Unexpected Appreciation

I have been whining in my last posts about the tough situation at work the past few days and Monday was no better.

I had a tough call with the customer.  I was the only person from my organization, a couple folks from a vendor organization and probably about 10 folks from the customer side. Most were just listeners but few of them who has the biggest issue took off on those same issues AGAIN.  I did my best to answer their concerns, explain the situation, next steps blah blah, and the call ended with them somewhat appeased.

Anyway so after a week like that, today I unexpectedly got all sorts of appreciation and kudos from different people.

First off I was invited by my UK colleagues to participate in a 3-day virtual trade show in London.  Its a fabulous opportunity and cool to be interacting with folks on a trade show floor but via video.  A nice tidbit to add to my resume.  The guy managing the UK office emailed my boss requesting my attendance and was very complimentary of me.  In fact his extra words were  " [Sunflower] is great to put in front of customers, knows the products and services extremely well and will represent the company brilliantly". So, that was good to hear :-)

At noon, my colleague, T, and I were on a call with our vendor, the same guy who was an attendee on the Monday call with the irate customer. He complimented me profusely on how well I handled that call and how professional I sounded and how good my responses were given it was a obviously a very unpleasant call to take. It was such great feedback since one rarely knows how one sounds to other people and how one come across on the phone. It was good validation and felt nice to hear some compliments in the presence of another colleague.

Then, in the late afternoon, I was on a call with my boss and my colleague, T, to discuss some pricing issues. I was more of a listener since my role is not related to pricing but I was on the call to cover some other project items. Anyways, I came up with an "out of the box" idea of how to price our services to customers which would be more amiably received -- both T and boss were quite impressed and decided to use my suggestion.

And lastly, I had an old colleague of mine email me to see if I was looking to make a change since his organization was looking for some folks.

So, all in all, a good day to feel somewhat valued in the organization.