Oh, the opportunity.

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

Today, I was presented with a rather rare opportunity.

In five weeks, I quit. Given that it would take several months to do the paperwork to fire me (government job), I am effectively invulnerable for this short time.

So I sent an email to the CEO, my Boss-to-the-power-8 (Boss^8), saying that I could shave two million a year off the Helpdesk running costs while improving all metrics.

Monday, I and Boss^5 get a reply saying "Talk."

This morning, I get an email from Boss^5 saying "You, me, and Boss^4. Next Thursday, my office, one hour. This had better be good."

So, in addition to my big song and dance number, what do YOU think upper management needs to hear from the front lines?

Comments

[kostika.livejournal.com]

There's only one thing I can think of that happens so litte.

Listen to them.

[twfarlan.livejournal.com]

Cost saving? You mean other than eliminating several layers of useless flab, aka managers? ;)

[fearrett.livejournal.com]

Pay.
Techs.
More.

[blossomingfire.livejournal.com]

Users should be held accountable for abusing techs. You called US, we're obviously not the dipshits here.

[guinevere33.livejournal.com]

The person making the ultimate call about what techs do and do not need to do their jobs effectively should NOT be a number-cruncher with no technical or help desk experience.

[inahandbasket]

+ a kajillion.

Tech management should be people with tech support experience. No ifs, ands, or buts. Promote from within and the management will actually know what needs to be done to be more effective.
Don't know how well that'd go over with your boss though. hehe!

Hiring:
Involve the upper tier techs in the hiring process to avoid resume-padders! If I have to work with one more schlub off the street who went to a 2 months "intensive training course" and that's their only computer related skills... so help me $DIETY heads will roll.
Get tech-geeks in there and hire more tech-geeks. To overgeneralize, ideal candidates' homepages should be set to slashdot, not ESPN.

[kostika.livejournal.com]

YES YES YES!!! Hire geeks not people who got into IT cause it's good money. These kind of assholes are what's making it hard for me to find work. Experience means nothing when this guy over here has 3 certs and no real tech knowledge.

Sorry...rant over. Bit of a sensative topic for me.

[network-nerd.livejournal.com]

Hire geeks who want to do IT and have specifically worked at it or at least trained for it.

Stop hiring geeks who are just willing to put in time doing support until a "real" tech job comes available.

[kizayaen.livejournal.com]

^3.

Investing in people who not only know their tech issues down pat but have pride in that knowledge will pay off immediately in training costs. Having those people on hands will guarantee the metrics gains that you're trying to sell. Actively supporting these people and compensating them commensurately will increase your retention rate and morale, with the dual effects of raising productivity AND remove the need to train as many replacements... thus cutting training costs over the long run as well.

This works at every level which has any direct hands-on whatsoever with tech support. That means your front line techs on level 1, it means your advanced desks at levels 2+, it means your techs' managers, it means the PR flaks who hire the tech boys, it means everyone up to the CTO of the company. It's extremely frustrated when a technical person can't work with management because management has no concept of issues involved. As a semi-related note, when I underwent my HR initial phone interview, I barely slipped by. The HR schlub was reading canned questions with canned answers and made the mistake of first asking me what the difference was between Ethernet and token-ring networking. I deluged her with information until she told me to stop several minutes later, and in a fairly confused voice admitted that she didn't have the first clue whether I was right or wrong but that I certainly seemed to know something about this networking stuff. If you must have non-techs in HR, they need to be able to grade based on knowledgeability, or the appearance thereof, not on whether the answer matched what was on the printed answer key.

Corporate incentives for meeting goals, quotas, and SLAs should come in the form of credit or giftcards with thinkgeek.com. This will attract exactly the sort of individuals you want.

Let's face it here. It really really is not that hard to find the technically inclined in today's society. There's plenty of us to go around. All you have to do is not go out of your way to alienate us.

I also recommend taking chances on the techs who know their shit cold but have no formal work experience in the field. Practical experience has shown to me... hell, to all of us, we've all been there... that these people will generally acclimate more quickly than your average training program will account for, and these guys will be so grateful to get the job that they'll never consider leaving.

To reiterate: Competent, knowledgeable employees who can have pride in their workplace and their work will be more likely to take initiative, more likely to work above the minimum required to meet goals, more likely to put in overtime when the SHTF.

[jecook]

I award all the posters in this thread 5 golden coins.

[omg-teh-funnay.livejournal.com]

That may be the greatest argument for having technical people involved at all levels that I've ever seen.

Do you mind if I copy/paste this and keep it for the 'reorg' meetings that I"m supposed to be involved in? I'll even give you credit for it

[kizayaen.livejournal.com]

I consider that comment to be licensed under the Creative Commons Whatnot and Random Stuffies. Or something. ;)

Use at will.

[rileydag.livejournal.com]

My "holy-shit, he's speaking the truth-o-meter" just hit it's highest level yet.

If we could only get management "listen" and follow your argument, life would be great.

[duality.livejournal.com]

there is no way on god's green earth that some of the people that i've worked with at the same place got that question. considering one of my twits actually wanted a resolution in our system for how to turn on the computers because she didn't know. aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrgh!

[kalium.livejournal.com]

Bonus points if they read ArsTechnica.

[inahandbasket]

and engadget, and theregister, and anandtech, and and and...
;-)

[echan.livejournal.com]

Techs on the floor get to hear about all the weird issues that aren't technically "known issues", but that are happening frequently to a lot of users. Example: one of the products I support has an issue when you do access restrictions in a certain way; you can get around the issue by mounting it using the IP address instead of the network name.

The techs need three things -- a way to communicate to eachother about these sorts of issues, a way to communicate various solutions (both those tried and failed, and those that work), and a way to communicate to those in power (possibly all the way up to the developers) what is going wrong with their products.

Too many organizations place no value in the issues uncovered by techs, the techs who deal directly with users every day and are in one of the best positions to ferret out bugs.

[bard-mercutio.livejournal.com]

I've been lucky to have few layers of management (max: 2), but what I've appreciate most in my bosses is that they deflected user criticism of me as a tech and didn't put the blame back on me. Maybe it's because my bosses have always been techies, but they've accepted that yes, some people will always complain and you can't make everyone happy. Not to say that they universally excused poor behavior -- but they knew the difference between the same ol' shit and the problematic kind.

[merlin-t-wizard.livejournal.com]

Talk about burning bridges behind you! I think you've just used a tactical nuke.
There are a lot of good suggestions here. I'd add taking the e-mail you received "You, me, and Boss^4. Next Thursday, my office, one hour. This had better be good." and doing a forward to the CEO, showing him/her middle management's response to an attempt to make things better. I guess the This had better be good just rubs me the wrong way.

[kalium.livejournal.com]

My guts says that's just a paraphrase.

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

It is. The full email was a bit rambly. The interesting bit is that Boss^5 has a bit of a loose cannon reputation - at any given time, she may do the management thing or the right thing, and there's not really any good way to predict which. I was hoping to bypass her and get hold of Boss^6, but it looks like I'll have to grit my teeth and go in with all charts blazing.

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

I think you've just used a tactical nuke.

It's a style I use a lot when working for government. It's about the only thing that gets through to people, and to date (after more than a decade), the only backlash of any real note has been multiple promotions.

(I probably wouldn't use this tactic in the private sector.)

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

Yes, the IVR is in the top five of things that need fixing. Currently responsible for ten to eleven percent of our incoming (down from the 19% I had it pegged at originally).

Basically, our breakdown of incoming calls is:
38% - stuff that callers should have told their manager about, not us
33% - stuff that's been broken for years, and would be frickin' simple to fix permanently
17% - actual technical work and provision of high-level info
6% - admin which could be devolved to local management or the users themselves
6% - misc crap

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

I've had an improved script waiting to go for over two years now. I'm hoping that I'll get to be the one to record it, but I'll be just as happy for anyone with a clear, understandable voice and IVR recording experience to take care of it instead.

[valiskeogh.livejournal.com]

we'd better get an update!

[goose-entity.livejournal.com]

oh, my.

For a start - there should be a clearly delimited line where tech support ends, and training starts. Too many times I have fielded issues where it comes down to the user NOT KNOWING HOW TO USE THEIR WORK TOOLS.

This is NOT, I repeat NOT AN ISSUE FOR TECHSUPPORT! Techsupport are NOT there to TRAIN USERS how to do their work!

Damnit! Blood pressure went up just THINKING about those clueless morons!

[harry-whodunnit.livejournal.com]

Support your techs properly.

Your knowledgebase should be a living document, people on the floor should be able to update it as and when needed, it should be regularly checked for redundant or outdated documents and broken links. Don't leave incorrect or vague information in the live knowledgebase because you're 'waiting for sign-off on the changes' or 'a policy needs clarifying'.

If you send important bulletins via email, don't flood the techs with unnecessary information, and don't leave the notices until the last minute. Your aim is to inform people of important events before they happen.

Your lead techs should have access to the people they need. In my case (ISP helpdesk) it was the NOC, and management recoiled in horror at the thought of floor staff actually communicating with them at will, without being filtered through 'channels'. Consequently, when network-impacting outages occurred, we found out from customers, which was embarrassing for everyone involved, and frustrating for staff and users.

Encourage people to communicate. In a perfect world this wouldn't need saying, but when one department launches a new initiative which potentially affects everyone in the company, everyone in the company should know. Before it happens, unless there are compelling reasons to keep it on the downlow.

[megpie71.livejournal.com]

Trust me, the knowledge base is a living document. I'm the sap who has the job of ensuring that it is so. However, it's hard to keep it a living document when the people who *use* it don't bother to mention that something is broken. I work on the same floor as them, in the same environment, and I am reachable by phone, by email, by instant message, in person, and via all forms of communication save possibly smoke signals (which would trigger a fire alarm) and elephant messenger (because the elephant wouldn't fit in the lift). Yet I still don't hear about things until someone raises the issue of "too much dead wood" in the knowledge base. There might be a wee issue of responsibilities here...

Informing people of events before they happen - this may happen in fantasy land, but in the Australian public service (or at least in our division thereof) notification two weeks after the crap has hit the industrial-strength wind machine is considered to be practically miraculous. Six weeks later is timely. What we actually need in these cases is the ability to point out to various groups that the upgrade they are timetabling for a nice quiet time in *their* schedule actually coincides with about six different prospective crises in *ours*, and we'd really appreciate it being pushed back a week, thanks very much.

The core problem at this particular point in time is that the Service Desk has been relegated to the position of an also-ran in the whole business. As far as the various development teams are concerned, we exist purely to act as a buffer for them. We aren't permitted to have the authority to actually *fix* things, or to insist that they be fixed. We have been effectively corralled into the role of job-logging and forwarding things to other teams. Given this, it is hardly surprising that in the past four customer surveys we've done (over a period of 2 years), there's an increasing level of complaint that the helldesk are only able to transfer the callers to another desk, or take their details and get someone else to fix the problem, or whatever. They call us for help, and we can't (read: aren't allowed to) provide it.

*fume*

Sixteen more days... sixteen more working days and I'm out of there, and it is officially Not My Problem.

[majicke.livejournal.com]

*sits back with the marshmallows and the popcorn*

now she could react in 2 ways

1. Nod her head, smile a little and ignore you. Safe in the knowledge she at least *looks* like she gets ideas from the plebs.

2. Agree with you, delay any action until the mess blows over and then ignore it.

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

And three months later, I send email to the CEO again saying "I gave all the fixes to Boss^5 with step-by-step instructions; I presume that she has provided the $2m budget savings by now."

[neferde.livejournal.com]

You're in government. That right there is going to be a HUGE hurdle to get over. If you do your hiring from one giant mega-pool from the state DOP database or if you actually get to advertise on your own for help, check and see what the current applications for tech support say and get rid of all the details on there that assure that you don't get people with practical work experience and only get those with a degree or trade school training. The first major thing that will save you money is getting employees who have worked, in one form or another, as tech support, even if only in a college part-time situation. The more experience they have, the more they'll be prepared for the challenges that come with working tech support, as well as being less likely to leave soon due to the job being too hard or stressful.

Give the promoted-from-inside upper level techs hiring and especially firing recommendations. They might not be able to directly hire or fire, but they're the ones who are actively working with the techs and who know what the position and department need in order to succeed. Allowing the beancounters to hire and fire based on nothing more than what they perceive to be best for the department when they have no experience in the area they're hiring and firing for is a waste of money.

Second biggest money waster is not listening to the techs themselves. If they suggest an espresso machine in the breakroom as a way to increase productivity (through moral) TRY IT. A $150 machine can easily save $10,000 in dissatisfied customers if it increases the moral of the techs. Be willing to invest small amounts of money to get large increases in non-monetary ways. Both moral and customer satisfaction can get the whole department a better reputation, which leads to an increase in funding by the state/feds(when played right by the beancounters).

Reaffirm (and enforce) the basic rules of who is to call for support and where they should be when they call for support. Having a user inform management of a tech problem, only to have the manager report it for them hours, maybe days, later means that the user wasn't able to do their job until the manager found time to report it. It also allows the user to slack off with complaints like "Well I reported it! It's not MY fault it didn't get fixed so I could do this really important project!"

Have two techs who's permanent priority is taking care of permanently or chronically broken problem-makers. Give them the authority to talk to the developers, requisition hardware quickly, and be general make-things-work people. Even just two people working on those sorts of problems will cut down massively on the amount of those kinds of calls that the techs have to deal with. And there's nothing worse for a user to hear than "We don't have the power to fix that major issue. You'll have to deal." That right there is a complete and total funding killer if it gets around that calling the techs is a waste of time.

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

I'm going to bring up a list of outstanding problems which could be so, SO simply fixed with a little programmer time. They're the cause of 800-850 calls per week, and some of them have been ongoing for eight years or more. Some are as simple as changing the text of an error message.

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

As a new note, I just did a quick personnel survey.

Aside from two two-person subteams, we are paying for fifty-three warm bodies from the Helpdesk budget.

At any given moment, we are lucky to have more than fifteen of these people actually taking calls.

Perhaps two will be what I consider genuinely capable technicians.

Based on the actual amount of real, genuine work we take in, I could run the Helpdesk with ten people: Seven techs, two supervisor/QA positions, and one manager. That's assuming I could pick and choose the right people.

I think I'll offer to do it with twenty, if only because most of the people we have to draw from aren't as useful as I'd like, and there are bound to be inefficiencies (such as vacation time and being off sick) I haven't accounted for.

[harry-whodunnit.livejournal.com]

Just a point you might want to consider... some managers are in the business of having a large headcount. If they've stacked the department with second-rate seat-fillers in order to justify a larger budget and more important role for themselves in the scheme of things, this isn't going to be welcome news.

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

True - but now the CEO knows about it too, and the CEO is under orders to cut costs and personnel wherever possible. Sure, he presides over a two-billion-dollar budget, but the prospect of a quick freebie seven-figure saving falling in his lap next quarter isn't to be sneezed at either.

And the Boss^5 - one of the national-level IT execs - knows this, and now both of them know that the other one knows, and so on.

So if the exec wants to pull a fast one over the CEO to keep her budget and/or staff, she better have some solid excuses.

And even so, perhaps they'll take it as a bonus instead of a saving. Perhaps the exec will merely transfer the budget and staff to some other vastly underresourced area, instead of just cutting them completely. After all, semi-trained staff today are better than untrained n00bs tomorrow.

Staffing levels

[lwj2.livejournal.com]

I blew a job interview because of this.

On a run-through of the department, I was asked how I'd change things if I got the production manager's slot.

I said I'd purchase new equipment that was multi- instead of uni-function, take jobs in-house that were currently subbed out and have staff reduced by five in five years and pay for it with RIFs by retirement and saved outsourcing costs.

A week after I got the "thank you for applying, Joe Doe got the job instead" letter, I found that the director's job was based in major part on how many people were employed in that department. RIFing five jobs would have downgraded him two steps.

Cost reduction, efficiency and more rapid turn-around were of no interest.

Might want to check and see if it applies here also.

Re: Staffing levels

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

Possibly, although the difference here is that I don't really give a rat's ass about the outcome, or whether they implement anything. I'm doing it because (a) I'm bored, and (b) I've told the three levels of boss immediately above me with no result.

If I get no result from levels four and five, I might take it to six or I might just walk away and sit on the beach. While I can see the massive overspending and horrible side-effects its having on the staff, and I can detail it and present it, I have carefully refrained from wanting it so badly I'd stay in my current job just to keep pushing this agenda. It's only a couple of million bucks down the drain - my personal contribution to it as a taxpayer is maybe a dollar a year.

I don't consider it my baby, or a crusade. It does, however, make a fun club to beat management over the head with on my way out, and I'm all about the fun.