Posts Tagged ‘baseball’

At the beginning of the baseball season, we gave away tickets for a lucky customer to see a Texas Rangers game, and as a result of that generosity, the Rangers thought it fitting to make it to the World Series. Well … our little giveaway may not have had anything to do with their success, but we like to think our support helped a little.

Understanding that we have customers and employees who are die-hard St. Louis Cardinals fans, I don’t want to turn anyone off with this blog post, but with all of the buzz in the air about the World Series coming back to Arlington this year, I started thinking about the Top 10 Ways SoftLayer is Like the Texas Rangers:

10. Secret handshakes / fist bumps.
9. Have a no “I” in “Team” mentality … In fact, there are no I’s in “Texas Rangers” or “SoftLayer.”
8. Teams’ leaders (i.e. coach and the CEO) are … um … charismatic (to say the least).
7. Come ready to play on any day that ends in “y.”
6. Strong lineups all the way through.
5. Texas is home, but both teams do amazing jobs “on the road.”
4. Both have Michaels who like pink.*
3. Both have Louisville Slugger bats … The Rangers’ bats do great things, while SoftLayer’s bats are given to recognize employees that have done great things.
2. Support is awesome from the customers (fans) to the back office to the team on the field making plays.
1. Champions of the World, baby!!**

* Apologies to Michael Young, as this statement may not be true as applied to him. Each of my blogs to date has a veiled (or obvious) reference to our CFO, and it was very difficult to think of how to incorporate this reference in a blog dealing with the Texas Rangers, so I may have taken undue liberties for which I apologize.

** The aspirations associated with that last comparison may have strayed me from an unbiased comparison.

-@badvizsla

If you didn’t read the title to this post in the singsong seventh-inning stretch tune, the rest of this post probably won’t be for you. For those of you who just got to “Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack,” as the song kept playing in your head, you’re going to love the news we have to share. We’ll wait for you to finish belting out “At the old ball game!” first, though.

[Pausing here for everyone to finish the song.]

Now that everyone’s back together, I want you to make sure you don’t lose any of that late-inning adrenaline because you might need it at the end of this post.

SoftLayer is all about customer experience. Just ask Skinman. If you’re a SoftLayer employee and you don’t have “the customer” in the top slot of your “work priorities” list, you’ll either need to update that list quickly or update your résumé. This post isn’t about THE SoftLayer customer experience, though … It’s about A SoftLayer customer experience.

THE SoftLayer customer experience is all about automation, efficiency, service and innovation. A SoftLayer customer experience uses the term in a much more general sense: It’s any opportunity we have to give back to our customers in the form of events, contests, and in this case, baseball tickets! If you’re a SoftLayer customer, you’re entitled to more fun than our competitors’ customers … And if that’s not in our terms of service, it probably should be.

Throughout the 2011 Major League Baseball season, SoftLayer will be giving away tickets to Texas Rangers home games in Arlington, Texas! We’re going to keep you guessing about how/when/where we’ll be giving them away, but if you keep your eye on the SoftLayer Blog, follow @SoftLayer on Twitter, subscribe to SoftLayerTube on YouTube and “Like” us on Facebook, you’ll be the first to hear.

We’re pretty sure customers in the DFW area are going to be the most excited, since they can root for the home team, but as the season progresses, the net may be cast significantly wider … Reaching out to customers in other parts of the country (world?) who love SoftLayer and want to catch a game while they’re in town for a data center tour. But let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves just yet. Let’s give away our first set of tickets!

Texas Rangers v. Anaheim Angels

• Date: Monday, April 18, 2011
• Time: 7:05pm
• Location: Rangers Ballpark in Arlington
• Seats: 2 – Section 26 (Lower Level, behind Home Plate!)
• Transportation: You’re responsible for transportation to/from the park

How to Enter
Since our first giveaway doesn’t include transportation to/from the game, the primary pool of participants will be customers who live within driving distance (or happen to be in the DFW area on April 18). Entry into the competition is simple: Comment on this post about why you love SoftLayer.

When you’re entering your email, please use a contact address associated with your SoftLayer account. Submissions will be accepted from now until 10 a.m. CDT on Thursday, April 14, so get to writing! We’ll have a quick internal vote for all of the submissions after removing your contact information to obscure on which account goes with which response. If your submission wins, we’ll email you on Thursday to arrange for ticket delivery … You’ll have the whole weekend to get excited about the game!

Play Ball!

-@khazard

Alright…get ready for some cheese…(but, it is true cheese!)

I really enjoy being part of the SoftLayer team. One of my co-workers and I have a little banter going back and forth regarding our SoftLayer technical support dayshift team. He decided that I should do part of his job one day because he was TIRED! I told him that, “There is no crying in baseball!” He went on to say that if I were a good team player that I would take up the slack when another team member is down. I told him that a coach (shift lead) simply puts in a new player and the “down player” sits on the bench. He then told me that I am no Billy Martin! I responded that he IS my Roberto Vanderlay. He said that he has never heard of Roberto Vanderlay! I said, “Exactly!” Roberto Vanderlay never made it to the big leagues cuz he spent too much time on the bench!

Anyway, this is all in good fun. This co-worker of mine is a very hard worker and he has been promoted after a very short time with SoftLayer. He has begun to specialize in networking while continuing to perform his duties as a CSA. He is essentially doing two jobs SUCCESSFULLY! And that brings me to the point for writing this blog. I thoroughly enjoy working with these guys because they work very hard and pay close attention to detail. They have integrity. They are NOT looking for ways to waste time or do as little work as possible. This cannot be said of very many employees of very many companies. Usually it is 20% of the employees doing 80% of the work. Not true at Softlayer! Yes, of course we all make mistakes at times, but I can trust that my co-workers are working as hard as possible in order to make as few mistakes as possible. But, I am not the only one that benefits from this type of integrity. Our customers are the direct beneficiaries!

A customer was working with Romeo R. today and insisted on speaking with his supervisor in order to express her satisfaction and gratitude for a job well done. She said that Romeo was patient with her, helped to clarify her issue, and finally resolve the issue. She told me to give him a raise! I told her that I would pass her praise for Romeo up the chain of command and that we really appreciate her taking time to show appreciation for hard work. This is not an unusual occurrence, although usually customers will show their gratitude through an update in their ticket. Whoever hired these guys did a great job in selecting great employees with a strong work ethic and the customers of SoftLayer can, and do, affirm this.

I really enjoy coming to work knowing that I have the privilege of working with these types of people.

Ok…ok…he is my Pudge! But don’t let it go to your head!

-David