What Are You Doing Right Now
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@WrCombs said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
What happens? you're down, lose thousands of dollars because you didn't pick up the phone and call.
Only because someone is ignoring them. There's nothing stopping your team from having efficient processes and dealing with the email like normal helpdesks do. We do this all day long for outages. We have the outage documented, the info digested, and someone assigned to look at it before a call would typically get through. Email is fast. You have to ignore it and treat it differently than a call to typically make it slower.
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@WrCombs said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@WrCombs said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
If you email me , you're understanding that I'm working on other issues. If you're calling me, then You need help Right now -because its a business critical issue.
But what if another site is also down and you can't answer, or can't prioritize them but they need to let you know? What if they need to document the information?
What if you aren't available to answer the phone?
Because I dont work alone , and i dont give out my personal number/desk number to all customers.
So it's a call, but not a call to you? That's how we handle calls, but typically they get turned into emails. Calling is just a slower way of sending the email, because the call center wants it out ASAP, not to have a long discussion or risk getting info transferred incorrectly.
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@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@WrCombs said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
What happens? you're down, lose thousands of dollars because you didn't pick up the phone and call.
Only because someone is ignoring them. There's nothing stopping your team from having efficient processes and dealing with the email like normal helpdesks do. We do this all day long for outages. We have the outage documented, the info digested, and someone assigned to look at it before a call would typically get through. Email is fast. You have to ignore it and treat it differently than a call to typically make it slower.
Literally nowhere did I say I was ignoring them, I was working on another non emergency Project, That I could have stopped and helped the customer, Now your just making things up to make a point.
They dont email the Support Line, they email me directly. while I worked on another project that was not an emergency, With no Alert that I got an email.Sure, I filter my emails on a constant basis, still gets full up of Non-Emergency Emails cluttering up the inbox.
You dont work on the front of of customer service so this entire conversation is from 2 completely different perspectives, as I said above. -The difference between real IT work, and POS Customer Support. -
@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@EddieJennings said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@brandon220 said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
Researching laptops. Mine is 6 years old and is struggling. Thinking of going with Fedora or Ubuntu and having a Windows 10 VM for managing Hyper-V, etc. There are too many choices. Looking at Dell and HP. A friend is pushing me towards Lenovo but I don't think I want to take that route.
We manage Hyper-V from Linux, works fine.
What do you use for console access to your VMs from Linux?
Most Hyper-V that we have to manage is from shops that want a GUI always, so there is a GUI on the Hyper-V desktop. So MeshCentral like everything else. Super simple.
The thing about Hyper-V is that the situations that make you choose it over KVM or Xen almost universally cause it to have a GUI locally, too. So no need for Windows for remote access at all.
So you don't (possibly can't) have console-level access to the VMs from your Linux machine. You're using MeshCentral or some other remote access tool to get to the VMs when you need a GUI.
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@WrCombs said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@pmoncho said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@WrCombs said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@pmoncho said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@WrCombs said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
a few of my customers use Email on a daily basis to communicate with us , Not a big deal right?
Well One in particular has decided that's the only way he will communicate with us.I just got an email 30 minutes ago. : ......... "oh and this is an emergency, the entire site is down."
Nope, must not be an emergency. You're emailing me rather than Calling.
Anyone else deal with people like this?
On a daily basis. I've tried to explain 911's require a phone call as I am not constantly in email, at my desk, or have a communication device directly in my hand or driving.
Mostly goes in one ear and out the other, or should I say "eye" for that matter.
Only reason I saw it was because emailed in again.
I called his cell, and got it working. then explained "emails - Not important. Phone call = Important. "
added that to my signature on my email now.. in Quotes.
Ha.That is one way to get the point across. Works for me!
Doesn't this result in lots of calls that would have been way better for you being an email?
Calls interrupt and take lots of time and don't produce a paperwork trail. We won't do work based on calls alone because that's a way to blame IT for decisions made elsewhere. We require everything in writing because that's how we show who requested things, found things, etc.
If a site is completely down (for whatever reason it could be, Terminals not working, Credit cards dont work, etc.) and they email me , and don't call - then it's obviously not an emergency.
If you email me , you're understanding that I'm working on other issues. If you're calling me, then You need help Right now -because its a business critical issue.I dont send a text to Emergency Services (police in this example:) when Someones beating the shit out of my car with a baseball bat then call them and tell them to read the text. That's Counter productive. and doesn't get the damn job done, Just takes longer cause then they have to find the text in a pool of thousands, and read it.
Same situation here; You got all your terminals looking for the back office server? You sent me an email 30 minutes ago, and you've lost an estimated 1000 in business because you called me an hour later?
Well I get hundreds if not thousands of emails a day from customers, error reporting, not to mention Being away from the desk, or working on something that I can't just stop and check my email.See the difference here is "right now emergencies" Business critical issues- cant go through an email to just me, it has to come through the help desk because if i"m not at my desk. You're emailing me to fix your site, and I cant check my email- What happens? you're down, lose thousands of dollars because you didn't pick up the phone and call.
I can relate. If I'm away from my desk working on something, or driving, or one of a million other things... and a customer emails me, I get one little vibration from my cell phone in my pocket. If they call me it rings for at least 30 seconds. I'm much more likely to notice the ringing. I believe it's pretty standard in manufacturing that email is the least urgent form of communication.
Sure, there have been times where somebody abuses the direct line for support, but we set them straight if that ends up being the case.
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@bnrstnr said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
I'm much more likely to notice the ringing. I believe it's pretty standard in manufacturing that email is the least urgent form of communication.
But would it go to just one person? Isn't going to a single person alone a mark of "not a priority?" Because if you're busy, in either case, or sick, or out, etc. what do you do?
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@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
This is like the restaurant where you stand in line and when it is your turn to get help, some yahoo calls and the cashier takes their call first even though you were there and waited in line.
This isn't a good comparison, IMO. Any distributor, manufacturer, etc. that we deal with, a call always takes priority over whatever orders they're processing via email. If I call xbyte and want to order something, do you think that they say "alright, let me put you on hold while I reply to these 3 other emails first?" nope, they don't. At least not when I've called them.
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@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@bnrstnr said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
I'm much more likely to notice the ringing. I believe it's pretty standard in manufacturing that email is the least urgent form of communication.
But would it go to just one person? Isn't going to a single person alone a mark of "not a priority?" Because if you're busy, in either case, or sick, or out, etc. what do you do?
We're a small company, I'm their contact for the project. If I don't answer, they usually call the office immediately after. If it's an emergency they always call. Sure, that might be bad, or our own doing, but it works... :man_shrugging:
We aren't a support company with an entire staff dedicated to doing just that. I'm rarely supporting customers, but when I do, they call me with urgent problems.
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@bnrstnr said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
This is like the restaurant where you stand in line and when it is your turn to get help, some yahoo calls and the cashier takes their call first even though you were there and waited in line.
This isn't a good comparison, IMO. Any distributor, manufacturer, etc. that we deal with, a call always takes priority over whatever orders they're processing via email. If I call xbyte and want to order something, do you think that they say "alright, let me put you on hold while I reply to these 3 other emails first?" nope, they don't. At least not when I've called them.
Right, but to do that they ensure that they have enough capacity to handle all calls at once. And they don't HAVE emergencies. Not comparable unless you, too, have a call center staffed at a rate to ensure that sick days, holidays, or call volume can't make you unavailable.
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@bnrstnr said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@bnrstnr said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
I'm much more likely to notice the ringing. I believe it's pretty standard in manufacturing that email is the least urgent form of communication.
But would it go to just one person? Isn't going to a single person alone a mark of "not a priority?" Because if you're busy, in either case, or sick, or out, etc. what do you do?
We're a small company, I'm their contact for the project. If I don't answer, they usually call the office immediately after. If it's an emergency they always call. Sure, that might be bad, or our own doing, but it works... :man_shrugging:
We aren't a support company with an entire staff dedicated to doing just that. I'm rarely supporting customers, but when I do, they call me with urgent problems.
So when you are out sick, at lunch, not on the clock, or already dealing with a fire, in a meeting.... all calls pre-empt all those things?
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@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@WrCombs said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
Same situation here; You got all your terminals looking for the back office server? You sent me an email 30 minutes ago, and you've lost an estimated 1000 in business because you called me an hour later?
Why aren't you watching your emails, but are sitting by answering your phone and allowing it to interrupt anything tha tyou are doing? That doesn't make sense.
This is like the restaurant where you stand in line and when it is your turn to get help, some yahoo calls and the cashier takes their call first even though you were there and waited in line.
Your system only works because you are intentionally giving phones priority to stop all work you are doing, and ignoring emails. It's you artificially prioritizing a slow, inefficient method creating the requirement. On a technological and more general business level, the opposite is true. If people constantly ignore email and prioritize calls, then suddenly call volume goes way up because people learn that calling gets action and emailing doesn't.
This then makes you less efficient and the customer less efficient.
Why the banter? Like you have never done that? Get interrupted by a phone call? There are two type of people when it comes when submitting tickets, the ones that do call (Which they know will get answered faster than an email almost without fail). Then there are others that actually only email and submit a ticket and you need to go through every single question in the world to get to the answer which they don't provide until like the 10th email and by then your time has been wasted.
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@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@bnrstnr said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@bnrstnr said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
I'm much more likely to notice the ringing. I believe it's pretty standard in manufacturing that email is the least urgent form of communication.
But would it go to just one person? Isn't going to a single person alone a mark of "not a priority?" Because if you're busy, in either case, or sick, or out, etc. what do you do?
We're a small company, I'm their contact for the project. If I don't answer, they usually call the office immediately after. If it's an emergency they always call. Sure, that might be bad, or our own doing, but it works... :man_shrugging:
We aren't a support company with an entire staff dedicated to doing just that. I'm rarely supporting customers, but when I do, they call me with urgent problems.
So when you are out sick, at lunch, not on the clock, or already dealing with a fire, in a meeting.... all calls pre-empt all those things?
Not all, and not always, but usually yes. I'm not so overworked that I can't take a call every now and then, even if it takes 4 hours of my day. If it ever became enough of a burden to require a full time position to deal with support, then we would consider it. But it just isn't necessary at this point.
Sometimes I only do the triage then pass it off to somebody else. Sometimes when I'm not available they call the office and somebody else handles it. Sometimes we have to tell people that they're just going to have to wait. We aren't under any strict support contracts.
I was at a funeral on Monday and got a call from a customer. I reached back out to him a few hours later when I was available.
Also, I totally get what you're saying about how we chose to make calls have higher priority over email, and it probably was a bad decision. I don't know. Similar to @WrCombs said, if I'm having a heart attack I would hope that my wife doesn't email my doctor, and instead call 911... Obviously the things we deal with usually aren't life and death, but I think people get comfort in knowing that somebody is on it, and that they're not lost in a sea of spam emails.
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@dbeato said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
Then there are others that actually only email and submit a ticket and you need to go through every single question in the world to get to the answer which they don't provide until like the 10th email and by then your time has been wasted.
Yes, this too! I usually cant diagnose a problem via email. I believe Scott has even said something to the effect that users have no clue what they're talking about 99% of the time. So why all of a sudden is a single email the most efficient way to help somebody? I just don't think that's realistic at all.
Sometimes after 9 emails and 2 hours of going back and forth, it's just way faster to call somebody and figure it out.
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@dbeato said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@WrCombs said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
Same situation here; You got all your terminals looking for the back office server? You sent me an email 30 minutes ago, and you've lost an estimated 1000 in business because you called me an hour later?
Why aren't you watching your emails, but are sitting by answering your phone and allowing it to interrupt anything tha tyou are doing? That doesn't make sense.
This is like the restaurant where you stand in line and when it is your turn to get help, some yahoo calls and the cashier takes their call first even though you were there and waited in line.
Your system only works because you are intentionally giving phones priority to stop all work you are doing, and ignoring emails. It's you artificially prioritizing a slow, inefficient method creating the requirement. On a technological and more general business level, the opposite is true. If people constantly ignore email and prioritize calls, then suddenly call volume goes way up because people learn that calling gets action and emailing doesn't.
This then makes you less efficient and the customer less efficient.
Why the banter? Like you have never done that? Get interrupted by a phone call? There are two type of people when it comes when submitting tickets, the ones that do call (Which they know will get answered faster than an email almost without fail). Then there are others that actually only email and submit a ticket and you need to go through every single question in the world to get to the answer which they don't provide until like the 10th email and by then your time has been wasted.
But then it's documented and not my issue. They had the choice to get me the info fast and get things fixed, or the option to withhold things. Leaves it up to them to make it fast or not.
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@bnrstnr said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@bnrstnr said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@bnrstnr said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
I'm much more likely to notice the ringing. I believe it's pretty standard in manufacturing that email is the least urgent form of communication.
But would it go to just one person? Isn't going to a single person alone a mark of "not a priority?" Because if you're busy, in either case, or sick, or out, etc. what do you do?
We're a small company, I'm their contact for the project. If I don't answer, they usually call the office immediately after. If it's an emergency they always call. Sure, that might be bad, or our own doing, but it works... :man_shrugging:
We aren't a support company with an entire staff dedicated to doing just that. I'm rarely supporting customers, but when I do, they call me with urgent problems.
So when you are out sick, at lunch, not on the clock, or already dealing with a fire, in a meeting.... all calls pre-empt all those things?
Not all, and not always, but usually yes. I'm not so overworked that I can't take a call every now and then, even if it takes 4 hours of my day. If it ever became enough of a burden to require a full time position to deal with support, then we would consider it. But it just isn't necessary at this point.
Sometimes I only do the triage then pass it off to somebody else. Sometimes when I'm not available they call the office and somebody else handles it. Sometimes we have to tell people that they're just going to have to wait. We aren't under any strict support contracts.
I was at a funeral on Monday and got a call from a customer. I reached back out to him a few hours later when I was available.
Also, I totally get what you're saying about how we chose to make calls have higher priority over email, and it probably was a bad decision. I don't know. Similar to @WrCombs said, if I'm having a heart attack I would hope that my wife doesn't email my doctor, and instead call 911... Obviously the things we deal with usually aren't life and death, but I think people get comfort in knowing that somebody is on it, and that they're not lost in a sea of spam emails.
Something that happened to me in the last two minutes - my automated system contacted me with an issue before any user did. Issue resolved before anyone could place a call.
In theory, I could have had the automated warning system call instead of emailing me. But emails get through more reliably no matter where I am or what device I am using, I wasn't at my desk so a call would not have reached me, and are just SO much easier to automate.
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@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
But then it's documented and not my issue. They had the choice to get me the info fast and get things fixed, or the option to withhold things. Leaves it up to them to make it fast or not.
I get it, you wanted it all in writing. Making the issue to be the customer can be seen a little antagonistic so that's why I pickup the phone when needed and still gets documented with a follow up email which says "As discussed on the call this is what we did and this our recommendations and whatever else". The ticketing system would also have that.
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@bnrstnr said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@dbeato said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
Then there are others that actually only email and submit a ticket and you need to go through every single question in the world to get to the answer which they don't provide until like the 10th email and by then your time has been wasted.
Yes, this too! I usually cant diagnose a problem via email. I believe Scott has even said something to the effect that users have no clue what they're talking about 99% of the time. So why all of a sudden is a single email the most efficient way to help somebody? I just don't think that's realistic at all.
Sometimes after 9 emails and 2 hours of going back and forth, it's just way faster to call somebody and figure it out.
Calling someone back is different when it's already an established priority than using a phone call to determine what that priority is and to do so with the tech.
We use phones, but only call center picks them up. They do triage. So if you have an emergency and, say, email is down you need that. But the call is guaranteed not to interrupt something critical already in motion and any conversation about additional details can be done, and written down, prior to the engineers being interrupted.
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@dbeato said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
But then it's documented and not my issue. They had the choice to get me the info fast and get things fixed, or the option to withhold things. Leaves it up to them to make it fast or not.
I get it, you wanted it all in writing. Making the issue to be the customer can be seen a little antagonistic so that's why I pickup the phone when needed and still gets documented with a follow up email which says "As discussed on the call this is what we did and this our recommendations and whatever else". The ticketing system would also have that.
Not just that I want it, but whether working at an MSP with itty bitty clients, or working in the Fortune 100, "in writing" is absolutely critical and generally that means in a ticket. If I get a call, rather than an email to the ticket system, that means I'm a secretary and have to document the start of the issue, while talking on the phone, instead of working on the issue. Because I can't start till I'm documenting.
So even if there isn't a lot of details, getting me a ticket with what little info that end user has before starting a call still speeds things up and helps to ensure we avoid problems both technical and political, all with less overall effort.
It's not that phones are never the right tool, it's that using phones as a "hey, everything from wanting to chat to just wanting to up my priority to alerting that something is on fire" causes problems because it bypasses documentation, triage, efficiency and reliability. You can manually brute force around most of those things, but it requires things like being forever tethered to your phone and getting more interrupts and having to do a lot of paperwork on behalf of the people who should have been doing it themselves and having management that trusts that what you've written down on their behalf is to be trusted.
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@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@bnrstnr said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@dbeato said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
Then there are others that actually only email and submit a ticket and you need to go through every single question in the world to get to the answer which they don't provide until like the 10th email and by then your time has been wasted.
Yes, this too! I usually cant diagnose a problem via email. I believe Scott has even said something to the effect that users have no clue what they're talking about 99% of the time. So why all of a sudden is a single email the most efficient way to help somebody? I just don't think that's realistic at all.
Sometimes after 9 emails and 2 hours of going back and forth, it's just way faster to call somebody and figure it out.
Calling someone back is different when it's already an established priority than using a phone call to determine what that priority is and to do so with the tech.
We use phones, but only call center picks them up. They do triage. So if you have an emergency and, say, email is down you need that. But the call is guaranteed not to interrupt something critical already in motion and any conversation about additional details can be done, and written down, prior to the engineers being interrupted.
Gotcha. I guess we'll just get a call center then lol...
We also have this thing called voicemail. Similar to email, it also comes to my phone, and my phone magically converts it to text so I can read it if I'm doing something else. It's crazy. Usually I get voicemails immediately too, unless I have no service, in which case I'm not getting emails either. So pick your poison.
Like I said before, we aren't in the business of supporting people. It's a minor task that we do sporadically.
