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

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JoeMorgue said:
My issue is we have tiers, but what happens is people from lower tiers just now to go to their supervisor, who is on a higher tier, and have them put the ticket in for them. Ticket SLA is based on who put the ticket in, not who is actually having the problem.

This kind of rigid "Your X important so we help you Y fast" is really only an effective means of prioritizing incoming work in large organizations where everyone doesn't know everyone.
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Yep. The ones I’ve seen working best use the affected system (app/server/whatever, which each have a tier level assigned) and the number of affected users to generate a priority score. That’s less easy to game, because they have to detectably lie in writing to try and “jump” the queue. The only VIP tickets based on who submitted them were if it were VPs or above, and not too many would ask a VP to submit a ticket for them :)


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JoeMorgue said:
My issue is we have tiers, but what happens is people from lower tiers just now to go to their supervisor, who is on a higher tier, and have them put the ticket in for them. Ticket SLA is based on who put the ticket in, not who is actually having the problem.

This kind of rigid "Your X important so we help you Y fast" is really only an effective means of prioritizing incoming work in large organizations where everyone doesn't know everyone.
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We have exactly two tiers: VIP callers and everybody else. The VIPs are Ministers' offices, departmental secretaries and their staff and pretty much nobody else.

The problem with the New Starter Request procedure is that everyone and her cat has had to have their fingers in it and a a result what we've got is a mess of compromises, where people who aren't VIPs have to wait 3 days unless they don't want to.

And yep, my Confirmation Bias score for all of yesterday was 100%. Every call I got from the Followup line was about a NSR.
 
JoeMorgue said:
My issue is we have tiers, but what happens is people from lower tiers just now to go to their supervisor, who is on a higher tier, and have them put the ticket in for them. Ticket SLA is based on who put the ticket in, not who is actually having the problem.

This kind of rigid "Your X important so we help you Y fast" is really only an effective means of prioritizing incoming work in large organizations where everyone doesn't know everyone.
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Nope. The SLA should be based on how critical the problem is, regardless of how important the person who raises the ticket it is.
 
jeremyp said:
Nope. The SLA should be based on how critical the problem is, regardless of how important the person who raises the ticket it is.
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Heh. Then you just have the people who bypass the ticket system entirely. At my company anybody whose job title is "director" or above just sends an email. It's not so bad for me because my little team doesn't work from tickets, but when something needs to go elsewhere it causes problems because some divisions of the company will not do anything without a ticket. So somebody in the middle of the chain has to open a ticket for the bigwig, and handle everything from their side so the bigwig "isn't bothered" by communications... and the person on the other end of the line thinks the work is just for Manager Joe Blow and doesn't exert stellar efforts, only to be set on fire when their boss's boss's boss's boss's boss's boss shows up screaming because the president of the company wanted this ASAP for a meeting with *hushed tones* The Board *cast eyes heavenward*.

Which is why, in those situations, I shoot the next party in line an IM "thanks for handling this, by the way it's for Darth Vader and he's very interested in quick, accurate results" and such.
 
jeremyp said:
Nope. The SLA should be based on how critical the problem is, regardless of how important the person who raises the ticket it is.
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Yeah that's great, cool story bro, anyway back in the real world the CFO who controls whether or not we keep the IT support contract gets extra attention.

And as TM points out, it's hard enough to get them to use the ticketing system at all. They will just come to the IT Server room and bang on the door if I don't respond quickly enough.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Yeah that's great, cool story bro, anyway back in the real world the CFO who controls whether or not we keep the IT support contract gets extra attention.

And as TM points out, it's hard enough to get them to use the ticketing system at all. They will just come to the IT Server room and bang on the door if I don't respond quickly enough.
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Holy crap! You have to spend time in the server room?

I used to wear ear-plugs and noise cancelling headphones over the top if I had to be at the door of the server room. All those little fans make an incredible amount of noise when you have enough of them in one place.
 
novaphile said:
Holy crap! You have to spend time in the server room?

I used to wear ear-plugs and noise cancelling headphones over the top if I had to be at the door of the server room. All those little fans make an incredible amount of noise when you have enough of them in one place.
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It's not like I get an office.

And yes my desk is in the server room, right next to the racks. It's about a 30x30 windowless bunker with 3 AC units and 2 rows of 8 server racks.
 
Oh Boy! I just got a call from my favourite person in the world! She's a staff member in the Minister's office, but that does not excuse her rude, demanding and entitled attitude. She is the archetype of the bad customer, and everybody in support, at all levels, knows about her.

She has been put on administrative leave in the past in response to her behaviour. I'm betting that's going to happen again soon if she doesn't pull her head in.

Her problem was a common one that we have a simple script that is designed to fix. She flatly refused to do it. It would have taken her a minute and a half, but no, she insisted that I leave a message for a particular person in our Premier Support team to call her.

I didn't. I followed procedure. I documented everything and sent an email to my boss, as we have been advised to do when this particular person calls. Now, instead of a minute and a half, it's going to take bloody ages to get her very simple problem fixed, because nobody is inclined to rush on her behalf.
 
arthwollipot said:
I followed procedure. I documented everything and sent an email to my boss, as we have been advised to do when this particular person calls. Now, instead of a minute and a half, it's going to take bloody ages to get her very simple problem fixed, because nobody is inclined to rush on her behalf.
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I believe this is referred to as "malicious compliance." :D
 
Blue Mountain said:
I believe this is referred to as "malicious compliance." :D
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No - if I were to engage in malicious compliance, I would have just left a message for the individual she demanded I leave a message for, and that's it. That person may not even be in the office today, for all I know. But that wouldn't have been fair on him.

No, we have an informal standing order for issues with this particular person.

Problem is, I'm the sort of person who will get off the phone with a person like this, then run mental scenario after mental scenario, thinking about what I could have said, what I should have said, how I could have responded, what would I do if they said that, and on and on and on. I have to hijack my brain with something else just to get it out of my head, otherwise it will ruin the rest of my day.
 
arthwollipot said:
No - if I were to engage in malicious compliance, I would have just left a message for the individual she demanded I leave a message for, and that's it. That person may not even be in the office today, for all I know. But that wouldn't have been fair on him.

No, we have an informal standing order for issues with this particular person.

Problem is, I'm the sort of person who will get off the phone with a person like this, then run mental scenario after mental scenario, thinking about what I could have said, what I should have said, how I could have responded, what would I do if they said that, and on and on and on. I have to hijack my brain with something else just to get it out of my head, otherwise it will ruin the rest of my day.
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Think of booze later. It will help.
 
arthwollipot said:
Oh Boy! I just got a call from my favourite person in the world! She's a staff member in the Minister's office, but that does not excuse her rude, demanding and entitled attitude. She is the archetype of the bad customer, and everybody in support, at all levels, knows about her.

She has been put on administrative leave in the past in response to her behaviour. I'm betting that's going to happen again soon if she doesn't pull her head in.

Her problem was a common one that we have a simple script that is designed to fix. She flatly refused to do it. It would have taken her a minute and a half, but no, she insisted that I leave a message for a particular person in our Premier Support team to call her.

I didn't. I followed procedure. I documented everything and sent an email to my boss, as we have been advised to do when this particular person calls. Now, instead of a minute and a half, it's going to take bloody ages to get her very simple problem fixed, because nobody is inclined to rush on her behalf.
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Seems like there is a personality type that is attracted to being around government and feels very entitled.


arthwollipot said:
No - if I were to engage in malicious compliance, I would have just left a message for the individual she demanded I leave a message for, and that's it. That person may not even be in the office today, for all I know. But that wouldn't have been fair on him.

No, we have an informal standing order for issues with this particular person.

Problem is, I'm the sort of person who will get off the phone with a person like this, then run mental scenario after mental scenario, thinking about what I could have said, what I should have said, how I could have responded, what would I do if they said that, and on and on and on. I have to hijack my brain with something else just to get it out of my head, otherwise it will ruin the rest of my day.
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With someone like that, nothing you could have said could have made the situation better. I'm sure you could have made it worse.

As Wudang says, a comfy chair and a nice podcast. Or possibly something physical - maybe some friendly sparring (I seem to recall you saying that you do HEMA)?
 
Oh, dear. I feel bad for making fun of Lean projects now. I've been asked to "assist" with one (I'm not formally a member of the project team, thankfully) and I've realized that this cross-disciplinary group summoned from different departments and job titles and ranks and experience is working hard....on busywork. The project is meant to tackle an important thing, yes...but I happen to know that other, better people are already working on this important thing in a much more serious way. I think this Lean group was put together and given this to simply occupy themselves so it can be said "yes, we had X many Lean projects this year!" They're starting to do a baby version of the thing. It's like they're toddlers making Play-Doh hot dogs for a play tea party while next door a team of five hundred world-class chefs are putting together the wedding banquet for when Jesus returns and marries a Kardashian. It's tragic. But also funny.
 
TragicMonkey said:
Oh, dear. I feel bad for making fun of Lean projects now. I've been asked to "assist" with one (I'm not formally a member of the project team, thankfully) and I've realized that this cross-disciplinary group summoned from different departments and job titles and ranks and experience is working hard....on busywork. The project is meant to tackle an important thing, yes...but I happen to know that other, better people are already working on this important thing in a much more serious way. I think this Lean group was put together and given this to simply occupy themselves so it can be said "yes, we had X many Lean projects this year!" They're starting to do a baby version of the thing. It's like they're toddlers making Play-Doh hot dogs for a play tea party while next door a team of five hundred world-class chefs are putting together the wedding banquet for when Jesus returns and marries a Kardashian. It's tragic. But also funny.
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Are they paying you extra? Can you wangle time off to be involved in this? And can you get your work laptop to connect to wifi during meetings to access the internet and browse websites like this instead of contributing to playtime?
 
Norman Alexander said:
Are they paying you extra? Can you wangle time off to be involved in this? And can you get your work laptop to connect to wifi during meetings to access the internet and browse websites like this instead of contributing to playtime?
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Oh, it's no burden to me to be in this thing. It took me less than an hour to pull enough data to choke them into analysis paralysis -- if they even get that far. So far they're struggling with the notion of "collect data then draw conclusions"; they wanted to "brainstorm possible causes" then go straight to "come up with solutions for them". I'm just going to drop the data on them and let them play with it.
 
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