Khách hàng chưa phải là thượng đế

Work and Life June 28th, 2009

Khi một nhân viên mới đến, Chủ tịch một Tập đoàn hàng đầu thế giới với doanh thu trên 6 tỷ USD mỗi đã tận tay rót trà mời.

Đích thân ông giới thiệu cho nhân viên mới về công ty, về quan điểm kinh doanh và những điều mà ông mong đợi ở họ. Đồng thời ông cũng chỉ ra nguyên tắc riêng của doanh nghiệp và chế độ đãi ngộ đối với từng nhân viên trong công ty.

Vị lãnh đạo ấy là Hal Rosenbluth, người đã biến Rosenbluth International từ một công ty gia đình nhỏ thành Tập đoàn du lịch có trên 5.300 nhân viên, gần 1.000 văn phòng ở tất cả các bang của nước Mỹ và 53 quốc gia trên thế giới, với doanh số hàng năm đạt hơn 6 tỷ USD. Tỷ lệ tăng trưởng là 1 tỷ USD mỗi năm.

Ông cũng chính là một trong 2 tác giả của cuốn sách “Khách hàng chưa phải là thượng đế”. Cuốn sách là bí quyết thành công của Rosenbluth International khi đặt nhân viên lên hàng đầu. Triết lý kinh doanh có vẻ hơi ngược đời nhưng lại được ông vận dụng thành công đưa Rosenbluth International ngày tập đoàn hàng đầu trong lĩnh vực du lịch tại Mỹ.

Rosenbluth cho biết, ông đặt niềm tin tuyệt đối vào tầm quan trọng của hạnh phúc nơi công sở, đó chắc chắn là yếu tố các chủ chốt để có dịch vụ tốt. Tất nhiên, khách hàng chính là lý do để công ty tồn tại, nhưng để phục vụ khách hàng tốt nhất, thì phải coi trọng nhân viên trước đã, bởi nhân viên là những người phục vụ khách hàng, sự phục vụ cao nhất chỉ đạt được khi xuất phát từ con tim. Vậy nên, công ty nào có được trái tim của nhân viên, công ty đó sẽ có dịch vụ tuyệt vời nhất.

Điều này cũng giống với câu chuyện cổ về “Chiếc xe độc mã”. Hãy tạm coi nhân viên đại diện cho con ngựa, nếu chủ doanh nghiệp cho khách hàng lên xe rồi đặt chiếc xe lên phía trước con ngựa, khách hàng sẽ chẳng đi được bao xa. Dù doanh nghiệp có đãi khách hàng bằng champagne và trứng cá muối trên xe, thì họ cũng chẳng thể nhích đi được một bước, chừng nào những con ngựa còn ở đằng sau họ…

Các công ty chỉ tự đánh lừa bản thân mình khi tin rằng: “Khách hàng là thượng đế”. Nhân viên nếu không coi khách hàng là số một và họ chắc chắn không làm điều này chỉ vì lãnh đạo của họ kỳ vọng như vậy. Chỉ khi nhân viên nhận thấy mình quan trọng như thế nào, thì họ mới chân thành chia sẻ cảm giác của mình với người khác. Từ triết lý kinh doanh này, Hal Rosenbluth đã xây dựng được một công ty có tỷ lệ giữ khách hàng là 98% – một con số kỷ lục.

Lâu nay, các doanh nghiệp luôn đặt ra cho mình một triết lý kinh doanh rằng “khách hàng là thượng đế”, song trên thực tế, việc thực hiện được điều này lại không dễ dàng gì. Tại cuộc tọa đàm mới đây về mối quan hệ giữa doanh nghiệp và khách hàng, Công ty Thái Hà Books đã đưa ra vấn đề trái ngược hẳn với những gì mà các ông chủ doanh nghiệp hay đề cập là “Khách hàng chưa phải là thượng đế”.

Cái lý được đưa ra là, nếu công ty tạo cho nhân viên cảm giác căng thẳng, lo sợ và thất vọng thường xuyên, họ sẽ mang những cảm giác ấy về nhà, tạo ra những căng thẳng trong gia đình và họ sẽ lại mang tâm trạng ấy đến công ty ngày hôm sau, rồi hôm sau nữa, vòng quay ấy lặp đi lặp lại… Dần dần, sự đam mê, nhiệt tình trong công việc sẽ bị thay thế bằng nỗi lo sợ, trách nhiệm phải hoàn thành công việc luôn đè nặng trên vai. Hậu quả xấu hơn là khi nhân viên của bạn đến gặp khách hàng bằng chính tâm trạng bất ổn ấy. Lúc đó, khách hàng sẽ là người lãnh sự khó chịu, bực bội ấy và họ sẽ chẳng thể là thượng đế theo đúng những gì mà ông chủ doanh nghiệp mong muốn.

Ông chủ tập đoàn Rosenbluth International – Rosenbluth đã tạo ra môi trường làm việc vui vẻ và hiệu quả cùng các nhân viên thích hợp với từng vị trí, phục vụ khách hàng hết lòng từ chính con tim… Rusendbluth coi dịch vụ là sự kết hợp của 3 yếu tố Thái độ, Nghệ thuật và Quy trình, tạo điều kiện để mỗi nhân viên thể hiện hết khả năng của mình, luôn khuyến khích tạo dựng và nuôi dưỡng các ý tưởng, tìm kiếm cơ hội, sử dụng công nghệ để giải phóng nhân viên, giúp họ có thể sáng tạo và tập trung chăm sóc khách hàng tốt hơn.

Hơn mười năm qua, các chiến lược và ý tưởng của ông đã tạo động lực thúc đẩy cho rất nhiều CEO, các nhà lãnh đạo, quản lý doanh nghiệp, các chuyên gia thực hiện, trong đó có Jeff Greenfield, Scott McNealy… Những bí quyết này ngày càng tỏ ra hiệu quả khi Rosenbluth International vẫn giữ vị trí là tập đoàn dịch vụ du lịch hàng đầu ở Mỹ kể từ sau thảm họa khủng bố 11/9.

Ubuntu 9.04 vs. Fedora 11 Performance

Linux, Weekly Tips June 19th, 2009

Fedora 11 was released earlier this week so we have set out to see how its desktop performance compares to that of Ubuntu 9.04, which was released back in April. Using the Phoronix Test Suite we compared these two leading Linux distributions in tasks like code compilation, Apache web server performance, audio/video encoding, multi-processing, ray-tracing, computational biology, various disk tasks, graphics manipulation, encryption, chess AI, image conversion, database, and other tests.

For this testing our system we used was an Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 clocked at 4.00GHz, ASUS P5E64 WS Professional motherboard, 2GB of DDR3 memory, a Western Digital 160GB WD1600JS-00M SATA hard drive, and a NVIDIA GeForce 9800GT graphics card. Ubuntu 9.04 ships with the Linux 2.6.28 kernel, GNOME 2.26.1, X Server 1.6.0, GCC 4.3.3, and an EXT3 file-system by default. Fedora 11 was using the Linux 2.6.29 kernel, GNOME 2.26.1, X Server 1.6.2 RC1, xf86-video-nouveau 0.0.10, GCC 4.4.0, and an EXT4 file-system by default. The x86_64 builds of both Fedora 11 and Ubuntu 9.04 were used.

We were using the latest Phoronix Test Suite code for managing our testing process, which will go on to form the 2.0 Sandtorg release. Older versions of our testing software are available in the Fedora and Ubuntu repositories. The test profiles we used included timed PHP compilation, Apache benchmarking, LAME MP3 encoding, Ogg encoding, FFmpeg, GMPbench, Bwfirt, C-Ray, timed MAFFT alignment, Threaded I/O Tester, PostMark, Dbench, GraphicsMagick, OpenSSL, Crafty, Sunflow Rendering System, dcraw, Minion, SQLite, and PostgreSQL pgbench.

When measuring how long it took to build out PHP 5.2.9 on each distribution, it was faster on Ubuntu by about four seconds. Ubuntu 9.04 is using the older GCC 4.3 branch while Fedora 11 is using the newest GCC 4.4 series.

Ubuntu 9.04 had really smacked Fedora 11 when it came to the Apache Benchmark with the static web page serving performance. Ubuntu was able to sustain more than 58% more requests per second than Fedora 11.

At encoding an MP3 file using LAME, the lead was in Fedora’s favor but by just about 4%.

When encoding an Ogg file it was more favorable on Ubuntu, but by a barely significant difference.

The time it took to encode an AVI to NTSC VCD using FFmpeg 0.5 was essentially dead even between the 64-bit versions of Ubuntu 9.04 and Fedora 11.

The GMPbench performance was very close between Ubuntu and Fedora.

With Bwfirt ray-tracing the performance was indifferent between Fedora and Ubuntu.

With C-Ray, which is supposed to be a very simple ray-tracing engine, the lead was in Ubuntu’s favor by about 12% — 110 seconds versus 125 seconds for Ubuntu and Fedora, respectively.

The timed MAFFT multiple sequence alignment was very close between Ubuntu 9.04 and Fedora 11.

Fedora 11 did significantly better than Ubuntu 9.04 when it came to 64MB writes with 32 threads using the Threaded I/O Tester to benchmark the Serial ATA disk under Ubuntu and Fedora. Ubuntu 9.04 had a significantly higher latency. This large difference is likely due to performance improvements found in the Linux 2.6.29 kernel, which Fedora uses, as well as the EXT4 file-system.

While the 64MB writes were faster under Fedora, the 64MB reads were better with Ubuntu.

NetApp’s PostMark had more transactions per second under Fedora 11 compared to Ubuntu 9.04 — a 38% difference.

Fedora 11 continued to perform much better at the disk tests when it came to Dbench too with twelve clients. Fedora 11 was nearly four times faster than Ubuntu 9.04!

Turning to the OpenMP-based GraphicsMagick for looking at the image manipulation performance, Ubuntu 9.04 was slightly faster. Fedora 11 had averaged 171 transactions per second while Ubuntu 9.04 was at 179 transactions per second, or about 5% faster, with the HWB color space conversion.

With local adaptive thresholding in GraphicsMagick, the results were identical between the Canonical and Red Hat operating systems.

The OpenSSL performance was also very close between Fedora and Ubuntu.

Crafty, which is an open-source chess engine, performed about the same under the latest stable releases of Ubuntu and Fedora.

The Java-based Sunflow Rendering System also had nearly identical results.

More similar results… This time with dcraw as we measured how long it took to convert several files from RAW format to PPM files.

The Minion constraint solver with the Solitaire benchmark also was close between Ubuntu 9.04 and Fedora 11.

Fedora 11 did much better than Ubuntu 9.04 with the SQLite performance. This large difference is explained by a serious kernel regression we previously reported on several occasions in the past, but after being present in the kernel for several releases, it was finally fixed with the Linux 2.6.29 kernel. Ubuntu 9.04 with its Linux 2.6.28 kernel is still impacted by this SQLite regression, but should be fixed in Ubuntu 9.10 unless the regression reappears. Fedora 11 is also using EXT4 by default while Canonical is finally moving to this updated file-system with Ubuntu 9.10.

Fedora 11 not only did better with its SQLite database performance, but PostgreSQL ran much faster too under the operating system that’s codenamed Leonidas.

In a number of the benchmarks the results were close, but in a few areas there are some major performance differences. In particular, with the test profiles that stress the system disk, Fedora 11 generally did much better — in part due to the EXT4 file-system and newer Linux kernel. Fedora also did much better with the database tests like SQLite and PostgreSQL. Ubuntu 9.04 though had done a better job with the Apache Benchmark and C-Ray. You can run your own benchmarks and compare these results using the Phoronix Test Suite.

Configuring YUM on Linux

Linux, Weekly Tips June 18th, 2009

Last time we visited Yellow Dog Updater Modified (YUM) in 2007 we created a repository and also configured access to repositories in RHEL5. In this, our second look at YUM – we’ll configure YUM by using its main configuration file, yum.conf, which resides in /etc. We’ll also take you through some basic yum commands that should be a part of your repertoire.For any yum newbie’s, a quick definition and a look at history. YUM is a package manager (an installer and remover) for RPM systems. It is tailor made to update groups of machines without having to update each specific RPM. The software locates and obtains the correct RPM packages from repositories, freeing you from having to manually find and install new applications and/or updates. The beauty of YUM is in its simplicity. You can use a single command to update all system software. Way back when, RHEL4 used to use up2date as its package manager – RHEL5 uses YUM, based on version 3. Upd2date is actually used as a wrapper around YUM in RHEL5. The product was developed by Seth Vidal (who now works for Red Hat) and a group of volunteer programmers and coded in Python. It is now up to version 3.2.23.

yum.conf
The file itself is made up of two sections. The first is the main section and the second is the repository section. You have a choice to put your repositories in this file or in separate files named file.repo. You can have more than one repository in one configuration file but there can be only one main section. Here is an example of a yum config file.

main]
cachedir=/var/cache/yum
keepcache=0
debuglevel=2
logfile=/var/log/yum.log
pkgpolicy=newest
distroverpkg=redhat-release
tolerant=1
exactarch=1
obsoletes=1
gpgcheck=1
plugins=1
metadata_expire=1800
timeout=10

[myexamplerepo]
name=RHEL 5 $releasever - $basearch
baseurl=http://local/path/to/myyum/repository/
enabled=1

Let’s describe some important fields:

Cachedir: The directory where yum stores its cache and database files.

Keepcache: There are two choices here, 0 and 1. 1 informs yum to keep the cache of headers and packages after a successful install. The default is 1.

Tolerant: There are two choices here, 0 and 1. Setting this as 1 allows yum to be tolerant of errors on the command line. The default is 0.

Grpcheck: There are two choices here, 0 and 1. 1 enables GPG checking, which provides for GPG signature checking on packages on all repositories. This includes local package installation.

Metadata_expire: This is the time in seconds – after which the metadata will expire.

Timeout: This is the number of seconds that one would wait for a connection prior to timing out.

Exactarch: There are two choices here, 0 and 1. 1 tells YUM to update only the architectures of installed packages. For example, if you have this enabled you won’t be able to install an i386 package to update an i686 package.

Obsoletes: This effects updates only and enables the processing logic of YUM. It’s particularly useful when doing distribution level upgrades.

The repository section has the information required to find packages during package installation, updating and dependency installations. The mandatory field descriptions are as follows:

ID: a unique single word string which is the identifier of the repository.

Name: The string that describes the repository.

Baseurl: The url where the actual repository is housed.

Some optional fields include; gpgcheck, gpgkey, exclude and include. The exclude and include fields are similar to the ones used in the main section of the file, but apply only to a specific repository.

If you are shy about manually editing config files, than I would be extremely careful before doing so. Better to use some GUI software to help you configure YUM, than mess up a currently running YUM-based system. If you are going to edit these files manually, make sure you first play around with them in a test environment and/or have good backups. It just takes five seconds to issue the following command:

# cp /etc/yum.conf  /etc/yum.conf.old

Please use this command prior to manually editing this file.

yummy commands
YUM has dozens of commands that are part of its system. Try to learn some of the key commands that you’ll be using routinely. In this section we’ll discuss some of these commands.

# yum list

This lists out all packages in all repositories which are installed on the system. There are a variety of options with this command. One option is:

# yum list installed

This is similar to running an rpm –qa, which breaks down a list of all installed packages. By default yum list without any options will list all packages in all the repositories, and all the packages installed on your system. (Note: “yum list all” and “yum list” give the same output.)

# yum info

Displays information about any package – either installed or available.

# yum search

Allows you to search for information from metadata available, about packages.

# yum clean

The yum clean command allows you to clean up the cached files of metadata and packages which YUM uses during its normal operations. This will clear up a lot of disk space.

# yum groupinfo groupname

This provides you with detailed information for each group including description, mandatory, default and optional packages.

We’ve focused on using YUM on RHEL, but it should also be noted that SLES10.1 has added support for YUM repositories in YaST. Many other distributions also provide YUM support – though some do not, so if YUM is really important to you, you should check your documentation carefully. Finally, as those of you who have already worked with YUM realize, it has a command line utility only. If you like GUI software there are also several GUI utilities which interface with YUM, including pup, pirut (the default Fedora GUI as of version 5), and Yum Extender. YUM may not be rocket science to use, but you will need to take some time to learn it properly. Like any other new software, the more time you spend learning it and playing with it in a sandbox the less time you will spend in having to fix it later.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Ken Milberg is a systems consultant with two decades of experience working with Unix and Linux systems. He is a SearchEnterpriseLinux.com Ask the Experts advisor and columnist.

Announcing Fedora 11

Announcements, Linux June 9th, 2009

Simply, Fedora 11 has been released. We all together celebrate the new child (but better :) ) of the large Linux family.

Please do not miss out your chance to join into one of the Release parties near you.

See: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedoraEvents/ReleaseParty

Inbox Innovation: Zimbra Adds New Gadgets and Gallery

Weekly Tips, Zimbra June 7th, 2009

Zimbra’s open source roots have always been of great importance to both the company and the Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS).  When we set out to build a new collaboration system over five years ago, we wanted to bring a fresh perspective to the market, and a big part of that was our commitment to being open source.  We understood sharing ideas within the open source community keeps you a one step ahead of competitors by iterating faster to give users what they want.  Process-maker-in-ZimbraA great example demonstrating how the community has flourished is the Zimlet development program.

Zimlets are simple but powerful extensions of ZCS that connect users’ email, calendar, and contacts with any number of outside services (for a couple of recent examples see Alfresco and Peru and TripIt).  Zimlet development growth in the community has been strong and steady, and we are excited to continue supporting the community’s work by providing a place where developers can feature the best of their integrations to share with other Zimbra users.   So, today we are launching an updated Zimlet Gallery where you can pick and choose from many handy new ZCS extensions.

At the same time, we also love seeing our Yahoo! friends continue to embrace openness as part of the Yahoo! Open Strategy. In addition to this announcement today, a number of our Yahoo! brethren are extending their platforms to become more open. Today, Yahoo! Mail is introducing applications which enable people to make online payments, access personal photos and more easily send large files directly from their inbox. In addition, My Yahoo! is adding even more third-party applications, driving enhanced personal productivity for users directly from their My Yahoo! start page. You can read more about the Mail and My Yahoo! updates on the Yodel and YDN blogs.

As part of the Zimlet Gallery launch today, we’d like to introduce you to a few new third-party Zimlets, including:

Xythos Zimlet – The Xythos Zimlet allows you to drag and drop email messages and file attachments directly into Xythos’ Enterprise Document Management System.  Secure document management is popular in the enterprise and universities; integration in email is key for ubiquitous adoption.

Processmaker Zimlet – The Processmaker Zimlet helps streamline workflows, like time-off requests, all within Zimbra email (see above).  This Zimlet is already becoming popular and is being deployed at Access America Transport and Ministerio de Vivienda by our Zimbra Partners.

Sticky-Notes-in-ZimbraIn addition, Zimbra developers have created a handful of new Zimlets, including:

Place Sticky Notes on Email – The new Sticky Notes Zimlet allows you to attach and tag emails with “notes.” One can leave comments, reminders, additional info about the email and more. And Zimbra’s powerful search can search through emails based on the contents of the tags/notes attached to the email.

Email Highlighter – The Colored Emails Zimlet allows you to apply personally assigned colors to emails from specific senders such as a family member, your boss, etc. You can identify senders by color, but you can also create colored emails through tags, making it easier to prioritize any inbox.

Save Email as Documents – With one click, the Email-2-Doc Zimlet lets you save an important email as a Zimbra Document; it will automatically save any attachments as links in the Document as well. The email can then be edited and shared with others.