Your Aunt Polly "Pauline" used to work as what is now known as an administrative assistant. You go to her to ask her opinion on keeping the information on your customers. You figure that she should have a good bit of experience working with others in an office environment and you feel that her input will be valuable. So, over a plate of cookies you talk...
Aunt Polly:Let me see if I understand this. You want to keep a list of your customers like their names, who they work for, their phone numbers, etc. Everyone in the office will need to look at this information every once in awhile. But because someone may end up talking to a customer you talked to you don't want to just keep the information just by yourselves? Well, back when I was with Wee, Cheat'Em, and Howe we used to keep a book with all of the main points of contact with all of the local law enforcement, judges, clerks, and the like. And when any of us wanted to call one we would just get the book and call them. I mean, each of us used to keep copies of the main people we called all the time on a piece of paper on our blotters near the phone.
Do people still use blotters?
You nod your head
Anyway, I would say you should use a word processor. That way you can keep a sheet on each person with whatever information you want. Then you could just print the sheet and put it in the book. It won't matter really who keeps the files since you'll have the printed copies in the book. And if you want to jot down some notes on someone you can just write on the paper. If you want more than one sheet (after you've written on the back side) you can just put the person's name and such on the next sheet and staple or paperclip it to the other sheet.
You: So you recommend we use a word processor to keep the information but mainly we would print out the sheets and keep them in a book?
Aunt Polly: Yes.
You: Why wouldn't you just keep the files on the computer and if you want to look up someone you would just open their file?
Aunt Polly: I guess you can do it that way, but if you want to keep them all on a single computer and just go to that computer to look at the files then you could. pause But wouldn't that take up more space than just keeping a book? And if you want to look at a sheet then you could just take it from the book while someone else is looking up other information. You can't both be on the same computer at the same time.
Aunt Polly shakes her head
You: Ok. How would you know what file belongs to what person?
Aunt Polly: Well, we used to use the first letter of their first name and then six letters of their last name.
You: Well, I'm not sure. I know of two J. Johansson's that are our customers.
Aunt Polly: Oh, well, you have 8 letters to use so you just use the last as a number. We never had more than 9 of anyone in our office records.
You are thinking that Aunt Polly thinks the file names are still 8 characters and a three letter extension. You mentally file away that in this case you could put the persons name and company name as the file name without many problems.
You: Thanks Aunt Polly.
Now you can go ahead and look at a summary of lessons learned from your second interview.
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