This should be interesting...

[grayhawkfh.livejournal.com]

In the last 3 weeks, we've lost 4 of the HellDesk staff.

Unfortunately, it's the good ones that left.

The ops manager just came up to me. Asked if I would mind helping to cover the HellDesk phones. The inference was that this was not really a request. In the interest of staying employed, I said that I'd help where & when I could.

I foresee many LARTs being delivered by me in the near future. Maybe I can even whip this bunch of a-holes into shape.

OK, probably not. But I can dream, right?

(x-posted to my LJ and to TSC)

Comments

[superbus.livejournal.com]

Wait...

So you guys lose 4 HellDeskers, and they decide to strong-arm one of their few remaining good employees?

Holy shit. That goes to show why they lost four of their best people.

[falnfenix]

it's incredibly common.

one of the jobs i recently interviewed for threw me for a loop: the manager believes that his best people need to be on the phones, rather than doing actual work.

it's no wonder i've seen their ad up repeatedly in the past year. they wear their "best people" out.

[canray.livejournal.com]

Yes, let's make our Best People do the High-Stress Monkey Work while the Monkey's do the things that cause the High Stress in the first place.

[falnfenix]

yes...morons. they wouldn't cut it as management in my department...we're way too high stress. yay for clinical work!

[superbus.livejournal.com]

At my job, we're expected to be both; the Lv. 1s handle most of the calls, but the 2s and 3s are also expected to be on the phone often. This is in addition to doing our primary jobs and maintenance.

Thankfully, because our customers consist of banks with IT teams, most of the people we deal with are good.

But yeah, if you have your "best people" always on the phone with end users, they're going to go elsewhere. Call centre work is entry level shit.

[jecook]

+1.

Just spent the last two days back at my last position because the meat bucket that normally works yesterday and today was out on PTO. (which he's taken an uncommonly large amount of- one day a week...) Fortunately, things were slow enough today that I managed to get a few things mostly done from my normal queue.

[falnfenix]

at mine, L2 is backup for L1, while L3 is really the network group.

at this point i'm still wondering what i'm doing there. i'm L1 and i know more than two of our L2 techs. one had to be told what a WEP key is. the other has never had experience with Windows (while i can't fault her on this, my manager shouldn't have put her in a L2 position). one of my L1 techs is ... well, never in his seat. the other works limited hours because he's in school.

based on this knowledge, guess who does most of the phone work on helldesk.

[superbus.livejournal.com]

We're pretty much the same way, but we also do a very good job of training the junior techs. We've got 3 L1 techs (one in India), a couple level 2s, and myself and my supervisor are L3.

For us, everyone is on the phone at some point; be it following up with a customer, or working an issue with them on the phone (again, usually not an end user), but we do a good job of everyone getting involved equally. We don't do workforce politics, and the last one that tried, we dumped his ass.

But we'd also never have someone in an L2 position that doesn't know basic stuff like that. You should keep that CV updated...