On call tech paging suck

[Blade_Raver]

ME: Me.
SC: Sucky Customer
OC: On-Call tech, not sucky.

ME: (Company) Helpdesk, Blade_Raver speaking.
SC: My xxx screen isn't connecting to server.

I've never heard of this "xxx screen" in my 2-3 years of working for this company.

ME: I'm sorry, can you be more specific?
SC: My xxx screen in (Application Y) won't connect to server.
ME: Is this affecting just 1 computer or multi....

I don't proclaim to be an expert in App Y, but I've never heard of that screen.

SC: (Interrupts and yells) Page (Application Y) on-call now! This is a production affecting problem!
ME: (Whatever dude, calm the fuck down) Alrighty will do. Let me make a ticket first.

I go through the process of making the ticket in our system. (System's slow because servers are running maintenance during afterhours.)
As I ask for his name, user ID, callback phone number he answers each question in such a manner that gives undertones of "WTF? Are you an idiot? Stop wasting my time!"
I finally get the ticket created and look up the on-call for App Y. Home phone is preferred method. I call it, wake up OC.

OC: Hello?
ME: Hey OC, this is ME at (company) helpdesk. I apologize for disturbing you so late, but a guy over in (city) called in reporting having issues with xxx screen in Y app and told me to call you.
OC: (Upset tone) Put him on the phone please.
ME: Will do.

(Conference in SC with OC)

ME: SC, I have OC on the line.
SC: Thank you.
OC: (Still in upset tone) What's the problem?
SC: I can't access xxx screen in Y app.
OC: That screen you're talking about doesn't even exist in Y app....

The conversation pretty much broke down with the SC insisting that it was WMS, the OC telling him that he's full of shit, SC then admitting his incompetence because he only works there on the weekends, and finally conceding his pursuit and saying he'll try to figure it out himself.

So, to recap, the SC:
1) Wasted my time on the phone that could have been better spent answering calls from people that have real issues.
2) Wasted my effort in typing up a ticket.
3) Caused stress on my part by him yelling at me.
4) Caused confusion with being unable to communicate and properly describe the issue.
5) Cost the company more money waking up the on-call tech (They get paid 1 hr of wage minimum per call received)
6) Cost the on-call tech valuable sleep
7) Caused frustration to the on-call tech.
8) Cost the company money due to him wasting time on my phone instead of fixing his own issue and getting back to work.
Possible 9) Give bad marks on the email survey that will go out to him once the ticket is closed, causing my performance numbers to look bad and cost me my raise come review time.

[Andara Bledin]

Here's an article at Quality Insider about How Not to Use Survey Data.

I thought of poor CS users who have to put up with this bullcrap as soon as I saw the sub-title in the email newsletter of "Using Survey Data to Beat Up Your Employees."

I think a lot of people need to share this gem with their supervisors, etc.

^-.-^

[lordlundar]

The company I worked for runs their surveys much the same way. Anything less than all 5's is considered a complete failure and the employees gets bashed on it. This is a 25 question survey and even 1 question less than 4 is a fail. So it's become standard to tell a customer that if they were generally pleased to just score nothing but 5 on all the questions. So in short, having the customers lie for the employees to keep their jobs.

[Ironclad Alibi]

Quoth lordlundar

Anything less than all 5's is considered a complete failure and the employees gets bashed on it.

Back in the early to mid 1970's when I worked for the Air Force and Navy the officers were subjected to a yearly rating. They were rated on a number of factors, each on a scale of 1-9. It had gotten to the point that an officer needed to get all 9s on this rating. A single 8 would destroy his chances for promotion, and hence his career.

A very good thing about retirement is I no longer get a yearly rating.

[draggar]

Quoth lordlundar

The company I worked for runs their surveys much the same way. Anything less than all 5's is considered a complete failure and the employees gets bashed on it. This is a 25 question survey and even 1 question less than 4 is a fail. So it's become standard to tell a customer that if they were generally pleased to just score nothing but 5 on all the questions. So in short, having the customers lie for the employees to keep their jobs.

Mine is like this, too.

The blogger forgot to mention that it is never clear on WHO your call is about. If it took you multiple calls to get the issue resolved then you'll have no idea who you're rating so you may give the great rep who fixed your issue a poor survey or one who just blew you off extremely high marks.

Reps can explain it to the customer but then they can easily be accused of "coaching" the customers to falsify the satisfaction ratings.

How about this - instead of putting so much stress over this and training the reps on this, how about properly training reps and giving them the tools to take care of the issues? Why spend the hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars a year watching this?

[EricKei]

It would not surprise me at all of the people who set such high standards are basically bastardizing the model behind Net Promoter (a survey company) -- their model is basically this:

- All questions rated 1-10, where a 1 is "Where's my shotgun?" and a "10" is "I want to have your babies"

- They ask a bunch of questions, then ask the only one that actually counts towards the score: "How likely are you to recommend this company/service/product to other people?"

- Scores of 9/10 count as positives

- Scores of 7 or less count as negatives

- The final result is a skewed ratio -- all "positives" MINUS all "negatives", divide that into the total number of responses to get the final score. In other words: 100 surveys, 70 pos, 20 neg, 10 "neutral" (8's), would yield a score of (70-20)/100=50%

A score of 50% is considered normal (the bulk of the companies they run surveys for get 50ish). A score of 80% is considered phenomenal.

I individual scores on specific questions (except that last one) don't matter -- just the biggie that sums them all up. I suppose a way to implement that model in, say , the naval checks mentioned above would be "How likely would you be to serve under this Officer again?". If the Officer gets 50-60, that's not bad at all but not amazing. If he gets an 80, Promote him NOW.