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

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arthwollipot said:
Instead of a simple table, each queue has a separate widget that crams as many parameters as possible into tiny squares, which are then tiled across the screen.
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I just realised that I described this wrong. It's not the queues that get the widget, it's the parameters. We have a widget called "Calls Waiting" and each queue has a separate line in this widget. Next to it we have a widget called "Calls offered", and again each queue has its own line. We're separating these sideways. How I initially described it would have been better than this.

We also see agents' availability in strict alphabetical order, not separated by queue. The only way we can tell who will be taking the next call is to look at the duration each person has been in Idle status. This cannot be changed or modified in any way.

Doesn't matter. We're live. And for the most part it works. Everything else we'll deal with later.
 
Well, that was a day. For the most part, most things worked most of the time. The Team Leaders and management people ran about like chooks with their heads cut off, but in the end they did what needed to be done.

I'm just glad they scheduled the changeover for a Friday.

Have a good weekend, everyone.
 
Dear Users.

Laptops don't have a great "shelf life" for lack of a better term. I know you all want a laptop to keep in your desk drawer and let it sit there for months so you can just grab it on a whim when you want to work from home or another site but that's not really how it can work. Those things needs updates and have to periodically check in or they get kicked off the domain.

If you want a spare laptop fine, it's your money you're buying them doesn't skin my hide none, but if you want to use them like you want to use them LEAVE THEM PLUGGED IN AND ONLINE on some corner of your desk so they can get their updates and stay on the domain.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Dear Users.

Laptops don't have a great "shelf life" for lack of a better term. I know you all want a laptop to keep in your desk drawer and let it sit there for months so you can just grab it on a whim when you want to work from home or another site but that's not really how it can work. Those things needs updates and have to periodically check in or they get kicked off the domain.

If you want a spare laptop fine, it's your money you're buying them doesn't skin my hide none, but if you want to use them like you want to use them LEAVE THEM PLUGGED IN AND ONLINE on some corner of your desk so they can get their updates and stay on the domain.
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Heh. My last manager had "an emergency laptop" that she left in a cupboard for a couple of years. When she finally needed it and connected it up it actually did power on...but then it started with the required automatic updates which ran for thirty hours or so.
 
xterra said:
But not important enough for us to hire more customer service people to answer calls.
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Or focus more on first call resolution to reduce the number of people calling back for something that should already be fixed. Nope, we instruct our reps to shuffle you off the phone as quickly as they have an excuse to, and have you go to the back of the line.
 
Wudang said:
"Please hold until it's no longer important to you".
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To serve you better, we have replaced all of the humans that could have helped you with your call...

... You're still in the queue and we're still not going to answer you.

... Current wait times are extreme, because the remaining six humans are now wrestling with ****** software that works even worse than the software we had before, but hey! Some of our managers had lunch at a fancy restaurant at the vendor's expense so this is OK.

... We keep talking like this so that you think you've finally reached a human, it's all part of the psychological torture designed to make you hang up.

... You are currently in position 1,945,746 in the queue, estimated waiting time is 47 days.
 
Skeptical Greg said:
Fastest way to get past PhoneBot:

Say " Close my account.. "
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Payment got screwed up for something I ordered so the quickest way was just to reorder after making sure that first order was canceled. So, I get on to their service department and the first agent confirms it's canceled. I thank him then hang up and I've barely pressed the button when my phone rings. It's someone else from the service department wanting to know how they can help me. I'm like "Your system called me, how can I help you?". I let him know I had got what I needed from the other agent and his system must have screwed up calling me back. He insisted on getting the order number so I gave it to him, noting I already know what I needed and that he was wasting his time. After hanging on for a bit while he kept claiming to be reviewing my order. He started going into the 'if we get disconnected speil'. Which is when I finally got fed up and said "look you want to review it, you knock yourself out. I already got what I needed from the other agent before your system called back by mistake once already, bye" and hung up.
 
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gnome said:
Or focus more on first call resolution to reduce the number of people calling back for something that should already be fixed. Nope, we instruct our reps to shuffle you off the phone as quickly as they have an excuse to, and have you go to the back of the line.
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This is where things have really changed over the last couple of decades. And is why many companies can outsource their customer services, customer service staff don't work for the company you have an issue with and they can only do what is on their resolution checklists, they have no authority to do anything else. They can't get up and go and see Joan in accounts to try and sort something out. It's why I always smile these days when people ask "for a manager", you are just going to get the manager of the call-centre and they also won't be an employee of the company you have an issue with.
 
I'm on VoIP jobs this week so less actual taking calls, then after Easter I've got a week off.

This is going to be one of the longest 4-day weeks of my life.
 
No enhanced callout rate for the holiest day in the christian calendar, I am going to write to the bishop
 
Filippo Lippi said:
No enhanced callout rate for the holiest day in the christian calendar, I am going to write to the bishop
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I always found being on call on holidays to be a double-edged sword. Yeah, the overall volume should be a lot lower with so many people not working...but some of the ones who are working are really pissed off about having to work on a holiday, so they find/make problems and magnify them and take their temper out on you.
 
Our support is mainly for batch systems and I'm back-up, in case the first-line guy needs some additional know-how. I was being, what's the word? Greedy
 
TragicMonkey said:
I always found being on call on holidays to be a double-edged sword. Yeah, the overall volume should be a lot lower with so many people not working...but some of the ones who are working are really pissed off about having to work on a holiday, so they find/make problems and magnify them and take their temper out on you.
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I hope not.

It isn't really an IT problem, but the logic is similar. Our hospitals here in Durham, NC require that any patient undergoing surgery get a Covid test two days before said surgery.

So I'm going in for a Covid test at 10:30am on Easter Sunday.

I hope they have a large pool of agnostics and atheists to draw on, cheerfully welcoming the overtime. But judging from the way they assign late shifts to nurses (my ex is an RN of 30 years), it seems unlikely that they would bother with anything so HR friendly.
 
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