Dear Users… (A thread for Sysadmin, Technical Support, and Help Desk people) Part 10

Status
Not open for further replies.
In a rare case of being asked to do something challenging, rewarding, and actually part of my job we will have an employee starting in 2 months who is hearing impaired, and we've asked for a text to speech solution and a caption compatible phone.
 
JoeMorgue said:
In a rare case of being asked to do something challenging, rewarding, and actually part of my job we will have an employee starting in 2 months who is hearing impaired, and we've asked for a text to speech solution and a caption compatible phone.
Click to expand...

By contrast, I'm currently stuck on all three of my current projects due to office politics struggles between other people.

Project 1 is now a pissing match between an executive vice president of something and a chief something something. I don't know which outranks which and apparently neither do they, and they're using this project as their opportunity to fight it out to see.

Project 2 is a change to past work but if the changes occur it's seen as a criticism of the people in charge of it last time so they're fighting to prove they're right and nothing needs to be done at all. We lose money each month until the changes are made, though, so everybody else is pretty keen to make those changes.

And Project 3, my favorite, is where the ninth person to occupy a particular position in the last four years is now attempting to understand the work I supplied to his eight predecessors. Oh wait, did I say "attempting to understand"? Of course not: they want the work changed radically before they understand what it actually is and does and what they're supposed to do with it. I don't know if they realize what happened to the last eight people in their position. Hint: it had to do with them not being able to cope with the work. I expect to be introduced to the tenth one shortly.
 
Dear User: if you have a request, make it. Don't pussyfoot around by instant messaging me crap like "Happy Wednesday!" and trying small talk. Just ask your question so I can tell you no, and we'll get on with our lives!
 
TragicMonkey said:
Dear User: if you have a request, make it. Don't pussyfoot around by instant messaging me crap like "Happy Wednesday!" and trying small talk. Just ask your question so I can tell you no, and we'll get on with our lives!
Click to expand...

One of my biggest stressors in life is that every role I fill, every social relationship I'm in, everything thing I do is about solving problems for other people.

And that moment right there is the worst of it. That fake, phony "Have I made enough small talk to I don't feel wrong asking you for something" moments are the absolute worst. I hate those moments. The "Would just ******* hurry up and ask me what you want? You aren't my friend. You don't care about me. I know this. You know I know. I know you know I know. Why are we playing this game?"
 
JoeMorgue said:
One of my biggest stressors in life is that every role I fill, every social relationship I'm in, everything thing I do is about solving problems for other people.

And that moment right there is the worst of it. That fake, phony "Have I made enough small talk to I don't feel wrong asking you for something" moments are the absolute worst. I hate those moments. The "Would just ******* hurry up and ask me what you want? You aren't my friend. You don't care about me. I know this. You know I know. I know you know I know. Why are we playing this game?"
Click to expand...

Tut, tut! You're doing it wrong. Everything you do should be about coming up with reasons 1) why nothing can be done, 2) why nothing should be done, and 3) why if something must be done it should be done by somebody else.
 
TragicMonkey said:
By contrast, I'm currently stuck on all three of my current projects due to office politics struggles between other people.
Project 1 is now a pissing match between an executive vice president of something and a chief something something. I don't know which outranks which and apparently neither do they, and they're using this project as their opportunity to fight it out to see.
Project 2 is a change to past work but if the changes occur it's seen as a criticism of the people in charge of it last time so they're fighting to prove they're right and nothing needs to be done at all. We lose money each month until the changes are made, though, so everybody else is pretty keen to make those changes.

And Project 3, my favorite, is where the ninth person to occupy a particular position in the last four years is now attempting to understand the work I supplied to his eight predecessors. Oh wait, did I say "attempting to understand"? Of course not: they want the work changed radically before they understand what it actually is and does and what they're supposed to do with it. I don't know if they realize what happened to the last eight people in their position. Hint: it had to do with them not being able to cope with the work. I expect to be introduced to the tenth one shortly.
Click to expand...

I wager 400 quatloos on the chief whatsit; VPs lack staying power.
 
JoeMorgue said:
One of my biggest stressors in life is that every role I fill, every social relationship I'm in, everything thing I do is about solving problems for other people.

And that moment right there is the worst of it. That fake, phony "Have I made enough small talk to I don't feel wrong asking you for something" moments are the absolute worst. I hate those moments. The "Would just ******* hurry up and ask me what you want? You aren't my friend. You don't care about me. I know this. You know I know. I know you know I know. Why are we playing this game?"
Click to expand...

I feel the same way about my meetup app.
 
Remember when I talked about the migration to ServiceNow? Which we now affectionately refer to as SNOW, which I think it pretty cool. It worked out pretty well.

Another big shift is coming. Right now we rely on Cisco Finesse to distribute calls around the Service Desk. It works just fine, which of course means that it has to be changed.

I am not optimistic about our change to Genesys PureCloud. We've had other call centres on our network who use this and the reports have not been good. We're just starting our training now and I have heard some pretty bad stuff about it. In particular, it tends to encourage the "achieve KPIs at all costs" model which in my experience - in everyone's experience - decreases customer satisfaction dramatically. Worse, it appears to be embracing gamification. Gamification! Of KPIs! What?

Unless this turns out to be completely untrue, this will be an absolute disaster.
 
arthwollipot said:
Remember when I talked about the migration to ServiceNow? Which we now affectionately refer to as SNOW, which I think it pretty cool. It worked out pretty well.



Another big shift is coming. Right now we rely on Cisco Finesse to distribute calls around the Service Desk. It works just fine, which of course means that it has to be changed.



I am not optimistic about our change to Genesys PureCloud. We've had other call centres on our network who use this and the reports have not been good. We're just starting our training now and I have heard some pretty bad stuff about it. In particular, it tends to encourage the "achieve KPIs at all costs" model which in my experience - in everyone's experience - decreases customer satisfaction dramatically. Worse, it appears to be embracing gamification. Gamification! Of KPIs! What?



Unless this turns out to be completely untrue, this will be an absolute disaster.
Click to expand...
Purecloud collects all the best KPIs and generates that most damming reports.
 
TragicMonkey said:
Tut, tut! You're doing it wrong. Everything you do should be about coming up with reasons 1) why nothing can be done, 2) why nothing should be done, and 3) why if something must be done it should be done by somebody else.
Click to expand...

This reminded me of "Yes, Minister" and the "Four Stage Strategy".

Stage 1 - Nothings going to happen.

Stage 2- Something's maybe going to happen, but we should do nothing about it.

Stage 3- Maybe we should do something about it, but there's nothing we can do.

Stage 4- Maybe we could have done something about it, but it's to late now.
 
arthwollipot said:
In particular, it tends to encourage the "achieve KPIs at all costs" model which in my experience - in everyone's experience - decreases customer satisfaction dramatically. Worse, it appears to be embracing gamification. Gamification! Of KPIs! What?

Unless this turns out to be completely untrue, this will be an absolute disaster.
Click to expand...

As I've ranted before these seem to encourage the mindset of "every thing is a separate ticket". So if I hire Jack and Jill and they need to be in groups, team1, team2, accesslist1, superuserstest etc, I need a ticket for John in team1, another for John in team2, another for Jill in team1 etc. When any decent system would allow me to raise 1 ticket that would break down into multiple tasks. I know because I used to have to support such a RYO system for bank mainframes.
So the grunts typing a command to add John to team1 shine while the highly paid team lead/manager waste their time filling in web forms.
 
arthwollipot said:
Remember when I talked about the migration to ServiceNow? Which we now affectionately refer to as SNOW, which I think it pretty cool. It worked out pretty well.

Another big shift is coming. Right now we rely on Cisco Finesse to distribute calls around the Service Desk. It works just fine, which of course means that it has to be changed.

I am not optimistic about our change to Genesys PureCloud. We've had other call centres on our network who use this and the reports have not been good. We're just starting our training now and I have heard some pretty bad stuff about it. In particular, it tends to encourage the "achieve KPIs at all costs" model which in my experience - in everyone's experience - decreases customer satisfaction dramatically. Worse, it appears to be embracing gamification. Gamification! Of KPIs! What?

Unless this turns out to be completely untrue, this will be an absolute disaster.
Click to expand...
Out of curiosity I asked a former colleague about it, her reply was not one to engender optimism.
 
rdaneel said:
This reminded me of "Yes, Minister" and the "Four Stage Strategy".

Stage 1 - Nothings going to happen.

Stage 2- Something's maybe going to happen, but we should do nothing about it.

Stage 3- Maybe we should do something about it, but there's nothing we can do.

Stage 4- Maybe we could have done something about it, but it's to late now.
Click to expand...

That show was packed full of practical wisdom. The world is full of maddening obfuscation, and I found I get on so much better when I embrace it.
 
TragicMonkey said:
Shut up! ASP was awesome! I used to have a job doing nothing but ASP! Cutting edge stuff!....although that was twenty-something years ago. Ahem. Well, it's still cool. I mean, it's still recognizable as having once been cool. Shut up, I'm not old! I'm not old!!!
Click to expand...

It wouldn't be quite so bad if it was just ASP, but it's not: it's ASP and FrontPage. Not only that, but the bits that are ASP and interacting with the database are devoid of prepared statements (which I have only just discovered are possible in ASP).
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Back
Top Bottom