The first two weeks of January, our lead support gal was out of the office for two weeks. During this time, one of our other support guys had a family emergency and had to take off work for a couple of days. This left Chris (he does literally everything and is constantly buried in 135983 projects that people give him) and myself to help out on support.
During part of this time, I was responsible for answering the support phone line when it rang. I realized when I started picking up these calls how out of league I was.
I started to wonder why. How did people do this every day? I felt like I knew our system pretty well and knew our customers pretty well but as soon as a customer called I felt way out of control. I had to ask who they were like 4 times and then had to get them to describe what they were experiencing at least as many times.
I felt like I about failed every single call and if it wasn’t a fail it took 5 times as long as it should have.
I realized as I was texting a friend this evening why it is. We were talking about how we both like to ask really deep questions of other people but don’t so much like to answer them. Or maybe not that we don’t like to answer them but we don’t like being put on the spot to answer these questions. In some ways, we actually really like answering the questions but not being able to adequately prepare to answer is what we hate.
When I was honest with myself, I realized it’s because I often feel shallow and I want myself to feel deep. I want to have a very thought-through answer that’s exactly what I feel at my deepest part but when I’m asked on the spot, I don’t have the time and thought to get to what that really is. I can be quick on my feet in some situations but when it comes to these kind of things I need time to really analyze what my thoughts and feelings are.
That’s why I sucked at answering support calls. I’m great when I can schedule a meeting with a customer and prepare beforehand and have everything mapped out how I want it to go. I’m actually pretty decent at it and have gotten even better in the role I’m in. But throw me a support call I’m unprepared for and I will screw it up almost every time.
Wow. I’m realizing something. I think this is also why I prefer planning events rather than attending events. I have the control and can organize how I think things should go and analyze how people will perceive it, but when I’m only attending I feel half blind going into it not being able to plan the details.
Overanalyzation, as with most things, can have pros and cons. For instance, I think, in general, I’m fairly decent at reading people and their intentions because of how much I think through everything that people do, and in some ways that makes me a great people pleaser. Something that’s great in business but not so great in trying to live a life not living for man’s praise…