(no subject)

[the-paco.livejournal.com]

Hi. I'm a tier 3 agent now for DSL. Kind of stupid, since there isn't a tier one. But hey, who am I to argue with idiotic bureaucracy?
"Ok Paco, we'll bite, what's a Tier 3 agent do in your cookie cutter organization?"
Well, it's simple.
The techs call in, the techs ask questions, we answer. We critique the techs notes, we guide them on what they should be troubleshooting and how.
We laugh about the idiotic ones and try to prod the smarter ones.
The techs call in with an angry customer who wants to talk to a higher level tech (but not a supervisor!). We take the customer and absolutely zero crap.
We solve problems. The supervisors come to us, ask us for tech help. Hand us phone numbers to track down, and basically do everything a tech could do assuming the tech were not a n00b or the most retarded thing to ever come out of the sea and put on a headset.
We're the ones who call the internal departments, put up with the most insipid and repetative hold music, and get the spice flowing again.
We're the ones the maintainence central offices call when they realize a tech was 'tarded and the customer needs some real troubleshooting.

Simple. Right now %90 of the community is going "Dur-HEY, Paco. You're in TECHSUPPORT. We know."

What Tier Three tech support is NOT:
We're not the ones who you come to for validation as to your righteousness when you have no troubleshooting notes.
We're not 'general question' people who give free info without a remedy ticket number.
We're not here to do your job for you.
We're not the ones you cold transfer the customers to when you can't hang.
We're not wrong.
We're still not answering your question without a remedy ticket number.
We're still not wrong.
We're not going to sit idly by and not track your dumb ass down and submit you to the big-brother types for re-education when you piss us off by doing everything exactly wrong.
We're not about to let you squirm out of not doing everything you need to do to escalate an issue.
We're not answering your idiotic question without an idiotic remedy ticket number.
Even if we're proven wrong by some later event, only we can say we were wrong, and then guess what.

WE WEREN'T WRONG, WE WERE MISINFORMED BY MANAGEMENT AND THE CONTRACTOR. Under no circumstances should you EVER. EVER. Argue with a tier three agent about proceedure.

Ever.

Whose butt is that in the tier 3 chair? Wait, whose? Oh yeah! That's MY butt grove right there! And you're still a tech! Level one! Level "I take the high queues, the first level customers, and all the crap." The first filter in a triple layer filter that seperates the idiot customers from the customers with real problems with OUR SERVICE. That means, this being a meritocracy, that I by default know more than you, and you know enough to swallow your pride and call in when you're lost. Because I will wipe your tiny nose, bolster your spirits, help you through the rough time, and load you back in the cannon to be fired back into the fray.

So when I tell you, mr level dick agent, that you need access hours for EVERY SINGLE dispatch you set up, the only response that should come out of your mouth is "Yes Sir." NOT 5-7 minutes of quibbling and exclamations of "That's different from before." Because I could give two craps about you and your OPINIONS, or your claims of ignorance, or your admissions of retardation. Do as I say, shut up, and get back on the dang phone.

---

Man... that guy was tailor-made for pissing me off.

Comments

[pope-guilty.livejournal.com]

I used to do tier 2 DSL suppourt. We were the front line- tier one was, by all accounts, actually a complicasted voice menu system that the customers hated. When they updated the call closing to include "Is there anything else I can do for you?", for at least the first week 5 out of 6 Coors drinking fuckfaces replied "Git rid of that got-damned recording!"

And yeah. You. Do. Not. Argue. With. Tier. 3. Still, you're doing better than my old workplace- one Tier 2 actually left his desk and charged the Tier 3 row, and was narrowly prevented from assaulting a Tier 3 agent who'd pissed him off. I kept waiting for the fact that I'd referred the guy to bite me in the ass (an Ops Desk guy who is a common acquaintance, upon realising what I'd done, laughingly damned me), but nobody seemed to care.

[lions-tambua.livejournal.com]

aeh.... yes sir :) youre right! *G*
---
well, iam level-1 agent too. i know the problems of them.
but i also see that an 2nd level will NEVER take an case without having FACTS and at least one (but usually 3) Engineer-Calls

Sorry, but i cant believe there are first-level agent who run over to 3rd!! Level with every case. Ok, we have an middle-stage between 1st and 2nd level called "Swat".
These SWATs are more 2nd Level than 1st Level, they also dont take calls out of the line, but they dont work on 2nd Level Cases. They have an open ear for the 1st level agent if they have quick questions about Procedures, technical stuff, "might that work?", "how does that work" and stuff like that.

and 3rd Level ? oh... i never have seen one of them in person or even talked to one ;)

[pope-guilty.livejournal.com]

And hell, come to think of it, you don't work in Longview, do you?

[greylady.livejournal.com]

Repeat with me.

"Why are you here?... No, not what is your problem, issue or request. Why are you standing here."

I miss the days of not being front-line support. It's not my fault the company lumps us all together and I'm sick of reading computer screens to people...

[the-paco.livejournal.com]

Nope. Never heard of that one.

[pope-guilty.livejournal.com]

I worked in Fishers, and there's another call centre for my previous employer in Longview, Texas. Thought maybe you were at that one.

[sketchydave.livejournal.com]

Ahh Tier 1. When I was in college I worked summers as a Tier 1 tech for an ISP. I remember the day I got promoted to Tier 2. Well, *I* didn't get promoted to Tier 2, our department did. The company bought an office a few states over and manned them with people who had zero technical knowlege and read off a script. Most had a pulse...I think.

[klytus.livejournal.com]

We only have 2 Tiers in our service desk - but each department is an entirely different company. Some are very good, others are... less so. Nothing frustrates me more than handing off a case to Tier 2, and having them get back to us the next day asking for more information... when the information that they are asking for is already in the case notes, and we would not have lost time on this case if they had bothered to read the friggin' worklog!!!

Not that I'm not bitter about it.

[loosechanj.livejournal.com]

Yeabbut what if you're tier 4?

[akage.livejournal.com]

No offense, but that's the kind of attitude that makes me want to clock someone. I've had plenty of dealings with techs who were technically higher than me in the hierarchy, but didn't know their ass from a hole in the ground. Or kept saying that the problem was in Team B's support envelope, and then Team B says no, it's Team A's responsibility, and they play ticket tennis while I have a user calling in six days in a row, threatening to eat my firstborn.

Respect where respect is due. None where it's not warranted.

[the-paco.livejournal.com]

Yep, understandable, but there are some issues that don't need to be questioned. In issues of departmental responsibility, and/or other things that lead to angry-customer-pong, I and the others take the customer and track that down/solve it.

When it's stuff the tech is supposed to do, as in this case getting access hours for any escalated ticket, which is a policy we've had in place since we started doing DSL, then yes. We are unquestioned.

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

It's inter-level annoyances like this that have made me push for a single physical location for all our IT teams at work (no luck after six years, go figure). Sometimes you just need to go and clock someone, or pull their boss aside for a word, or even just grease the gears with a log printout and a quiet 'next time check this, mmmkay?'

We do actually have a building a couple of suburbs away that would be perfect for this purpose - it's an ex-government-lab and is effectively a single open area the size of a warehouse, carpeted and infested by a couple hundred desks.

Not that we'll ever be allowed within sniffing distance of something so grand as a decommissioned warehouse.

*bitterness*

[geekgrrl-ca.livejournal.com]

Here policy changes so much and so often everyone's wrong all the time.