better than having them sit idle and not know what's going on in the company because they are so disconnected. At some point, those roles have to have jobs.
Yeah idk what this means. Their job is to drive the direction of the company. Sure in 5 person landscaping companies the "CEO" is doing some of the work. But if the company is as big as you are alluding to, the CEO should be driving the company forward and meeting with potential customers (if you guys don't have a sales team, I have no idea).
Sure, but how does one do that? You can't fill every second with "meeting with clients." Business isn't magic. If that were really true, we'd not even have offices, right? We'd only be talking to potential clients. But then to keep that schedule full, that would imply that we are basically an outbound sales team only, and doesn't that bring us back to square one?
You're taking one part of that argument and using that as all of what I said. Driving the direction AND meeting with potential customers.
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@scottalanmiller said in Testing Zulip:
@stacksofplates said in Testing Zulip:
@scottalanmiller said in Testing Zulip:
That's $125/hr that I'd be covering versus hiring a customer service person. But I'm not only covering for customer service, but for an engineer. I'm often solving a ticket fast without having to transfer. So I'm really covering more than $250/hr.
I don't understand this. You're at $125 an hour, and you're covering for a helpdesk person and an engineer. So they also make up $125 an hour?
No, we use $3 and $6 as the example.
then where does the $125 come from?
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@scottalanmiller said in Testing Zulip:
@stacksofplates said in Testing Zulip:
@scottalanmiller said in Testing Zulip:
I took one those calls tonight and am hoping it's over $100K of benefit because I did so. I definitely don't have many hours that make more money than that. Now, is it certainly $100K? No. Likely, actually yes. Keeping tabs on operations can have value.
That sounds like a sales call. What are the circumstances where a helpdesk call was over $100k in benefit?
That's the thing, helpdesk calls are often sales calls, when someone high enough to have the crossover knowledge is the one answering the phone. So one of the best ways to make sales (or you know "business development") is to keep doing some customer relationship / tech stuff. It's an amazing time to often get "chat time" with customers.
I honestly don't know how to respond to this one. This is just, I don't have words.
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@coliver said in Testing Zulip:
@stacksofplates said in Testing Zulip:
@scottalanmiller said in Testing Zulip:
Better than having them sit idle and not know what's going on in the company because they are so disconnected. At some point, those roles have to have jobs.
Yeah idk what this means. Their job is to drive the direction of the company. Sure in 5 person landscaping companies the "CEO" is doing some of the work. But if the company is as big as you are alluding to, the CEO should be driving the company forward and meeting with potential customers (if you guys don't have a sales team, I have no idea).
I don't know. I've known a Presidents/CEO of multi-10s of million dollar companies with 200 employees go out and load trucks if they needed to, or package goods if they needed to. It is, or was when he was running it, a wildly successful company. 1000% growth year over year in many cases.
I know college is meh, but the graduate business classes that I participated in did case studies on organizational leadership, successful companies often have leaders who are able to lead from the trenches as well as from the war room.
Yeah, something that is often missed is that executives rarely have a specific job. It's not like the CEO bills $500/hr or whatever. Not in NTG, not at a manufacturer, not in a shipping firm. A CEO's job is to kind of "do whatever it takes" because they are where the buck stops.
So there isn't some magic "keep the CEO focused on X" and the company brings in some huge amount of money that other people can't make. The CEO is worth what they are worth because of them doing "whatever" to make the company valuable as a whole. Whether that's overseeing mergers and acquisitions, chaning payroll vendors, negotiating with paper suppliers, buying a new van, delivering coffee to sales people, doing internal training, loading trucks, or flipping burgers. Whatever it takes. And what it takes varies by the situation, the company, and the CEO. Not every CEO can jump into whatever role.
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@Dashrender said in Testing Zulip:
@scottalanmiller said in Testing Zulip:
@Dashrender said in Testing Zulip:
@scottalanmiller said in Testing Zulip:
I'll give another example that I think shows a similar case that "feels" different. We use MeshCentral for remote access/support. We don't charge for it as a line item for our existing customers (or new ones, lol.) The cost of it is crazy low on a per machine basis. Just having one conversation with a customer about where they want to pay for it and where they don't would waste an unacceptable amount of money for no gain. It's heavily to both our benefit and our customers' to have it in place. Everyone wins by making it universal and keeping the cost so low that no one notices.
If we broke it out, the cost of managing the accounts, tracking where it is deployed, discussing with the clients would easily cost $1/machine or more. By not doing that and simply deploying all/none on a client by client basis keeps the cost to a few pennies. It's deployed by script, it's managed in a blanket way that makes cost really, really low. So instead of a dollar per machine, it's more like a dollar per customer. Background noise. Everyone benefits.
Yes, I completely get it, this is no different than what I mentioned above - but it's still not zero cost to you. So you put it in the whatever GL catagory, instead of direct passing the cost down to the customer, no different than intel putting the cost of fabrication equipment into some general internal line item, because you could never break it out on a per items type basis, that's, as you mention, not cost effective... BUT you still have to have an otherwise higher end user fee because of that service than if you didn't offer that service, and if not higher fee, then lower profits, tomato tomato..
Sometimes. It may not actually be higher, it can be lower. But either way, the cost is so low on a per customer / user basis. That's the important part.
how can providing a service to your client be lower cost to you than not providing it? It is possibly lower because it lowers expenses in other places? if so, what other places?
Because is lowers the cost of service delivery. It's like how can good oil lower the cost of operating your car when you have to pay for the oil? Because it can reduce the amount of gas or diesel that you need over thousands of miles.
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@Dashrender said in Testing Zulip:
@scottalanmiller said in Testing Zulip:
@stacksofplates said in Testing Zulip:
@scottalanmiller said in Testing Zulip:
We have a separate team that deals just with customer service handling. We try hard to never let phones go to voicemail, and I think we only see that once every several months (like two to three times a year.) We have a tiered desk that answers the phones, then their managers and a few techs who have volunteered take calls if the front line is overwhelmed, which is rare since Paul and I ring with the front line so if they are swamped, we tend to know and can grab calls before they go to managers like @valentina and then we typically, depending on the path, have a third tier that can catch most calls if they fall through both of those levels and if, by some unbelievable situation, it makes it all the way through the third tier, it goes to voicemail that automatically emails everyone to find someone to deal with a customer that's tried to call and couldn't get through. THEN a tech might respond immediately because they couldn't get to triage. But like I said, 2-3 times a year. It's rare and we staff up to make sure it stays at about that rate.
Generally the front line takes a call, puts in a ticket while on the phone, finds the right tech, and transfers (along with the ticket and notes) directly to the tech. It's not a delaying tactic, it's to allow the triage layer to find the right resource that both has the right technical skill set and is currently available to step in. Otherwise, we'd have techs grabbing the phone and you might be calling about a printer and get a storage guy or something.
The CEO and CIO are taking helpdesk calls? That cannot be a good use of company money? That just seems crazy.
Better than having them sit idle and not know what's going on in the company because they are so disconnected. At some point, those roles have to have jobs.
I took one those calls tonight and am hoping it's over $100K of benefit because I did so. I definitely don't have many hours that make more money than that. Now, is it certainly $100K? No. Likely, actually yes. Keeping tabs on operations can have value.
You're saying you would have totally missed that opportunity had you not taken (answered the incoming call, not got a call passed onto you by a help desk rep) the call?
Right, no one would have found out that it existed. I knew the customer well from several unrelated interactions (other product lines) and felt comfortable having a personal conversation in which we really connected and she brought up an opportunity that even she didn't know existed until we were chatting.
