Working in the privacy of your own home, away from the eyes of colleagues and visitors, it can be easy to slip into an over-relaxed attitude about the confidentiality of the information you're dealing with. I'm not suggesting that your family or visiting friends might use the information for unscrupulous ends, but you owe your clients and colleagues a high level of vigilance. Failure to observe this could result in the loss of work or your reputation, and that is hard to recover from. Maintain high levels of confidentiality in the following ways.
Have your own separate space for you to have somewhere to read documents and make phone calls without being overlooked or overheard. This is a great help.
Make sure you lock documents away in a filing cabinet when you have finished using them and keep computer passwords away from other family members.
If you are self-employed, find out if you should register as a data gatherer under the Data Protection Act. Surprisingly few businesses are exempt.
Make arrangements for daily data back-up, off-site if necessary. Losing confidential information is as bad as disclosing it to the wrong people.
Be careful when using your mobile phone in a public place; you never know who might be able to hear you.
Avoid a careless reference to your work or the people you deal with in conversations with friends. It's all too easy to inadvertently mention a name when your business and your casual chats are conducted in the same space, possibly even on the same phone. 'So-and-so toldme the other day. . . ' can slip out before you know it, so if in doubt, don't mention that topic or get into the habit of always adhering to the Chatham House Rule.
Chatham House is the home of the Royal Institute of International Affairs and the Rule was created almost a hundred years ago to promote freedom of discussion on sensitive topics. The Rule says 'When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed.'
In other words you may disclose a particular piece of information but not who gave it to you or the name of the organisation they belong to.
We all have customers, although the people you work for may not pay you directly for the work you do for them. If you work in the public sector your customers might be the people who live in your local authority area while your work is funded by government taxes. Or your customers could be your colleagues in the same or another department, who rely on your efforts to support them to deliver a service. It's said that 70% of dissatisfied customers take their business elsewhere, not for reasons of price or finding a better product, but because they are unhappy with the level of personal attention they are receiving. If you get your customer service right you have a much higher chance of hanging on to your current customers and not having to spend the time and money to find new ones.
Customer service is a huge subject and there are hundreds of books on it and millions of pages on the internet. It's not my intention to give you exhaustive coverage of the subject here, just to provide some points I've found particularly pertinent while working from home and running a small business.
Our website is not responsible for the information contained by this article. Articleinput.com is a free articles resource thus practically any visitor can submit an article. However if you notice any copyrighted material, please contact us and we will remove the article(s) in discussion right away.
Note: This article was sent to us by: Rita Allesen at 05292010
1. Keep your workspace at home separate and pay attention to details
All articles are property of their respective authors. Please read our Privacy Policy!
© 2009 ArticleInput.com.
Partners: Damenmode