The Employee: Blake Phillips

Location: Texarkana

The Fans: Community Services Office

Blake Phillips’ professional versatility can be witnessed by his career path. After years in the IT field, he left to become a licensed funeral director (a certification he still owns). But he’s back into the technology game. As a recently hired Datamax field service technician in Texarkana, he knows that his role as a technician is equally versatile.

Fixing the equipment is one thing. Creating a Raving Fan? That adds another element, one that he’s picked up on quickly.

The Organization's Need

The Community Services Office (CSO), a Head Start Program in Hot Springs, AR, offers critical educational resources to children and families in need. In doing so, it’s important that they make every resource count toward their great cause.

That’s partially why they set up device quotas for printing, to see who’s printing what, how much color, etc. in an effort to control print-related costs. When that ability went awry, they weren’t able to print at all.

The Team’s Approach

’“It wasn’t printing at all because somehow the group lost complete access,” Blake said. “It’s a solution that’s actually built into the Lexmark system where you can permit or not permit certain users.”

He’s not exactly sure HOW it happened, but he knew the solution. The solution was simply to create a brand new group. He also took the extra time to show a user there how to set up groups, so that if the situation happens again, they know exactly what to do.

This is where “Raving Fans” comes in.

“Not everyone has the experience level that I do. Whenever we explain things to end users, it’s important to me to not use any kind of big jargon. To explain the functionality in the easiest way possible without useless information.”

Blake’s work at CSO promoted one of the employees there to send an email praising Blake for all of his help.

What Made Them a Raving Fan?

“I think having the issue fixed is obviously important. But maybe it was taking the time to show him how these groups work. If he needs to in the future, he can work through it without having us out there… The education piece is huge to me. If they can understand it themselves, people feel more confident about what they’re doing. A little bit of confidence goes a long way.”