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This place is like the wild west  Often times people will finish tickets with "fixed" or just leave them open (I'm told they have a good reason for it, or it's not actually "fixed" yet) with no updates since last august in Jira. When asked about what kind of culpability other teams have for not being clear in their tickets was met with a shrug. When asked about who harps on the team for not providing feedback to other agents (they'll complain things shouldn't have been escalated, but then they don't update the tickets succinctly for other agents to follow back up on, or walk over to you and tell you what you did wrong), was met with a shrug. When asked about "what about if someone comes in late, is there a number to call to let someone know ahead of time?", it was met with a shrug. Almost no central repository for information, lots of tribal knowledge, etc. If anything, I'm hoping my involvement will result in  others and/or management to come up with better processes. I have a feeling I'm probably going to have to spearhead that, based on everything I've seen though....
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Jul 18, 2018 02:33
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GreenBuckanneer posted:This place is like the wild west This your new job, or your old? Cuz if it's your old, you know I got your back. Send me the deetz at work. If it's your new, I can probably give you some pointers on how to start tackling this stuff.
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Jul 18, 2018 03:32
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Re: free space chat, I don't know how useful this is to you all but it has been to me in the past. If you're deploying PCs or servers to users who aren't great at managing free disk space, or teams who install all applications and log files and cache folders to C, then make it part of your process to write an empty 5-GB (for example) to each volume. Give it some kind of discreet name or make it invisible. Then, when someone comes to you with a "my disk is full and it's affecting production!" case, the very first thing you can do to get some breathing room is to delete that file. Obviously there is still the matter of the disk filling up, but this at least delays detonation.
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Jul 18, 2018 06:29
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It's still helldesk (Because I don't want to move city, so I'm stuck with the options available here, and there's competition for other roles I could maybe do) but I did just  Over the last year, my current job has gotten worse and worse, less technical responsibility for me, no pay progression, stricter and stricter on breaks, all becoming more like a call centre, less like a helpdesk. Just got an offer for a bit more money, enough to make a difference, and basically moving to this new company to do what I used to do in my current job before they rolled it back.
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Jul 18, 2018 12:55
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Sometimes a change in scenery is all you need. Congrats on the new job!
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Jul 18, 2018 13:27
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mehall posted:
My old helpdesk job went through the same transition and it was sheer hell. Congratulations on getting out of that mess.
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Jul 18, 2018 13:51
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nominal posted:My old helpdesk job went through the same transition and it was sheer hell. Congratulations on getting out of that mess. We're currently experience this, but at least at this point metrics aren't being tracked. I think that's going to be the line of stress that's too much. More responsibility killing some free time is one thing, pushing for just numbers will be gross.
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Jul 18, 2018 14:48
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Metrics loving kill EVERYTHING. I've seen it over and over again. I get that they're useful, and I think they can be great if they're implemented properly. The problem is that they're never implemented properly. I think they work great as a guide, but if management is going to start banging on the table and incoherently screaming "NEED NUMBERS GO UP" , then everything falls apart. It always becomes about chasing the number itself rather than the thing it's actually supposed to represent.
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Jul 18, 2018 15:21
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mehall posted:Over the last year, my current job has gotten worse and worse, less technical responsibility for me, no pay progression, stricter and stricter on breaks, all becoming more like a call centre, less like a helpdesk. Yeah, that's a terrible thing to experience, I'm glad you got out 
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Jul 18, 2018 15:32
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I finally decided to (attempt) to make the jump from systems engineering (storage, linux, various other things as needed by clients) to security. It's for an analyst position and since I already do a fair amount of "this is acting weird please figure it out" analysis I'm fairly confident in the shift. Plus I have my CCNA Cyber Ops and had my Security+ though I know certs don't really equate to experience. I've gone through two phone interviews and four in person interviews so far and should be hearing back about the position this week. I don't mind my current job (save for the hellish commute) but I've been wanting to pivot into security for a while and my current position doesn't give me that opportunity.
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Jul 18, 2018 16:26
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nominal posted:Metrics loving kill EVERYTHING. I've seen it over and over again. Yep. You get more of what you measure, and that's not necessarily bad(but sometimes it is.) More importantly, in that kind of culture, you will get a lot less of everything else.
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Jul 18, 2018 16:42
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AlternateAccount posted:Yep. You get more of what you measure, and that's not necessarily bad(but sometimes it is.) More importantly, in that kind of culture, you will get a lot less of everything else. When what you measure only tangentially touches on 'good customer service' or 'actually fixing the issue' you end up with a shitshow where nobody likes dealing with IT, especially the people working in IT.
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Jul 18, 2018 16:49
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Methylethylaldehyde posted:When what you measure only tangentially touches on 'good customer service' or 'actually fixing the issue' you end up with a shitshow where nobody likes dealing with IT, especially the people working in IT. We're moving a lot more to this kind of thing, because our new VP is a very "data driven" fellow. I don't have any issue with sending out surveys here and there and asking for generalized feedback. But he's all into TARGET COMPLETE DATES and TICKET TIMERS and tracking hours and a bunch of other poo poo that doesn't really do anything to improve service delivery.
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Jul 18, 2018 16:53
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AlternateAccount posted:We're moving a lot more to this kind of thing, because our new VP is a very "data driven" fellow. I don't have any issue with sending out surveys here and there and asking for generalized feedback. But he's all into TARGET COMPLETE DATES and TICKET TIMERS and tracking hours and a bunch of other poo poo that doesn't really do anything to improve service delivery. hey this is why I'm job searching.
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Jul 18, 2018 17:07
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A high priority ticket comes in, first action: change the priority to low for statistics.
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Jul 18, 2018 17:14
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Methylethylaldehyde posted:When what you measure only tangentially touches on 'good customer service' or 'actually fixing the issue' you end up with a shitshow where nobody likes dealing with IT, especially the people working in IT. Our helpdesk has a quota of tickets they have to close every day, so the first response to your issue is a link to the knowledge based and a notice that they're closing the ticket, please open a new one if the issue persists. That went well until the goal for closed tickets started rising, as everyone was a rockstar under the old counts.
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Jul 18, 2018 17:19
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Submarine Sandpaper posted:A high priority ticket comes in, first action: change the priority to low for statistics. Then change it back to high just before marking it done for annual review purposes
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Jul 18, 2018 17:19
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The FI I work for has been obsessing about their "efficiency" number (the amount we spend to make a dollar). So, for the year, we've managed to make that number way better. Of course, we've mostly done that by instituting a hiring freeze, and making fewer people do more work. Weirdly, over the same amount of time, the customer satisfaction numbers have plummeted. So strange. But the executives are drilling down into that, they're going to figure out the complete mystery of why that's happening.
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Jul 18, 2018 17:29
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Weatherman posted:Re: free space chat, I don't know how useful this is to you all but it has been to me in the past. I found the best way to resolve this issue was to configure your management system to alert you to low disk space on workstations and servers and auto generate a ticket so you can be proactive and reach out to the end user. Then just connect/get infront of the computer, spin up TreeSizeFree and figure out where all the files are. Bonus points for creating a low disk space cleanup script that goes in and deletes cab files, stops wsus, deletes the contents of the software distribution folder and then starts wsus, then blows away the contents of all the temp folders. If you do that about 60% of the tickets that get auto generated you wont even need to reach out to the end user because they will have plenty of free space left.
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Jul 18, 2018 17:32
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Submarine Sandpaper posted:A high priority ticket comes in, first action: change the priority to low for statistics. At $OLDJOB-2 we had both this as well as "close ticket immediately as soon as you think an issue's fixed, make the customer open a new ticket if it's not". My habit of "hey, we show it's fixed from our end, but if you could confirm it's fixed for you, that'd be great!" and leaving tickets in a pending auto-close state (if the customer didn't reply within 72 hours, then it closed itself) was seriously super frowned upon once a new management team rolled in. It was so stupid, and we had so many customers bitch about it, but GOTTA HAVE THEM TICKET CLOSE METRICS  .
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Jul 18, 2018 17:35
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The use of metrics to drive change really comes down to the priority of the organization. A good org will have multiple priorities, and drives towards industry standard metrics in those priorities. Common metrics include handle time, customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, number of contacts per case, time-until-close per case, etc. The thing is that, for most orgs, the #1 priority is cost savings, with customer satisfaction coming second, and employee satisfaction dead last. They can and will cut costs any way they can, even if it pisses off everyone. Those people are, IMO, doing it wrong. Not to say there's never a case to change internal procedures, but thinking outside the box a bit can have even bigger returns. It's possible to make significant financial inroads with little impact on customer/employee satisfaction. There will always be those who are pissed about change, but steps can be taken to limit that. In some cases, you can even improve satisfaction. I mentioned before that my job is basically to find problems, and fix them, wherever they may lie. I work for my company's Support org, and we have three call centers in operation. Pretty much everything I do is targeted at reducing Support costs. I spend at least 3/4ths of my time working with Engineering, Product Management, etc to modify our products based on Support and/or customer (which in turn reduces the burden on support) needs. As a great example, I'm currently working on a project to improve log collection processes for one of our product lines. A rough estimate is that it takes 10-15 minutes to get the log gather tools to a customer, run the tools, and begin the transfer back to us. Transfer takes as long as it takes, and often it's long enough we have to end the call and have the customer email us (requiring another touch on the ticket to verify). We do this on roughly 20% of all incoming contacts, and when we need logs, we almost always have to get them multiple times (average is about 2.5 sets of logs per case that requires logs) for one reason or another. That's a huge waste of time on everyone's part. It's boring, and it's frustrating for both Support and the customer, especially if something goes wrong and you have to start the gather/send process again (a semi-frequent occurrence). We gather logs thousands of times per month, which costs us hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. It should be automated. When we need logs on a live contact, there should be a button to click. And if it's not a live contact, like an email case, we should be able to tell the customer "click the button and contact us again when it's done." By this time next quarter, I expect the automation will exist. It's costly enough to jump to the top of the priority list. Boom. Done. Saved 10-15 minutes on 20% of our cases. End result: We used metrics to find and isolate product-level issues, get fixes for them, metrics go up, customers and employees are happy, and I get to move on to the next big thing.
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Jul 18, 2018 17:57
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Man, I wish we'd use some of the tools in ServiceNow for that kind of thing. They are apparently a pain in the rear end to implement--my last job was thinking about starting the process in 2019, and we'd been on SN since 2014. Current job's overall implementation of SN is already a clusterfuck, and nobody is making any moves to improve things.
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Jul 18, 2018 18:03
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Just be like my job and have no ticketing system. Metrics? We don't need to stinkin metrics.
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Jul 18, 2018 18:07
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AlternateAccount posted:Yep. You get more of what you measure, and that's not necessarily bad(but sometimes it is.) More importantly, in that kind of culture, you will get a lot less of everything else. That's basically what the culture at my new job has turned into - over the past few years, the service desk has lost a lot of rights, been converted to a much stricter metrics and ACD style system, and reduced to daylight only with an outside vendor for off hours support. As you can probably predict, everything is awful. No one wants to work because they feel like it doesn't mean anything, the user community doesn't call unless they absolutely have to because they don't trust us, and the environment is just an overall mess. The good news is that the somewhat-new CIO has apparently realized that this is awful and wants to change it. I followed my manager here from our previous firm, and boy is this going to be an interesting couple of years turning this around. It's funny how insidious it is, too. Like, we have a "scorecard" that's supposed to show how well the department is performing, but it's all about ticket quantities, closure rates, and meeting SLA. If you look at that long enough, the numbers slowly become the real point, rather than measuring to make sure you're supporting the actual values of the business. You can say that people have too many open tickets, but that doesn't say anything about the underlying cause. Maybe they're all shitheads, maybe staffing levels are wrong, maybe there are too many preventable problems in the environment that are driving higher volumes. If you can get a handle on that, then you can start being actually valuable to the business rather than an annoying cost center. I just hope that all this talk from management about change still holds up when we start really shaking things up.
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Jul 18, 2018 18:15
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Kyrosiris posted:At $OLDJOB-2 we had both this as well as "close ticket immediately as soon as you think an issue's fixed, make the customer open a new ticket if it's not". My habit of "hey, we show it's fixed from our end, but if you could confirm it's fixed for you, that'd be great!" and leaving tickets in a pending auto-close state (if the customer didn't reply within 72 hours, then it closed itself) was seriously super frowned upon once a new management team rolled in. It was so stupid, and we had so many customers bitch about it, but GOTTA HAVE THEM TICKET CLOSE METRICS This was the disconnect between marking the issue fixed at the time you fixed it (which has to be implemented separately) and using the ticket closure time as the measure of it being fixed. My $JOB had this problem in an earlier ticket system but not the current one. Of course now we have whole new fields of ticket metric gamesmanship, and our current intense pressure is to say that problems had no impact at all.
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Jul 18, 2018 18:35
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The Macaroni posted:Man, I wish we'd use some of the tools in ServiceNow for that kind of thing. They are apparently a pain in the rear end to implement--my last job was thinking about starting the process in 2019, and we'd been on SN since 2014. Current job's overall implementation of SN is already a clusterfuck, and nobody is making any moves to improve things. You'll never get what you want out of SN itself. My advice is to set up a separate reporting service. Create a SQL job to pull and (if necessary) massage the data from key tables SN, and place the results in a separate database. Have this happen daily-ish. If you can't do it, put together a project and pull in people who can. Then point a real data application, like PowerBI or Tableau, at this new source. Or hell, just have a job dump a .csv daily and use Excel (this sucks long term and is better used as a stopgap to refine the data source before you unleash a real data application.)
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Jul 18, 2018 18:41
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you ate my cat posted:It's funny how insidious it is, too. Like, we have a "scorecard" that's supposed to show how well the department is performing, but it's all about ticket quantities, closure rates, and meeting SLA. Yep, none of those things matter, except maybe SLA.
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Jul 18, 2018 19:07
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Submarine Sandpaper posted:A high priority ticket comes in, first action: change the priority to low for statistics.
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Jul 18, 2018 19:24
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Kyrosiris posted:At $OLDJOB-2 we had both this as well as "close ticket immediately as soon as you think an issue's fixed, make the customer open a new ticket if it's not". My habit of "hey, we show it's fixed from our end, but if you could confirm it's fixed for you, that'd be great!" and leaving tickets in a pending auto-close state (if the customer didn't reply within 72 hours, then it closed itself) was seriously super frowned upon once a new management team rolled in. It was so stupid, and we had so many customers bitch about it, but GOTTA HAVE THEM TICKET CLOSE METRICS AlternateAccount posted:Yep, none of those things matter, except maybe SLA. Submarine Sandpaper fucked around with this message at 19:44 on Jul 18, 2018 |
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Jul 18, 2018 19:31
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Our response SLA is 1-2 hours depending on the client. Which was real fun sometimes until it was decided that as long as they got an e-mail saying we were aware of the case it was good enough! Still have clients who put in a ticket, wait five minutes and then respond to the ticket asking why we haven't gotten back to them!!!!!!
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Jul 18, 2018 19:56
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ConfusedUs posted:The use of metrics to drive change really comes down to the priority of the organization. A good org will have multiple priorities, and drives towards industry standard metrics in those priorities. Common metrics include handle time, customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, number of contacts per case, time-until-close per case, etc. Yes, but if we do all that AND cut headcount 7% and freeze all new hires, think about how much more money we'll make this quarter!
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Jul 18, 2018 19:59
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pr0digal posted:Still have clients who put in a ticket, wait five minutes and then respond to the ticket asking why we haven't gotten back to them!!!!!! It's even more fun* when it's a phone call because they haven't gotten a response in five minutes. (*actually it's really stupid but I digress)
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Jul 18, 2018 20:06
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Submarine Sandpaper posted:our termination SLA is < 12 hours. We get tickets for them up to a month in advance. I thought uhhh, that's fine? Until I realized your timer probably starts at ticket reception. We can at least forward-date terminations so the ticket can come in whenever but doesn't really fire until the date of actual termination.
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Jul 18, 2018 20:20
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ConfusedUs posted:This your new job, or your old? Cuz if it's your old, you know I got your back. Send me the deetz at work. It's the new job. If it was the old job I would have Granted, most of what I work with is seemingly "oh your printers aren't working? *uninstalls/reinstalls printers* it's fixed!" or "you didn't reset your password and now you're locked out completely" or "you need access to SPECIFIC_PROGRAM_HERE? well you need to fill out a request, go do that" so it's super simple, but for everything that isn't super simple there is zero giving a gently caress about rabbit holes. Other people's notes are things that would make my last job's teams cry anger tears. (this is for a very small internal clientele)
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Jul 19, 2018 00:24
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Loanarn posted:Bonus points for creating a low disk space cleanup script that goes in and deletes cab files, stops wsus, deletes the contents of the software distribution folder and then starts wsus, then blows away the contents of all the temp folders. It’s you. You are today’s unsung hero. My mom doesn’t know you, but she thanks you.
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Jul 19, 2018 01:47
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 Help! I can't get into Sharepoint! Your password expired. WHAT DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH SHAREPOINT? Well... I CAN'T GET INTO SHAREPOINT. I LIKE MY PASSWORD AND DON'T WANT TO CHANGE IT.I feel like I just ruined this person's morning or something. What the christ.
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Jul 19, 2018 13:58
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my cat is norris posted:I feel like I just ruined this person's morning or something. What the christ. 'Company security policy requires users to change their passwords after x number of days, if you don't like this take it up with the head of security.' As much work as our security chief makes us, sometimes he's useful. Not your circus, not your monkeys, not your problem. Unless you are in charge of sec policy, then you are beyond help.
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Jul 19, 2018 14:50
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my cat is norris posted:
hahah my [only?] complaint when I was helpdesk was regarding a woman's PW. I unlocked it and immediately hung up since she was yelling. Then fielded the callback and my own complaint, she didn't recognize my name or voice and I could tell her secretary was very very uncomfortable. Routed that complaint to security regarding our PW policy and kept my name off it.
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Jul 19, 2018 14:52
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The amount of bitching about passwords I get is amazing, and they always act like I don't have to know twice as many as they do. (I only know like, 4 passwords because I'm capable of using a generator/PW safe.)
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Jul 19, 2018 14:53
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One time we made the owner of the company change his password, and he decided on something like 'rats0135' Because you say 'awww rats!' when you are forced to change your password
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Jul 19, 2018 15:08
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