Told Off

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

I have had a call open on the help desk for about a week now
yesterday I got an email saying 'thanks for confirming this call resolved, we have now closed your call'
As you can imagine I sent a quick email in disgust asking for the call to be escalated to a manger, and had I spent a week resolving an academic issue in my day I would of been out of a job!

Got a call from the help desk manager today, great I think
wrong
He called to try and 'tell me off' as he did not like the assumptions I made in my email that it was a 'simple' task and that it could be done quicker than a week


The task in question...
Adding a printer to my login script and actually getting it to show up!

Oh how I love my job some days.....

 

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

May be the help desk manager see's it as a 'big' job!
Should be easy to do, why has it not been done?

 

Sounds like where I work, it's going to take them 6 weeks to add our new starter to a distribution list!

That's scary that something as basic is that is seen as complex...

 

sorry, but im going to defend the helpdesk a little here. just because something can be done in 5 minutes, doesnt mean it will be. These people (and i've been there and done it) can, depending on the environment, have stacks of calls to deal with. In my day in account admin (user account creation/deletion, DL admin, Directory access, etc), we used to have in excess of 200 calls on an average day - for 2.5 people to deal with (mostly leavers to be honest, but thats irrelevant - especially since the leavers process was in some ways more complex than the new starts process - way more complex).

It really gets on my wick when people whine about how its 'just a two minute job' - so is almost every other job in the queue. yours will be dealt with when we get to it in the list.

Dont agree with the managers attitude, nor how the call seemed to be handled necessarily, but dont get in the face of those doing the job, just because its a job that only takes two minutes to do. Take a look at the bigger picture will you

 

I think your missing the point Fergal
my issue is not that it has not been dealt with when I snap my fingers, hell its not even that important to me!

the issue is its the help desks job to keep the user informed of any issues around the resolution of the call, the issue arose when the help desk closed my call 4 days after saying it was complete, despite getting two emails from me countering that fact

To then call a user up because they complained about the level of response they got is absurd, its your JOB to resolve the issues users have, that's it, if you don't/can't do that then expect your users to get upset, especially the ones who have done the job and know exactly what's involved in both working on, and running a help desk

Defend them all you like mate, but my beef was not with the fact the call was not completed in four days (although our SLAs are WAY tighter than that, so it would be a perfectly fine beef to have) my beef is the attitude they gave me when I pulled them up for CLOSING my call without a resolution

 

Yeah, I kinda have to defend help desk a little too. Im in the IT Department at my company and we have alot on our plate and a very small IT department to handle it. Though he should not have told you off like that, that was wrong. Part of being a good IT Professional is knowing how to interface with people.

EDIT: Sorry, just read your post there. I would have to agree with you on that. That was wrong.

 

Phoenix, my post wasnt so much aimed at your initial post, but at those afterwards claiming that it was an easy job, and why wasnt it done yet. That said, your post (to me at least) also reads, at least a little, like you are having a go about the timescale.

After your elaboration, I grant that thats a poorly dealt with call, if you have been informing them that its not been resolved. And you are perfectly entitled to get annoyed about the attitude, but thats not really how it necessarily read in the initial post.

 

Your right Fergal it does come across like that in the first paragraph
but I will stand by it
the email that was sent to the help desk highlighting the fact its taken a week was just, as I say our SLA is <6 h for most tasks, the fact is I needed access to the printer Monday, and I knew I would next Monday, I'm rarely in the office other days so I did not chase them down hourly as well, it wasn't that important
so I gave over 24h before each 'its still not done' email just to give them the benefit of the doubt

lets not forget, I have done my time on help desk, I've filled the boots of 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, team leader and help desk manager in previous roles for quite a portion of my career, I know what goes in to it, I know what's required, and I know how much a pain in the ass users can be, especially the 'slightly' technical ones
I think I was more than forgiving with them frankly.

 

I apologise - my point was more due to having worked on helpdesks with far tighter SLAs (and not for small companies either) - well, each helpdesk is run differently...

 

I agree with Phoenix on this one and I do help desk stuff once in a while. If someone starts giving S*** for something like this (what Phoenix mentioned) I would not be happy either. I don't understand why someone would just call and start telling off the guy for doing his job. It's just not right and I don't care what position in the company he has. On the other hand if the employee did something wrong I can understand the frustration.

 

I am going to put my 2p even though I don't work on a helpdesk.

Even if a job cannot be done immediately, isn't the point of a help desk aswell as resolving issues to keep customers informed of any ongoing developments or delays in processing the issue.

Customer service should be a top priority otherwise customers will go elswhere if they can.

 

Exactly GBL, this is one of the reasons a lot of help desks refer to there users as 'customers' now, it is supposed to encourage staff to realise they need to provide a level of service, even if the problem can not be solved straight away (don't we all know how that is)

By using the word customer and not 'user' the onus of superiority is removed, and an onus of responsibility is instilled

As a customer (in this example), I understand that not all problems are created equally, and a simple printer change is not a high priority goal, that said, TELL ME that, don't beat around the bush, avoid my emails then say 'well he has not called for two days, it must be finished!'

The level of professionalism in IT is surprisingly slack, and the standards delivered differ so greatly between two places that there is no real measuring stick with which go gauge the quality, this is one of the reasons I joined and encourage others to join, the British Computer Society, in the hope that one day the IT professional will be as professional and well respected as that of other professional fields

But its down to us, as technical ambassadors to make that so, by treating our clients, customers and each other with respect, by insuring our skills are well honed and looked after, and by flushing out the idiots who simply don't belong in IT

 

Helpdesk can be overwhelmed, but the end-users are the customers. I can understand SLA’s not being met; I can’t understand not being kept in the loop. I want to know what’s happening, especially if their published SLA’s are not being met!

As for the manager, the role should defend or at least deflect some of the criticism off the staff. However, attacking the customer doesn’t make sense and will not resolve anything.

 

What you're pointing out, Phonenix, is not an IT problem but a societal problem. This problem exists in all areas of society, not just in IT. It comes from putting money as numero uno priority. Why do I say this? Because if making money is priority number one with most people then pride taken in doing their job well is automatically not at the top of their list, and neither are other people. Once those two areas lose top focus in people's lives all other things suffer as a consequence.

If all a person cares about from their job is their paycheck, then it automatically follows that all aspects of job performance will suffer.

 

I would have also been upset if someone had closed one of my tickets without resolution. I would have done the same thing as Ryan had done - requested escalation of my ticket, since it is obvious that the lower-level techs could not handle my request in a timely fashion.

As has been said, it's fine that they can't handle it, or can't handle it in a timely fashion. I understand that more important things come up, and my problem isn't on the front burner. But it's NOT fine when the ticket is closed as "Resolved" when it's not resolved... and it's NOT fine when the help desk manager calls me to give me grief, particularly when HIS employees made the mistake.

I'd bet that Ryan would have let the ticket sit yet another week, had the ticket not been prematurely closed.