Sometimes I wonder why we even bother...

[sessifet25.livejournal.com]

A ticket from one of our resellers:

The customer is having intermittent connection problems with their internet service. Can you investigate please? This has been since the Cardif exchange problems a couple of weeks ago.

That was the full extent of the ticket. Oh, and they provided the customer's CLI. Not a lot to go on. So I fired back the following:

Please clarify as to what fault the customer is experiencing and what you have done to try to resolve it. With the information provided, we cannot perform adequate testing. Note: This is not me trying to avoid work. This is me trying to figure out what this reseller is talking about when they talk about 'intermitttent connection'. Some mean intermittent sync, some mean intermittent PPP, some dropping authentication and yet others use this for intermittent slow throughput issues. And all of these faults need if not different testing, then at least a different approach. We are trying to get them all to be consistent, but it is slow going. At least we've got half of them convinced to stop raising everything as bloody, sodding 'broadband miscellaneous'.

Coworker of mine picked the ticket up today and called me over. The reseller had reopened it with this:

The customer initially logged a fault with us a couple of weeks ago when there was an issue with the Cardiff exchange they are on. Since then they have intermittently been having problems with their internet connection in that it doesn`t always appear to be working. The fault only started after the exchange work had been completed and running a line test on Supportal shows Line Stability Rating as Intermittent Stability, which believe is causing the issue, possibly at the exchange?

Well, that just clears things right up. Thanks. Oh wait. It doesn't.

The 'line test' they refer to is nothing more than the line statistics. If the connection is intermittent for whatever reason the line stability rating will indeed show 'intermittent stability'. I just don't get why you would decide to resell ADSL2+ if you've no idea how to support it. And this is not rocket science! We're not talking about knowing the ins and outs of our network. We're talking basic stuff here. They get a nice welcome pack and training on how to use the support systems when they come over to us. They get told what the different fault types mean and what standards there are for raising a ticket into our queue. They get told how to do basic troubleshooting. I personally suspect we're just wasting our time and should just give them an A4 sheet of paper with our contact number on it and how to raise a fault. Because that's pretty much all they do anyway and we're just making a lot of trees nervous.

I especially love 'they have intermittently been having problems with their internet connection in that it doesn`t always appear to be working'. I just want to take that sentence home and cuddle it and give it much love. Coworker and I had a word with the manager who suggested we run line tests anyway and educate them a bit. My suggestion of this education involving us hunting down this particular agent and headumacate them with half a brick was not carried forward.

I never get to have any fun...

As to why we even bother? I don't know. Consensus seems to be 'hey, self-torture makes you smart!'.

(In other news, I nearly sent a ticket back earlier today with the words 'the customer appears to have an underlying intermittent stabbity fault'. I occasionally worry about my subconscious.

Comments

[barbituratecat.livejournal.com]

Ugh, 'intermittent connection' issues are the bane of my existence. Because it's almost NEVER the connection that's at fault. "My internet goes down" can mean anything from "the website I'm trying to access isn't working", or "my router is dead", or even "My computer is full of viruses and I can't open my browser AT ALL".

And trying to tell someone that we can literally see that their modem has been connected 100%, for the past X amount of days? "No, it wasn't!"

[sessifet25.livejournal.com]

Ah yes. I remember those. Fortunately I don't deal with end-users directly anymore, so most of the chaff has been removed by the time it comes through to us. Mind you, what does come through is usually enough to make us stare at it for ten minutes, then giggle hysterically and doing all testing anyway because, seriously, people can't be this stupid, right? Hope springs eternal and all that...

[reddragdiva]

The trouble with the filtering process is that you end up with:

1. real problems, which involve work.
2. drooling idiocy.

And nothing else.

[sessifet25.livejournal.com]

I've found the drooling idiocy ones also require real work. We want to educate these people, if only to give their poor, poor customers a chance to have a fault fixed.

And normally I really don't mind either. The first ones allow me to learn more stuff and the second one at least provides me with a giggle.

Unfortunately, work is insane at the moment, mostly due to the general rollout of our second dynamic line management system. It's breaking stuff in interesting ways even though we were told this on was New and Improved and ShinyPerfect and would not fuck stuff up like the first one. I now spend my days working almost nothing but intermittent sync and slow speeds issues where I have to change line profiles and disable the bloody DLM (which now has taken to turning itself back on!). So my patience for stupid things like this ticket is...somewhat limited.

[reddragdiva]

Yuh, I did intarweb tech support in the dialup days (1999-2000). I still manifest post-traumatic stress disorder at the sound of a modem connecting.

We had 12% Mac users (we'd bought a small Mac-specialist ISP). Macs basically Just Worked back then too, so they were only 2% of the calls. And they were all either (a) insanely difficult or (b) too stupid to work a Mac. And there's nothing quite like providing technical assistance to someone too stupid to work a Mac.

[barbituratecat.livejournal.com]

You can't seriously believe that, I know I don't ;)

A few weeks ago I had an extremely irate customer whose modem couldn't connect. Finally, I got enough information out of him, and the sparse notes from the three other techs - he moved his modem and installed a cheapo splitter. I got him to go straight to coax, and his connection came on instantly. HOW did that get through three other techs without anyone bypassing the farking splitter?!

[jarad.livejournal.com]

Customers lie. The most infamous one in my workplace was a customer who reported their ADSL not working one morning. We asked if anyone had changed anything on the phone line, and they said no.

When our engineer got to the premises later that day, it turned out that the ADSL was on their fax line, and during the night someone had broken in and stolen the fax machine, yanking the socket clean off the wall in the process. The customer had sellotaped the socket back together and plugged in a new fax machine, and as far as they were concerned 'nothing had changed'.

[10binary-cats.livejournal.com]

Cardiff exchange?

Bloody Torchwood!

[linguafranca.livejournal.com]

Haha, that's what I thought, too! Obviously, the rift is open again, and that's what's causing the intermittent connection problems.

[kingogre.livejournal.com]

Offtah reddragdiva... I worked dialup back then as well and man working with mac users were either wow you know so much more about I do about mac's why are you calling me or torture.