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1. Restate The Problem. Before you answer an angry customer's e-mail, show that you understand the problem. If the customer has included all relevant information in the e-mail, you should simply restate the problem and then set about solving it. Quote or paraphrase the customer's own wording to show you've read his e-mail carefully. Include all relevant information you have about the customer: purchase history, account number, previous customer service contact, etc. But if you don't understand the problem completely, see Tip 2.

2. Ask For Clarification. Angry customers may not write clearly. The customer may be unskilled or his e-mail may have degenerated into a rant about the company rather than an explanation of the problem. So you may have to ask the customer to clarify the problem: "I need some more information to solve your problem with the replacement parts for your storm door handle. Were the parts you received broken, or did you receive the wrong parts?" You may also have to clarify how the customer would like the problem resolved. "Do you want us to rush the parts to you overnight or do you want a refund?" Unless you clearly understand the problem and the preferred solution, you're bound to make the customer even angrier.

3. Personalize Your Response. Nothing infuriates an angry customer more than the feeling that no one is listening. "Dear Customer: Thank you for your e-mail. We take our customers' problems seriously and are glad to hear from you." So, personalize e-mail to an angry customer to reassure him that he's being heard loud and clear. * Use the customer's name and title: Mr., Mrs., Ms., Dr. Or use the customer's signature as your salutation: Jim Jeffries, Dr. Jeffries, Jim. * Review the customer's account information and incorporate it into your response. "We're proud that you've selected us as your ISP for the last six years, and we would like the opportunity to keep you as a satisfied customer." * Sign your e-mail. An angry customer needs to know a real human is trying to solve his problem.

HDI Insider Answering e-mail from angry customers »

You Can't Outsource Everything

THESE DAYS, THERE is certainly no shortage of debate on the relative merits or evils of outsourcing. One thing's for sure: Outsourcing will continue to increase over the next several years. Close to 500,000 American IT jobs have already been lost since 2001, many of them to offshore outsourcing. An unspoken corporate lemming behavior will continue to fuel this growth for years to come. When industry leaders such as GE, DuPont, Citibank, GM or Procter & Gamble do something, others take notice and many will follow. CIOs cannot single-handedly reverse the forces moving U.S. jobs overseas. While I'd love to see thousands of CIOs come together as a united bloc to influence IT-related policy matters, the sad reality is we don't have a clear, unified voice right now. Therefore, I strongly encourage CIOs to rise above the "religious fervor" and focus on the things they can control in order to ensure the best possible outcomes for their companies, their IT organizations and the U.S. IT industry.

First and foremost, CIOs need to be proactive. Don't wait until your CEO or CFO walks into your office asking you about the merits of offshoring or "Why is Company X outsourcing its IT work?" At this point, you're now playing defense, my friend. CIOs should proactively look at their own IT operations and determine which portions are strategic, and which are basically nondifferentiated services. The latter may be candidates for outsourcing. For example, CIOs in retailing appropriately view their customer-facing systems as very strategic and usually do their development in-house. But what about application maintenance or help desks? Do those IT services differentiate your company from the competition? I doubt it.

Ideally, the CIO's offensive game plan should evolve from the company's overarching business philosophy to focus on its true core competencies. This requires redirecting employees' energy from internal machinations to focusing only on initiatives that differentiate your business in the marketplace. At P&G, this strategic philosophy was at the heart of the decision to outsource some of IT as well as other non-IT, back-office operations. About 25 years ago, P&G developed an internal e-mail system, which R&D used extensively to proliferate the best ideas for product development and manufacturing. In 1980, this was a strategic application. Recently, P&G concluded that internally running a world-class e-mail operation no longer creates a sustainable competitive advantage. Now the company gets that service from Hewlett-Packard as part of a large, multiyear outsourcing agreement signed in 2003.

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Playing Well With Others - Office cliques sap morale and kill productivity. Does your firm have them? By By: Alison Stein Wellner Illustrations by: Brett Ryder

Canton investigated, and found that indeed, three members of the programming team had joined forces. They held informal meetings of their own, helped solve one another's problems -- and essentially ignored the two other teammates. Canton knew that daily life had to be pretty miserable for the two guys who were shut out of that cozy little cabal. But he was more concerned about what it might mean for the development project. "I had deadlines to meet, a budget to keep, things that needed to get done," he says. "I needed five people to do it, not three." Canton's task as manager was clear: He had to bust that clique. But how? It's tempting to dismiss cliquishness as a relic from high school, along with midterms, lockers, and prom dates. But the fact is, adult workers often behave much more like teenagers than they care to admit. Put people together in any group and it won't be long before they coalesce into subgroups, says Virginia E. Schein, an industrial psychologist and professor at Gettysburg College. "We grow up and move into organizations, but we don't necessarily change much," Schein says. That's not a problem if groups remain reasonably inclusive. But as Canton learned, a benign subgroup can rapidly become a malignant clique. And the issue is much larger than simply wanting your employees to be nice to one another.

Cliques can have a profound effect on an organization's productivity, says Rob Cross, professor of management at the University of Virginia's McIntire School of Commerce and co-author, along with consultant Andrew Parker, of The Hidden Power of Social Networks: Understanding How Work Really Gets Done in Organizations . The book grew out of a study of 60 companies at which Cross mapped employees' informal connections with one another -- who they turned to with workaday questions, who they socialized with, and so forth. Cross found that employees rely extensively on these informal networks to get their jobs done. In fact, according to Cross, the more co-workers employees know, and the more aware they are of their colleagues' particular skills, the easier it will be for everyone to share information, solve problems, and perform at peak productivity. Cliques get in the way of all of that. People shut out of a group seldom talk to those on the inside, Cross found. Similarly, those in a clique don't tap into the expertise of outsiders. In other words, if you've got cliques, your company isn't as productive as it could be, and you're probably not getting full value from your employees.

Alan Canton couldn't afford to get less than full value from his staff. So, he decided to end his next companywide meeting with a strong statement. "I'm the one who's writing the checks for this team," he said. "This is a team effort. If I come across any instance of anyone withholding information from anyone, they're out the door." He calls it his "big stick" approach, and says that it was effective. The cabal of three began including their two colleagues in their work -- and Canton was relieved when the new software was completed on time and on budget. "These guys were young, they didn't have a lot of time in the sandbox," he says. This made them more responsive to a "tough love" approach, he believes. Threats may result in short-term clique dispersal, but experts say they may not be the best way to clique-proof your business. "It's a Band-Aid approach," says Joshua Estrin, a consultant and psychotherapist in Plantation, Fla., who counsels small-business owners. A more effective approach may be to examine why the cliques formed in the first place. Experts say cliques generally become a problem during periods of uncertainty, such as when job cuts loom or senior managers squabble. Other warning signs: when one group of employees is physically isolated from the rest of the company or when some employees have a prior relationship. At Canton's company, for example, it turned out that members of the clique of three had all worked together in the past.

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11 Ways to Motivate Geeks by: Paul Glen

3. Communicate Significance. It is very important for managers to be explicit about the role a new technology plays in a business otherwise some will misunderstand the centrality of their work and others may develop delusions of grandeur. 4. Show Career Path. Many geeks have only a vague sense that there's more to advancing their careers than just acquiring new technical knowledge. Be specific about what competencies a geek must demonstrate in order to advance their career. 5. Projectize. Projects help turn work into a game and geeks love games with objectives that delineate both goals and success criteria.

6. Encourage Isolation. While geeks need free flowing communication within their own work groups, collective seclusion provides fertile soil for motivation, cultivating cohesion and concentration. 7. Engender External Competition. Healthy competition can enhance group cohesion. 8. Design Interdependence. When a colleague is relying on you to complete your work, it's much easier to put in the extra effort for them than it is just to meet some externally imposed deadline. 9. Limit Group Size. As group size grows, colleagues become less individuals and more an undistinguished mass of anonymous faces. The larger the workgroup, the less conducive the environment for developing intrinsic motivation.

10. Control Resource Availability. Whether thinking about money, people, time, or training, there's a delicate balance of resources that will encourage a group's enthusiasm. Too many resources or too few can diminish interest in the work. 11. Offer Free Food...Intermittently. Never underestimate the power of free food. I can't offer any rational explanation, but for geeks, even those making sizeable incomes, free food offers major support to motivation development, far more than an equivalent amount of cash.

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