Short and Sweet...

[amynnah.livejournal.com]

Dear Users on the 5th Floor in One Particular Department,

It is not necessary to flood us with calls about the same damned printer, all at the same time. We got it the first call. When I hear my fellow Helldesk coworkers on the phones with people on the same floor, calling about the exact same problem, at the exact same time as I am...

...that cuts efficiency. A lot. Not only are you flooding out other callers with different problems, you're tying up the Helldesk, Support, your fellow coworkers, and after 3pm, we're shortstaffed. Fortunately, we're pretty quick on the uptake and tied it into one ticket (yay for Windows Messenger).

Please pretend you're not completely mentally defunct and keep in mind there are other people than you bunch of special, unique snowflakes. Support's coming, and they're going to be pissed at all the notes we've all collectively plopped on this ticket.

Thank you.
amynnah, whose friggin' wisdom tooth was yoinked out last night, and is without pain meds today, yet is at work trying to help you ungrateful bunch of asses.

Comments

[syberghost.livejournal.com]

Go and collect the printer. Keep it for a day on the first ticket.

Return it, fixed.

30 minutes later, collect it again, saying it's on the second ticket. Keep it two days this time.

When you show up the third time, some of the snowflakes may melt a little.

[redhillian.livejournal.com]

This.

Also, sympathy on the tooth thing for the OP. I suggest inflicting pain on lusers. But I'm a harsh man who gets to use power tools for one of my other jobs.

[melstav]

When a guy brings a sawzall or powder-actuated nailer to his job as IT techsupport / help-desk, you definitely know something's up.

[redhillian.livejournal.com]

Now, the reciprocating saw I'm very familiar with, but the powder-actuated nailer? I want. I don't think we have those in the UK tho'.

[melstav]

They are fun tools to use.

I rented one when I built walls in my basement.

[amynnah.livejournal.com]

I'm good now... :) A few days after drinking my food and avoiding the Deadly Dry Socket, I'm in excellent shape.

Thank you! <3

[zendequervain.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you were able avoid the dry sockets. I wasn't. T_T

Both of my bottom ones went dry, and I got strep throat at the same time, but they couldn't tell, because I couldn't open my mouth wide enough. Bawwwww.

[japester.livejournal.com]

::laughs::

brilliant!

[boogara.livejournal.com]

I know how that is. Like when an Exchange Server goes down, we get at least 100-200 calls at once saying "I can't access my e-mail". At my work we tend to send out IMs saying stuff like, "these people..need...to...listen..." as we have it announced before anyone answers the call what major issues are happening.

[spiker-uk.livejournal.com]

However, when the only means of communicating widely to people is via email, there can be a bit of a bootstrap problem. :-) Just recently, the only notification we had of Exchange delays... was an email sent via Exchange (and got delayed)...

[boogara.livejournal.com]

Yeeeeah, but it's more of the fact that if you're having an issue, and it's been escalated (since we don't post a message on the voice prompt w/o it being escalated first), having everyone and their sisters call us about it is not going to make the procedure move faster...:'(

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

This is why I always push to have onsite tech reps at all locations, even if they're nothing more than an administrative point. If a company has more than 50 people per helpdesker, make the staff report all technical issues through their local accumulator.

Bonus points if you can then get the local reps trained in basic gruntwork - replacing consumables, rebooting, and referring people to their own managers for password resets.

[emsporter.livejournal.com]

We sort-of have this in place. And the local accumulators sometimes refuse to let us talk to 'their' staff, no matter how much I may need to speak to an individual with a problem in order to troubleshoot effectively...

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

I usually run into the opposite problem, in that the local reps get no funding, no training, and no preparation, and subsequently are more than happy to simply abandon their role and let their entire office overload the helpdesk at once.

Most of them are more than happy to fob one of their staff off on the helpdesk, given the chance. Of course, in most places, we had direct access to the staff phone directory, and the better class of site tech would know enough to figure out whether they should call from the user's desk or whether they could take it back to their own.

[trixtah.livejournal.com]

So send out an email to everyone on the floor saying the printer is out of order, or get one of the lusers to put a note on it saying the Helldesk has been informed. Or are they psychically supposed to know that the problem has been reported?

[amynnah.livejournal.com]

No, they're our problem children.
We realize they're not psychic... that's on our job description (and no, none of us are actually able to read minds).

Here's the breakdown:
They tell their supervisor.
They call us anyway.
Their supervisor calls us.
Rinse and repeat.

Thank you for your concern. :)