Dear Users... (A thread for Sysadmin, Technical Support, and Help Desk people)

[Wudang]

Yeah, that'd be nice, but this is government. We're required to adhere to SLAs, and one of those is first-contact resolution, and we are financially penalised if we do not meet them.

The call centre my brother worked in years ago had absolutely no KPIs related to resolution. Their "mystery callers" from the customers they handled calls for rated him very highly as he listened and sorted their problems but his bosses rated him as poor as all their KPIs related to how many times he used the customer's name, how cheery he was and chirping "is there anything else I can help you with" after failing to help at all.

 

[Mongrel]

The call centre my brother worked in years ago had absolutely no KPIs related to resolution. Their "mystery callers" from the customers they handled calls for rated him very highly as he listened and sorted their problems but his bosses rated him as poor as all their KPIs related to how many times he used the customer's name, how cheery he was and chirping "is there anything else I can help you with" after failing to help at all.

I moved out of a support role when our helpdesk turned to that model. When I started it was calls per day & first time fixes then it changed to "we recruit for customer service and can teach them the tech stuff" (hint: you can't) then they changed the targets to prioritise the "Can explain how I can't help in the nicest way possible" calls

 

[zooterkin]

I spent my career in IT moving closer and closer to the end user (not something I particularly relished, but that's where the opportunities were). I avoided the idiocies of KPIs when I was in support by mostly working on high complexity, low volume products that were used by systems administrators (who were supposedly trained, though that seemed to fall by the wayside if a company contracted out the running of their systems to a third party). In my last job, I was occasionally actually talking to end users who seemed to know little about computers in general, so was not too upset when the company decided (for reasons I cannot discuss ) that they no longer needed my services.

 

[arthwollipot]

The call centre my brother worked in years ago had absolutely no KPIs related to resolution. Their "mystery callers" from the customers they handled calls for rated him very highly as he listened and sorted their problems but his bosses rated him as poor as all their KPIs related to how many times he used the customer's name, how cheery he was and chirping "is there anything else I can help you with" after failing to help at all.

That's an exceptionally poor set of KPIs.

I moved out of a support role when our helpdesk turned to that model. When I started it was calls per day & first time fixes then it changed to "we recruit for customer service and can teach them the tech stuff" (hint: you can't) then they changed the targets to prioritise the "Can explain how I can't help in the nicest way possible" calls

In my experience T1 is an entry-level job, so a high degree of technical competence is not necessary. Customer service is a more valuable selection criterion. T1s are often part-time jobs while they are studying, too. So they get their qualifications at uni, then move on to non-Service Desk jobs where their quals are vaguely relevant.

Personally I spent something like 15 years doing T1, so I'm bloody great at customer service - my speciality is telling someone something they don't want to hear and having them report a positive interaction anyway - but I don't have a deep technical knowledge of anything. From where I am, my intention is to move into the admin/management stream rather than technical.

 

[Wudang]

That's an exceptionally poor set of KPIs.

Not surprising given the company. They had to sell a new mobile a few years back and were given zero briefing. "Has it got what? Pixels? Are they a good thing? Oh well it's got that then. How many? Err a lot?"

I resolved never to open a certain bank account after hearing some horror stories.

 

[Darat]

That's an exceptionally poor set of KPIs.

In my experience T1 is an entry-level job, so a high degree of technical competence is not necessary. Customer service is a more valuable selection criterion. T1s are often part-time jobs while they are studying, too. So they get their qualifications at uni, then move on to non-Service Desk jobs where their quals are vaguely relevant.

Personally I spent something like 15 years doing T1, so I'm bloody great at customer service - my speciality is telling someone something they don't want to hear and having them report a positive interaction anyway - but I don't have a deep technical knowledge of anything. From where I am, my intention is to move into the admin/management stream rather than technical.

In the commercial world most companies use variants of NPS (net promoter score), this is according to "business thought" the best way to measure a company's interaction with a customer. The concept is flawed from beginning to end and is usually implemented to reduce "bonus" pay outs.

 

[Mongrel]

In my experience T1 is an entry-level job, so a high degree of technical competence is not necessary. Customer service is a more valuable selection criterion. T1s are often part-time jobs while they are studying, too. So they get their qualifications at uni, then move on to non-Service Desk jobs where their quals are vaguely relevant.

Personally I spent something like 15 years doing T1, so I'm bloody great at customer service - my speciality is telling someone something they don't want to hear and having them report a positive interaction anyway - but I don't have a deep technical knowledge of anything. From where I am, my intention is to move into the admin/management stream rather than technical.

Nope - we started with proper technical people on the frontlines, a small cluster of unoffical "These guys knew their stuff" and a small callback team to handle the really tough questions.

 

[JoeMorgue]

In most cases T1 is pretty entry level, requiring only the ability to understand terminology and follow a script.

And to be clear there's nothing wrong with that. Yes the vast majority of trouble calls are simple password resets, printer mappings, file permissions, and stuff like that that can be done on that level. Throwing an actual tech at any of the problems to apply actual troubleshooting would be a waste of time.

 

[arthwollipot]

End of financial year shenanigans.

You know what's great? Someone's already been waiting in the queue for ten minutes, and when they finally do get through they speak... as... slowly... as... possible...

 

[novaphile]

End of financial year shenanigans.

You know what's great? Someone's already been waiting in the queue for ten minutes, and when they finally do get through they speak... as... slowly... as... possible...

I've met a couple of people that speak like that, one had MS and the other had a disabling stammer, unless they used that technique...

 

[TragicMonkey]

Grrrr. Yet again, someone doesn't understand that they need to arrange an actual phone line in order to have a meeting in Microsoft Teams with people who don't have microphones and speakers on their computer. People working from home on work-issued laptops don't have all the same hardware as people sitting in an office conference room. Jesus Christ, my work laptop doesn't even have a sound card for some reason. No, I'm not going to join the meeting just to watch people cutesy portrait icons glow when they say something I can't hear. Why we need Teams anyway is a mystery -- I've attended about five hundred Teams meetings since March and not one has shared a screen.

Just use the goddamn phone, you feckless idiots!

 

[JoeMorgue]

I actually had a user mentioned to me in passing that "I've seen (Person's name)'s face more in Teams in the last week while he's been working from home then I've seen it in person here at the office in the 5 years we've both worked here."

 

[arthwollipot]

I've met a couple of people that speak like that, one had MS and the other had a disabling stammer, unless they used that technique...

I'm pretty sure that for some people, once they get through the wait period they want to hang on for as long as possible so that they don't have to call back and wait again.

And this despite the fact that 90% of the time there's no wait at all.

 

[theprestige]

DEVELOPER: My builds are failing due to timeouts trying to download my packages from your server. [URL of package collection] [URL of Failing Job]

ME: I see BIG PACKAGE in that collection, is that the one that's taking too long to download?

DEV: . . .

ME: I'm getting consistently good download times for BIG PACKAGE. What are you getting?

DEV: . . .

ME: Okay, I'm looking at the logs for Failing Job, and I'm not seeing any log events that look like a file transfer timeout. I'm not even seeing any events that reference BIG PACKAGE. Can you tell me where in the logs I should look for the timeout events?

DEV: It's these log events: "Error downloading OTHER PACKAGE from OTHER COLLECTION - package not found."

ME: That's not a slow download issue. OTHER PACKAGE is truly not present on my server. You'll need to put it there before you can download it from there.

DEV: My bad. We do have jobs failing because of slow downloads.

ME: No worries. Can you provide the logs for one of those jobs please?

DEV: Never mind. I'll get back to you if I see it again.

ME: . . .

 

[TragicMonkey]

....

....

....

...all of that, and you didn't even make a BIG PACKAGE joke?!

...

...

...sometimes a BIG PACKAGE is worth waiting for. Somebody had to say it. Sheesh.

 

[arthwollipot]

...sometimes a BIG PACKAGE is worth waiting for. Somebody had to say it. Sheesh.

Thanks for taking that BIG PACKAGE for us, Trag.

 

[lauwersw]

my work laptop doesn't even have a sound card for some reason.

Does that even exist these days?

Why we need Teams anyway is a mystery -- I've attended about five hundred Teams meetings since March and not one has shared a screen.

Just use the goddamn phone, you feckless idiots!

The reason is simple: saving money on phone bills. They could buy sound cards with that!

 

[quadraginta]

my work laptop doesn't even have a sound card for some reason.

Does that even exist these days?

<snip>

I had the same thought.

I would have figured that a laptop without audio already built into it would be some sort of custom job, and would cost extra.

 

[TragicMonkey]

Does that even exist these days?

It's probably in there but not officially installed in Device Manager, and since mere peons using the laptop aren't allowed admin rights I can't do that myself.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Sounds cards really do seem to have died as a mainstream PC component. Back in the 90s/2000s your sound card was as big of a part of your computer build as your graphics card was, especially in gaming.

But I guess since "multimedia" stopped being a thing some computers did and became something all computers were just default expected to do that's no longer the case.