What Are You Doing Right Now
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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.
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In a secure environment, phones are also a tool of social engineering. They have the least security verification and are the easiest to use to manipulate someone into violating protocols. Doesn't matter much to 99% of us, when when you are in a really high security situation, phones also become a "no no" beyond "hey, I sent an email with needs/authoritzation please go look at it ASAP".
I'm all for sending data by email/ticket and using phone immediately after to ensure urgency. It's phone BEFORE documentation/approval that I see a severe issue with.
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@bnrstnr said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
Usually I get voicemails immediately too, unless I have no service, in which case I'm not getting emails either. So pick your poison.
More pieces, direct to email is like three steps fewer to go wrong.
But basically your backup IS email, just a weird "call, but go to email". It's not terrible, but it leaves a lot of room for voice to text to get things wrong, confusion, delay.
For this purpose, I actually have voicemail disabled for all technical staff.
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@bnrstnr said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
Gotcha. I guess we'll just get a call center then lol...
Way cheaper than your time, I guarantee. It's seriously rich companies that can afford high end engineers to be doing the work that low cost customer service people can do.
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@bnrstnr said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
Like I said before, we aren't in the business of supporting people. It's a minor task that we do sporadically.
It's not about supporting people, but the business. Sure, it might apply to talking to someone about a missing icon on their desktop. But we are mostly assuming it is more like a server has failed, data is lost, network is down, etc. Not "people" issues, but larger network issues.
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This place is slow today.
I'm slow today.
Still just finished my first coffee!
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@brandon220 said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@jmoore I tried Asus a few years ago with poor results. Leaning towards Dell at the moment.
There are lots of quality levels in big companies like Asus for sure so I can understand that. I am talking about their mid-level gaming machines. Those are pretty solid. Certainly nothing wrong with Dell or Hp though. Im using a Precision laptop now actually and it has been great.
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@brandon220 said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@jmoore I tried Asus a few years ago with poor results. Leaning towards Dell at the moment.
Dell has been good to me. But Asus has been great, very good luck with them and Acer as well.
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One thing that I just thought of with phones, I spend a lot of my day on the phone as it is - either the regular phone or teleconference. And if someone uses the phone to reach me, they can't, because I'm tied up. But if they email me, I get that during those times. I was just thinking about that as I was handling emails and chat with people while being tied up on the phone for other things.
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@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@brandon220 said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@jmoore I tried Asus a few years ago with poor results. Leaning towards Dell at the moment.
Dell has been good to me. But Asus has been great, very good luck with them and Acer as well.
I have not used Acer before but I have a mid-level Asus gaming laptop thats 6-7 years old now and its still solid. It has an ssd in it and running opensuse. I use it as a backup target which gets hit by backblaze.
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@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.
I totally get what you are saying - and I'm sure this is covered further down in the thread - but when you don't have a helpdesk who's job it is to SIT on email waiting to act the instant it comes in - then how does the person wanting help now know anyone is dealing with it?
I feel the same way about text messages/chat messages - there is no assurance that someone is watching that continuously.
Now sure - the phone device might be unreachable/not ring for whatever reason, but me, the person having the problem knows instantly that no one is working my problem yet. I have the choice to call more/other people, or simply wait for a response to the email.
I'm all for vendors requiring the email first even - but then instantly picking up the phone to work the problem, because yes, my problem is more important than anything else you are working on - and if you answer that phone, I know that to be true. But if you don't answer the phone, then I assume you're busy doing something else and move to my next options.
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@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
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.
So you're saying, while you're working an issue, you stop and look at every email that comes in during that time? Then you're just as interrupted as a phone ringing. And if you don't look at the email, but only look after your current job is complete - then how are you to become aware that a potentially higher priority thing has hit the pile?
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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.
OK - what's your turn around time to contact those people when you get an email about an outage? If it's not 2 mins or less, I'm sure people are freaking the heck out waiting...
while it might not seem like much, the end user experience of the phone call makes them feel more in control, which potentially makes them at least a tiny bit less upset... -
@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:
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.Well - @WrCombs that's your fault for giving the customer your direct email - like your phone number, that's something they should never likely have - so they funnel all of their emergencies through the helpdesk.
Of course, that's not realistic, and it does require the customer to "be adult/be a business" and use the process that you, the vendor/support company, put in place for such contact - i.e. they should only be emailing the helpdesk with support issues, not you directly.
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@Dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@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:
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.Well - @WrCombs that's your fault for giving the customer your direct email - like your phone number, that's something they should never likely have - so they funnel all of their emergencies through the helpdesk.
Of course, that's not realistic, and it does require the customer to "be adult/be a business" and use the process that you, the vendor/support company, put in place for such contact - i.e. they should only be emailing the helpdesk with support issues, not you directly.
Yes, You're right, I'm at fault; we didn't have a Support email at the time when I gave this individual my email to receive a floor chart over a year ago. Then they just started using my email as a way to get support, I've blatantly ignored their emails for a while as well, on super small things that weren't business critical, up to 2 days before I responded.
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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:
@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.
not even remotely comparable - that automated warning doens't give a shit when you fix the problem, people do.
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@Dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
not even remotely comparable - that automated warning doens't give a shit when you fix the problem, people do.
That's why you want the automation to let you get it fixed before people find out. That people care and automation doesn't is the entire point of why you use that. If you don't, then the only way to find out is that people are impacted and take the time to alert you.
And automation gives you much better chances of getting good information. Better timing and more exact information. Not "it's down", but a specific check has failed.
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installing a gazillion updates onto a 2012 server that was decided to be repurposed in place of simply knocking up a quick 2019 server instead. Why????
