It was an amazing evening with slight showers of rain and seeing the sight of rain after scorching summer is a feel beyond words. Sitting in my balcony, curling up with a good book, along with strong steaming hot Espresso in one hand, is one way to make it through the howling winds. Looking deep in the rain which is pelting the windows and the sounds of the leaves rustling in the trees, I feel a sense of bliss, a feeling of oneness with nature. I was observing the rain, the wind, greenery around & allowing myself to slowly sink in the emotions. The rain seemed very mild, so I could hear the natures its own music, “the soothing sound of chirping of birds” which only added more beauty to it. While I was getting immersed in these lovely emotions, all of a sudden, my phone started ringing with my wife’s latest song (Yes, I generally keep her songs as my caller tunes for obvious reasons) and from the display screen, I could clearly understand that it is my work-related call. With a jerky feeling, I have lifted the call only to understand that there is a “medium-priority” technical issue which requires my attention. Well, just as I was about to delegate my work to someone else, an incident from my past flashed onto my mind which fueled me with energy to serve my customer.
Basically, we develop and maintain software applications which we give as a service to all our customers. We give services across Information Technology, Business Management, Human Resources, Security etc. And as per our standard process we categorize the problems faced by our end customers primarily based on the “availability of our application”. Which means, highest priority would be given to issues where application is just not available or down.
During my recent visits to US for our annual conference, I happen to meet one of our colleague with whom I have been interacting online for over a decade but for the very first time I happen to meet her in person. It was indeed a refreshing feel and we happen to discuss on various topics and finally came to our work life, wherein she happen to tell me something which made so lasting impact on myself that I started to differentiate my life till that discussion and my life after that discussion.
During my discussion with my colleague, she told me about one of our customer who is a billion-dollar Healthcare industry. With our service, they have been able to transition their entire manual handling routine notifications to automation by increasing HR productivity and delivering more strategic value to their business partners. In this process, they have saved millions of dollars and we were discussing how proud we are to be a part of such firm.
Well, just immediately after this she happened to tell me something which had a profound impact on me.
One fine day they have received a complaint from them that the notifications were not working on their devices and they wanted us to resolve it considering it as highest priority issue (P1), however as per our policies we can only allot highest priority only in case of catastrophic application failure or application not being available at all, so we have denied it as per the process and then considered it as second priority issue.
After couple of days later when my colleague happened to visit the customer at their office (which is of course an hospital) , this incident has been brought up and what the hospital staff has said brought tears to the eyes of my colleague…! The staff told her that the reason why they wanted to consider it as highest is because, they are dealing with the pacemaker insertion (a small electronic device )which will generally be implanted in the chest (just below the collarbone) for one of the patient suffering from problems related to heart to help regulate slow electrical problems with the heart. And it seems that notifications of this device were not working properly and thus it was to do with the life and that’s why it is for them of highest priority as this is to ensure that the heartbeat does not slow to a dangerously low rate.
At that very moment, when my colleague narrated to me about this, my eyes were moist and it touched my heart
Recalling this incident immediately made me fill full of gratitude about my work and how much of an impact it could be to someone.
and I have immediately shouldered responsibility to current issue and assisted my customers with full of energy and enthusiasm having the sense of tremendous satisfaction.
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