A Positive Spin on Problems

Pepco Helps Tech Workers on Help Desk to Improve People Skills

By Carrie Johnson

Washington Post Staff Writer

Saturday, February 17, 2001; Page E01

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17232-2001Feb16.html 

 It's among a technical worker's worst nightmares.

The computer network crashes. Soon calls come pouring in from irate co-workers demanding to know when it will be fixed. What to do?

To Calvin Sun, who lectures technical staffers on people skills, the scenario is ripe for misunderstanding. Users want answers now, without a lot of computer jargon. Tech workers can't help but get huffy at the unrealistic expectations and rudeness they encounter from those complaining.

Don't go negative, Sun advised his audience, a dozen senior managers gathered for a training session at the Potomac Electric Power Co. last week. When in doubt, he said, "spin. This is what the politicians call spin."

Then Sun led the technology managers in a round of positive word play: The system will be ready in as little as an hour, he instructed. We'll fix the problem as soon as somebody can get there.

Help-desk etiquette has long been an issue for companies across the nation as more and more computerize their operations. But some tech workers have been slow to embrace the principles of customer service, in part because they were so secure in their jobs. It once was not easy to replace them. One recurring skit on "Saturday Night Live" has popularized the image of a tech worker lording it over the hapless computer user.

The current economic downturn has changed the equation. Layoffs are now common, and many companies are contracting out tech services. Pepco tech workers, for instance, need to look no further than Conectiv, a Delaware utility that Pepco announced last week it was taking over. Conectiv scrapped its own information-systems department and paid more than $1 million to hire International Business Machines Corp. to handle its technical needs.

No one wants that to happen to Pepco's 160 technical staffers, least of all chief information officer Kenneth Cohn. To help energize the workforce, Cohn brought in Sun, a former IBM programmer, who now runs Technology Horizons, a consulting shop in Paoli, Pa.

"The better service we can provide our internal customers, the better the company will perform externally," Cohn said. "You get so wrapped up in the technology that's changing so quickly, you can lose sight of the customer-service and communications skills."

That's why two dozen techies are spending six hours in a gray classroom, practicing how to avoid negative thoughts by exorcising the nos, can'ts, don'ts and won'ts from their vocabulary.

A few moments later they're trying to explain computer freeze-ups and the difference between a client-server computer system and a thin-client system to co-workers without engineering degrees. (Puzzled? A client-server system is one in which individual PCs share computing duties with larger computers called servers. It's like a library where you can check books out and take them with you, reasoned Jim, a project coordinator. The thin-client system is a network of PCs that rely on the server to perform most of the functions. In the library analogy, you can look at the book but you cannot check it out.)

"We want to make sure we're communicating at the correct level," said Sun, who makes frequent mention of the times he grew frazzled in his own career.

The lessons come as welcome reminders to many of the Pepco veterans.

"We're used to working inside with each other," said Vivian Webb, a technology project manager who's logged two decades at the company. "Our business is changing so much that it's not going to be that way anymore."

Jim Cernoch, who began his tenure at Pepco 22 years ago by installing overhead power lines and studying computers at night, agreed: "The customer-service stuff, we could all use a little of that."

Still, the shift can prove jarring for some longtime techies, said Peter Abresch, a systems programmer.

"We were programmers back in the days when we were treated like gods," Abresch recalled with a smile. "Now we're almost like everybody else. We have to be nice, a little bit more friendly."

Minding one's manners can be particularly difficult when more interactions take place by e-mail and over the phone, Sun told the assembled managers. He recommended that they take their mothers' words to heart and count to 10, or at least three, before replying to overheated colleagues.

"The way we say things to other people is as important as what we say," Sun said.

But niceties don't readily spring to mind when three supervisors are demanding their projects be finished immediately, or a harried receptionist can't access the network.

"It pulls you," said systems programmer Philip Watkins. "It pulls you back and forth."

In some ways, however, technical staffers are able to adapt to change more easily than others.

"If you picked information systems and you don't like change, you really picked the wrong career," said Abresch.

© 2001 The Washington Post Company