New NotesAppStore Reviews!

New Notes App Store

Vibrant Apps Community

The point of NotesAppStore is to show that there is a vibrant community building customer-tested apps for Lotus Notes. Anyone looking at Google apps can find many comparable apps in Lotus Notes. However, the Lotus Notes apps are more mature and have been field tested, some for many years. The variety and functionality of these apps also is unrivaled by anything Google offers to businesses.

The other huge distinction is vendor support. Most of the vendors in the NotesAppStore are small to midsize businesses (SMB) who are available to help install and support their Apps. They will answer the phone. This excellent app support will be critical when there is a problem. And they have references to prove it!

NotesAppStore Site Features

Under the Company Listing, I put all the Twitter name and company blogs that I could find, along with a link to the management page of each website. Again, most of these Lotus Notes App vendors are approachable leaders of small to midsize businesses who are quite visible in the Lotus community.

You can also Search for anything on the site.

There is also a place to Recommend an App and another place to Post a Comment to help make the site more useful.

So, Lotus Notes and Domino users, finally we can say "There is an App for that" !

Technical Support Done Right

I often joke that, unlike in college, I face problems where the answer is not in the back of the book. Technical Support Done Right, as described below, focuses on how I  find a way to solving a problem through 

• Subject Matter Knowledge
  
• Ownership and 
  
• Tenacity.
  

Tech Support, as it is generally defined, implies giving information to a customer so they can resolve the problem. But that is not how I look at it. That definition lacks a certain quality that is critical to my own definition of Technical Support, the ability to solve problems. When you look at it from the perspective of solving problems, the definition takes on an enhanced meaning. Problem Solving means active participation in the problem until it is fixed. A minor difference? Not at all. In my mind, a Problem Solver needs to have a spirit of can-do in every case. This spirit is not just wishful thinking, but it is based on my multiple successful experiences making things work in a variety of environments.



Subject Matter Knowledge

So, as a Problem Solver I see a problem or "challenge" and I think "I have fixed many similar to this one before" and "I can certainly fix this one, too!". This makes me as a Problem Solver an optimist, not in the sense of blind optimism, but in the sense that my experience and training, combined with an attitude of "can-do" provides the tenacity to try different solutions until a successful outcome is achieved.



Ownership

Problem Solver also means taking ownership of a problem. The word "ownership" is abused via overuse, and is usually just lip service. However, for those who actually practice ownership, it is truly empowering. "I am assisting a customer" generally does not create ownership. Thinking that this is my problem to solve moves me towards action. This is an element often ignored in Tech Support organizations. 

Lack of ownership manifests itself as passing the buck. I have been copied on too many tech support emails requesting my help with a support problem which are really just a form of passing the buck to me under the guise of "he is more knowledgeable". If a company had a rule that said "if you have to ask others for help, then you don't belong here", there would be a lot less people dumping their problems on others. Oftentimes the problems are hard and cause people to do hard work, which most people avoid. Work is hard, especially problem solving.  If work was easy, they would call it "tennis".



Tenacity

So what does Problem Solving look like in practice? My own experience is that total immersion in a problem is not only required, it is the only way to be sure of success. I become very creative and, because I feel ownership, I start finding resources that help to resolve the problem. It is up to me as the Tech Support person to find the resources even if it is not immediately apparently what those resources are.

I often find that the biggest problem can be finding the information to help solve the problem! That is where tenacity is vital. Tech support must be tenacious in searching and researching solutions, finding others who are knowledgeable for information or blogs or other internet resources that have solved similar problems. My experience is that you make your own luck. When I dig and dig, I get lucky and find relevant information. You really don't need to know where to dig. It is the digging that is critical to finding an answer.


So, when I am solving some problem, my strategy looks a lot like this:

• I have Google open in multiple windows to search for clues
  
• The customer computer systems is visible in another window (Sametime, WebEx or GoTo Meeting, for example)
  
• My own personal test computer system in a third window (every problem solver should have a dedicated system for testing ideas)
  
• Additionally, I have any email or KnowledgeBase information open
  
• One or more IM chat windows with other staffers who have similar experience.

So, think of it like "Who wants to be a millionaire". We chase the solution with the tenacity of a contestant close to the ultimate prize, we use 50/50 split to eliminate options, we "shout out" to a friend, and use all of our collected knowledge.

So, the elements of problem solving are:

• Subject Matter Knowledge
  
• Ownership of the Problem
  
• Attitude of "Can-Do"
  
• Tenacity when dealing with obstacles
  
• Tapping into others who have similar experiences and knowledge
  
• Never Quitting until there is a Solution

In my way, the job of "Tech Support" is not a dreary road, but actually a game show played by one. The prize isn't one million dollars, but I sure feel like a million dollars once I have figured it out!

Frank Paolino manages Technical Support at Maysoft.com

Kaizen in Medical Care

Tom Daschle is now the Health Care czar. His ideas are laid out in his book "What we can do about the Health Care Crisis". A key aspect of this his approach is a "Federal Health Advisory Board", an innocuous sounding idea that is effectively a governing board of allowable medical procedures. It looks like a cost-savings approach to increasing health care costs. In truth, it is a powerful approach that will effectively stop payments to physicians for any procedure that is not approved by the Board.

This is not Health-Care Rationing. It is significantly worse than that. This is anti-Kaizen for healthcare. This is "no improvement" for health care, locking down treatment and limiting future health care developments. Sound unbelievable? Let me prove it to you with a little thought experiment, which I will call "It’s a Wonderful Life”: Picture the year 1950, just after the end of WWII. If we had a Daschle-esque plan implemented, with allowable care guidelines listed, creative people (physicians, University professors, pharmaceuticals and affiliated hospitals and the businesses that fund them) would have stopped innovating as their products and procedures would not be "allowed" to be purchased.

With medical care frozen in 1950, we would have polio with us today. Anyone who can remember this knows what a scourge it was, and how it ruined many good people. 

• Jonas Salk would have invented the vaccine in 1952, but he never got the funding to continue his research.
  
• CT scanners were not invented by Hounsfield and Comack and they did not win a Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1979.
  
• The MRI was not developed in the 1970s. 
  
• The birth control pill was not invented in 1952.
  
• Artery stents were never invented. 
  
• Cholesterol reducering drugs do not exist. 
  
• Genentech did not develop synthetic insulin in 1980 to help diabetics.
  

Fast forward to today, in 2009, we do not have thousands of drugs, life savings procedures and knowledge. The list would be all the innovations of the last 50 years. Scary?

 
Well, with 1950s Daschle-care, we will never see some of the innovations that are being discussed, as funding for new ventures will dry up. If anyone thinks government can invent these items, they deserve the future they are going to get. His plan should be called "No more Health Care improvements. We have all the medical procedures we need".

So you see, even though the current health care system needs a lot of Kaizen to keep improving it, the wrong answer is to freeze it in the name of controlling costs. The right answer is to find ways to allow life saving innovation to continue, so we don't end up with 2009 healthcare in the year 2050.

Kaizen for Product Development

Kaizen (改善, Japanese for "continuous improvement") is a very interesting concept. I attempt to apply Kaizen to product development at Maysoft. For me, this means going over each product feature and looking for areas for improvement.

For example, the most obvious feature that needs attention in the world of SpamSentinel and spam blocking in general is the need to continuously improve the block rate. When we released SpamSentinel in 2003, it blocked 70% of spam, and we were ecstatic. 2004 brought us to 90%. 2005 saw 95%. In 2006, we passed 98% block rate. In 2007, we hit 99%. Now, with SpamSentinel v7.6 we added some more blocking logic.

We are at 99.44% block rate, and we are working towards 100%. An external proof of success in the new version block rates comes from one customer comment that we recently received:

We are seeing significantly less mail & spam volume now that we are running 7.6. I have received many comments on how small spam reports are now. Very effective update. Lee Keener, Knoxville Utilities Board

It may not be possible to achieve 100% spam blocking, but Kaizen does not say "do not try until you are sure you will succeed". In fact, just the opposite. Try little things, every day to build up to a success. Some other sayings come to mind, which I believe support our approach: "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again". And Edison's famous "Genius is 10 percent inspiration and 90 percent perspiration" If you substitute "Kaizen" for "Genius" you get:

Kaizen is 10 percent inspiration and 90 percent perspiration

which to me means that we need to think of good ideas for improvement 10% of the time and actually work on implementing these good ideas 90% of the time.


Which brings me to urgency, another concept that I believe is intimately linked with Kaizen. Improvements that are conceived need to be implemented right away, now. There needs to be a sense of urgency. If not, Kaizen loses its focus on results and moves into the category of discussion, which produces nothing except words. Tom Peters, in his Search for Excellence book talks about "A bias for action, active decision making - 'getting on with it'. I believe you cannot have improvement without action. The risk and costs of "not thinking it through" are smaller, in my experience, than the risk of "doing nothing" or "delaying until the perfect solution is conceived".


Kaizen is a great way to guide one's thinking. You can apply it to every aspect of a product design, not just product features. For example, my Lotus Notes Spam blog is part of my personal Kaizen to improve how we communicate with resellers and customers about SpamSentinel and Maysoft. It was right after Lotusphere 2008 was finished that I decided to start writing about all the things that we were doing to help stop Lotus Notes email spam. I did not really discuss blogging, I just did it, writing the first posting, titled A Successful Lotusphere. Now this blog is an important part of the product, announcing features and explaining new options, and telling a little about how we work here at Maysoft.

For me, Kaizen is fun, as every time I attempt to improve something, I learn something new. Blogging was a whole new world for me, but I learned a lot and now I really enjoy writing these blogs.


So, my overall thought on how to apply Kaizen to work is to never stop asking the question:

How can I start making this better right now?

Three Laws of Customer Support

Someone asked me why I don't hire cheaper help for our support staff for my company, http://www.maysoft.com/. You see, we only hire experienced Lotus Notes administrators or excellent Lotus Notes developers in our customer support.

So I did a little bit of math on the subject of Customer Support. Having majored in Chemistry, I like equations and formulas. These equations are beautiful, in that they are simple and precise. Today, I attempt to translate some business principles related to customer support into mathematical equations to explain the three laws of customer support.

First Law of Customer Support
(Time to Completion) = (Problem Difficulty) / (Skill Level)
Explanation: We know that (Time to Completion) is proportional to (Problem Difficulty) and inversely proportional to (Skill Level) of the problem solver.
So, the greater the skill level, the faster the problem will be resolved. The denominator, as it increases, reduces the Time to Completion element. Which brings me back to cost. Our top notch support people cost a lot more per person but they perform most jobs in a fraction of the time, so they actually cost less than mediocre talent.

Here is an area everyone likes to discuss, customer satisfaction.

Second Law of Customer Support
(Customer Satisfaction) = ( Skill Level ) / (Time to Completion)
Explanation: We know that (Customer Satisfaction ) is proportional to (Skill Level) and inversely proportional to (Time to Completion). If the time to completion approaches infinity, the (Customer Satisfaction) approaches 0. As (Time to Completion) approaches 0, then (Customer Satisfaction) approaches ∞ , meaning the customer is infinitely happy.

The greater the skill level, the greater the customer satisfaction. Otherwise stated:

Faster service (done well) = Happier Customers

Now for some advanced mathematics, with substitutions. We already saw in Law #2 that:
(Customer Satisfaction) = ( Skill Level ) / (Time to Completion)

and we know from Law #1 that

(Time to Completion) = (Problem Difficulty) / (Skill Level)

So, substituting #1 into #2 gives us:
(Customer Satisfaction) = ( Skill Level ) / ((Problem Difficulty) / (Skill Level))

Simplifying terms gives us our third law:

Third Law of Customer Support
(Customer Satisfaction)= ( Skill Level ) * ( Skill Level ) / (Problem Difficulty)

So, Customer Satisfaction is improved with the square of the Skill Level! This means that a person who is twice as good will deliver 4 times the Customer Satisfaction!

This Third Law amplifies the importance of (Skill Level) as the single most critical factor in (Customer Satisfaction).

These Three Laws are quite simple and are the reason why all of the people who handle customer support are experienced Lotus Notes administrators or excellent Lotus Notes developers. I know these items cannot be measured in units like weight or volume, but the Three Laws are still true, and they help explain results that many of us know empirically, and helps me justify paying a lot more for talented people to talk to our customers, who, by the way, ultimately pay all of the bills!

You can read other postings for Frank Paolino at his Lotus Notes Spam blog: http://blog.maysoft.org/