How Do You Handle Pressure During High Priority Calls?

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Hello All

How do you handle the pressure of fixing a "Priority 1" call, this is especially for those who have worked/currently working in support environments.

Do you take your time with the issue and attempt to methodologically work through the issue from start to finish in an organized fashion, knowing that this approach will probably mean site stays down for longer (because you are working through the problem thoroughly?)

Or, do you just throw everything you can at the issue in an attempt to get it fixed as soon as possible? Meaning that you might get the initial incident fixed asap, BUT, if you don't you essentially have to start from Square one again and re-investigate the issue more thoroughly.

I hope this question makes sense, when I get a P1, I always feel this massive internal pressure to get it resolved by any means asap and I think sometimes I miss little things which would help me resolve it a little faster because I am so consumed by getting the customer up and running as soon as possible.

How you do you handle the high pressure situations in your roles and what methodologies do you use to make sure you get them fixed appropriately?

 

Sometimes when there is a P1 you have an onsite guy panicking and just rebooting randomly selected stuff. The first step in resolving those issues is to tell that guy to take his hands off the keyboard and step away from the computer.

 

Definitely, I had one recently of a similar type. A client with 2 internet lines and an on-site sbs server stopped receiving emails. I started stepping through methodically, can they access files, can I access the server etc etc. I connected to the server and was almost immediately booted off as the guy on site panicked and held the power button in.

Eventual resolution: blown power supply on the router for their second line, incoming email fell over because it was all pointed at that lines external IP. Nothing wrong with the server, all solved with a £25 plug.

If you don't approach things methodically you can miss the obvious, the most important thing though is to make sure whoever you are dealing with knows that you are working on it and you will resolve the issue as fast as possible but these things can take time.

 

Never let people rush you or put you on the edge of your seat. I'm sure alot of other people can relate to this also but i work in an environment where just clicking around and making changes to settings can put other clients projects at risk which run on that same server.

 

Arroryn hit the nail on the head. Work through it methodically and not only will you fix it, but learn the "signs" of the issue, the next time a similar fault occurs, it will hopefully let you fix that P1 quicker.

"I always feel this massive internal pressure" - sounds like you're your own worst enemy here. Where I am a P1 is a resolution within 4 hours. I can take a P1 and make myself a coffee without turning to a jibbering wreck (I've even been known to have my lunch during this time ).

Who's putting the pressure on you?
If it's yourself, chill out a bit and take the time to learn the issue and the resolution.
If it's your boss, chill out a bit and take the time to learn the issue and the resolution. You will always get more qudos fixing the issue once. Fixing it 3 times in the same time you would take to do it slowly makes you look a pratt - even if the end result is a fix.

ATB

G

 

Guys, I just wanted to say thanks for the responses. Ironically, after I made this thread, I seemed to attract P1 calls like flies to the "proverbial", I still think I have improvements to make and it's good to hear other people's experiences and advice.

What kind of P1's are you guys dealing with and how did you resolve? It would be great to hear.

Last P1 i worked on was yesterday, some body in our team ran a script which marked 3,000 members in the clients database and then the client basically said that the script had ruined the system and asked for a backup of the database to be restored (which would cause loss of data since last backup). It caused a major panic and an incident meeting to discuss a way forward. I kept in mind what you guys were saying and tried not to get panicked into rushing any work I was doing to help, if anything I think in those situations, you should take your time as you don't want to replace one mess up with another one.

 

The first thing I do is assure the caller that I'm on it and won't let go until it's resolved properly (this generally takes a good bit of the pressure off - the caller calms down to a level you can work with). The recommendations above are excellent, but I'd like to add this: sometimes the priority will dictate that you simply get it running ASAP (quick fix) and fix it properly afterward.