MCN Billing and Technical Sales

My assignment as Nina, Billing and Technical Sales at the Mendocino Community Network (MCN), was perhaps my most unique to date.  I am pretty confident that we are the only school district in California to own an internet service provider.  As a school Superintendent, it has provided some new and interesting learning experiences.  I rely heavily on Sage, our manager at MCN to run the business.

Nina was substituting that day as our Office Manager, and I was glad she saved a difficult job for me to do.  She provided a list of customers who had been late on their payment and had already been contacted about making their payment.  My job was to call them and give them a “courtesy reminder” that their bill was overdue and for them to pay by next Tuesday to avoid disruption in their service.

Nina had written out a script for me, and Sage was monitoring my calls so I had a safety net.  I was nervous as I dialed for my first call.  The customer was gracious and asked if I could change her credit card number and to make it a monthly transaction.  I fumbled my way through it, but thanks to Sage’s guidance, it was a success.  The rest of the calls that day were much easier!

At MCN, we pride ourselves on our local, friendly customer service.  Our customers know that and appreciate that, which I think made my job much easier that day.  Chalk it up as another great learning opportunity that I would most likely not have experienced if it wasn’t for this project.

Photo by Sage Statham

K-8 School Admin Assistant

This past week I covered for Jeanne, one of our admin assistants at the K-8 School.  Jeanne and Tracy (our other admin assistant) have been working together for quite some time at the K-8 School.  Jeanne and Tracy are as smooth as Tinker to Evers, Concepcion to Morgan, and even Trammell to Whitaker.  Go ahead, Google them – and if you know Jeanne and Tracy, you won’t disagree with me.  I knew I couldn’t replace Jeanne in that double play combo, but I was excited to drink a cup of coffee, sit next to Tracy, and watch her work her magic in the morning.

At about 8:15, the phones started ringing, students and parents came in with various requests, and staff members came in to say hello…it was a crazy morning!  On one occasion, I answered the phone and there was another conversation in the background and I felt like I had to ask the caller to repeat their information about 5 times.  It was hard for me to handle one phone call with commotion.

Around 9:00, Tracy gave me some sobering information – that morning had been the slowest morning of the year!