(no subject)

[red-scully.livejournal.com]

Dear Luser Who Sounds Like He's On The Verge Of Either Weeping Or Exploding With Rage,

I'm sorry, but you did NOT ring half an hour ago and log a call.  I know this because the person you originally claimed you spoke to does not exist.  The person you then claimed you had actually spoken to tells me he did not take a call from you.  What actually happened is that you rang everyone on the Helldesk on their DIRECT LINES and left them imploring voicemails, before calling the actual Helldesk number half an hour later and coming to me.  I'm sorry that you've been waiting half an hour 'for someone to come and fix this urgent problem' but if we don't know about it, we can't fix it.  Furthermore, don't tell me that a call has 'definitely been logged' when it hasn't.  When I ask for a reference number and don't get one, I know you're fibbing.

Furthermore, do NOT lie to me about the problem when you know full well what is actually going on.  If you forgot to tell us in advance that someone was coming to work in the office and would need a network connection for her laptop, and realise only ten minutes before they're due to do some Urgent Work, do NOT call us claiming that "it's just a password that needs resetting".  This will not achieve ANYTHING apart from me having to erase and rewrite the entire call log when I realise what's actually going on here, i.e. your own incompetence.  A password reset is NOTHING to do with needing to plug a computer into the network.  Nothing at all.  I know you know this because about five minutes into the conversation you suddenly said that you knew what actually needed to be done was that a network connection should be provided.

Finally, please don't be so rude to me.  Again, it's not my fault that you didn't actually log a call.  Sighing and emphasising how important this is, and how you've apparently been sat by the phone for half an hour waiting for us to fix something that we didn't know about, isn't going to make me help you when it's accompanied by tutting and the implied opinion that we're a bunch of lazy twits.

I hate you,

Red_Scully
 

Comments

[barbituratecat.livejournal.com]

Ugh, I hate when they do that! "I've called THIRTY TIMES, and you have STILL NOT fixed this. When are you guys going to get off your lazy asses and FIX THIS?!"

And then you check their call records, and see thirty notes from other techs that all say "Customer called to complain about problem, hung up before service call could be booked/support could be offered".

[red-scully.livejournal.com]

Those people just need to die, seriously. Luckily I don't get many of those, although I do have a current Repeat Offender who keeps refusing to make the changes I've suggested, because he doesn't trust that I'm right (long story short, he thinks that shutting down his desktop is the same as shutting down a server... don't get me started), so he carries on doing the same thing, which causes the problem, and then calls me to ask why his problem is still occurring. Apparently everyone else closes his calls without looking at them because they hate him so much. I pray I never reach that level...

[jecook]

That's an easy fix, especially if you can connect to his computer remotely:

Set up a scheduled task to run at midnight or some other odd hour that you can be certain that he's not in to run "shutdown.exe -f -t 5" and set it to run as the "SYSTEM" user.

(the -f forces the shutdown, and the -t 5 is a 5 second grace period.)


He might lose anything that he's not saved, but you can always claim that there was a power outage overnight or something. :)

[red-scully.livejournal.com]

Man, I'd love to do that, but he works mainly from home, remoting into his machine in order to hop onto the server he *maintains* (I know, I know, it fills me with horror too) and I don't know what days he's in or out, plus he often works from home at weird hours of the night/evening/morning/weekend, and might do it three days in a row, so I can't switch it off because then he won't be able to get in the next day if he needs to... Excellent idea though!

[jecook]

Scheduled tasks can be set up to do a "run once" in the scheduleing... :)

[red-scully.livejournal.com]

Yeah but the issue is that he does need to work a lot of weird hours, and I don't want to prevent him from doing that; I just want the stupid fool to SHUT DOWN HIS MACHINE when he's definitely finished, rather than just logging off and leaving it on.

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I just realised a whole new category of things I can fix for corporate helpdesks, using just three words: User. Team. Chargebacks.

I'll put it under my general category of "The Helpdesk Is Not A Dumpster", I think. There's the 20/80 rule about who takes up the most helpdesk resources, and then there's the ultradouche elite of that 20% who should never be allowed direct access to a technician.

[grrltechie.livejournal.com]

Yeah. We get this a lot. Also? Complain about having a problem for X hours and how nobody ever answers the Helldesk. That'll get you far. Know what will get you a LOT farther? Actually, you know, leaving a fucking message on the Helldesk voicemail. Instead of calling every other number in the department, then calling the Helldesk and hanging up before voicemail kicks in. Three times in a row. Cause I'm just sitting here waiting to see if you'll actually call that magical number of times before I answer. (sometimes I am sitting there, but not answering for a valid reason. or because I HATE YOU. either one works)

/pardon my rambling, I is feverish :(

[red-scully.livejournal.com]

*hugs you* It's ok... it's going to be fine... This just proves that these people are bad for our health.

[benatwork.livejournal.com]

Heh. That reminds me of a time when I had to call my ISP's support for something a while back. Apparently, the guy who was position #1 on the board decided to go on break without actually logging out or locking the computer or whatever it was. It'd just ring, get picked up, and all I'd hear is the rest of the office murmuring in the background, no matter how many times I tried. I finally had to leave that phone on hold and call again from my other cel to get the next person in line..

[hisamishness.livejournal.com]

I solved the unheard voicemail issue. Well, at least for me. VM is disabled on my extension. You get an announcement "call x#### for techhelp, to get me, send an email to A@B.Com" and that's it. :-)

[jecook]

Same here- none of our support lines have voicemail enabled.

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

Exactly. Especially in corporate setups, what's going to happen even if someone does manage to leave a coherent voicemail saying who they are, what their number is, and what the problem is?

- The person is there on that number when the helpdesk calls back at 9am or whenever the next shift starts. In which case it's no different from the person making the call to helpdesk at that time. Stick a notice of hours on the auto-answer.

- The person is not there on that number when the helpdesk calls back, in which case there's not usually a lot that can be done.

- Rarely, the person will not be able to be there when the helpdesk opens, but is overseeing some system which is definitely actually important AND they're capable of describing the problem to a degree which would allow a fix to be done without them needing to be called back. In this case, there's two possibilities - either the problem will be called in again during opening hours by someone else affected by it (and if no-one else is affected by it, it's not that urgent), or the overseer will have a direct line to a specialist team responsible for that particular system.

If they're VERY lucky, the specialist team will even have contact hours outside those of the helpdesk. But it's not likely. Which takes us back to the immediately previous scenario.

If it does get to the point where something seriously important breaks and there is no emergency after-hours technical contact for it (helpdesk or otherwise), then to be blunt that's a management decision which has been made regarding the amount of support and digital firefighting they're willing to pay for. Having voicemail is not going to change that.

The only use I've actually encountered for voicemail on a helpdesk has been on the manager's personal line, to allow staff who aren't well to call in before the start of the first shift and advise that they won't be in.

[hisamishness.livejournal.com]

The helpdesk # is answered 24x7x365-1/4. It's my personal line that has no VM.

With always-on coverage of the main #, there should be no reason for anyone to ever 'need' to leave me a VM at work.

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

Logically, yeah. But wait until someone in management reads a business article about the wonders of voicemail.

[hisamishness.livejournal.com]

That's so last century - no, now it would be the miracles of converged messenging, and how everyone needs to have their VMs show up in their inboxes despite nobody having headphones to listen to them privately...