At the IT Service Desk, I frequently end up creating trouble tickets that get sent to other support teams for service. It's not uncommon for users to ask how long until the issue gets resolved.
This is not a question I can answer. First of all, because I don't always know what the issue is, so I can't begin to guess how long it will take to fix it. Second, even if I do know what the issue is, the fix may not be that simple. Third, I don't know what the work queue for <support team X> looks like, how many other tickets are ahead of the user's ticket in the queue, etc. And even if I did know all of that, I'm not going to put another team on the spot by saying something like "Oh, they'll have that done for you in five minutes!" ...because five minutes later, when it hasn't been done, they'll call back asking what's taking so long.
Twice so far today, I've been asked for estimates on how quickly a ticket will be turned around.
One of them was for a user whose admin account had gotten locked. Now, the ITSD can't unlock admin accounts-- we don't have the access for that-- so we'd have to send that up to the Account Problems teams. However, all account locks time out after a certain interval, an interval which, honestly, would have probably passed by the time the Account Problems folks got to her ticket. I advised the user about this, but she wanted a ticket submitted anyway, since the account had locked after one failed attempt at logging in, instead of after the usual <X> tries. So I submitted the ticket, but made sure to note on the ticket that she insisted on it, instead of waiting for the lock to time out.
The other turnaround estimate was for a "critical" ticket. Now, I put "critical" in quotes because however desperate someone might be to have their ticket addressed immediately, the highest priority a ticket can get without senior manager authorization is "medium." This user was having a problem on the "Envy" work environment with several applications, and the issue had been ongoing for several days. The ticket had gotten submitted earlier in the day, and been kicked up to Tier 2 and sent to the engineers so they could figure out what the issue was.
Mr. Impatient had called an hour before for an update on his ticket, and was calling back again because this was a "critical" issue. I placated him as best I could, which admittedly wasn't much, because there was nothing documented on the ticket about what, if anything was being done. Do note, however, that this does not mean that nothing is being done, it's just not been documented if so. The user wanted to know how he could be sure anything was being done, and asked me to put on the ticket that he wanted someone to call him immediately, so he could be sure someone was actually looking at the ticket.
Then Mr. Impatient asked me what the usual turnaround time is on critical tickets. Now, I did not give him an actual figure for that question. I told him that every ticket is different, and as his ticket was in the queue of a completely different support team, in a completely different office, I had no way of knowing what the turnaround could be. Still, with my noting his call on the ticket with his request of "OMG CALL ME NAO NUTHINS BEIN DONNNNE" logged in as well, this seemed to satisfy him enough.
Sigh.
This is not a question I can answer. First of all, because I don't always know what the issue is, so I can't begin to guess how long it will take to fix it. Second, even if I do know what the issue is, the fix may not be that simple. Third, I don't know what the work queue for <support team X> looks like, how many other tickets are ahead of the user's ticket in the queue, etc. And even if I did know all of that, I'm not going to put another team on the spot by saying something like "Oh, they'll have that done for you in five minutes!" ...because five minutes later, when it hasn't been done, they'll call back asking what's taking so long.
Twice so far today, I've been asked for estimates on how quickly a ticket will be turned around.
One of them was for a user whose admin account had gotten locked. Now, the ITSD can't unlock admin accounts-- we don't have the access for that-- so we'd have to send that up to the Account Problems teams. However, all account locks time out after a certain interval, an interval which, honestly, would have probably passed by the time the Account Problems folks got to her ticket. I advised the user about this, but she wanted a ticket submitted anyway, since the account had locked after one failed attempt at logging in, instead of after the usual <X> tries. So I submitted the ticket, but made sure to note on the ticket that she insisted on it, instead of waiting for the lock to time out.
The other turnaround estimate was for a "critical" ticket. Now, I put "critical" in quotes because however desperate someone might be to have their ticket addressed immediately, the highest priority a ticket can get without senior manager authorization is "medium." This user was having a problem on the "Envy" work environment with several applications, and the issue had been ongoing for several days. The ticket had gotten submitted earlier in the day, and been kicked up to Tier 2 and sent to the engineers so they could figure out what the issue was.
Mr. Impatient had called an hour before for an update on his ticket, and was calling back again because this was a "critical" issue. I placated him as best I could, which admittedly wasn't much, because there was nothing documented on the ticket about what, if anything was being done. Do note, however, that this does not mean that nothing is being done, it's just not been documented if so. The user wanted to know how he could be sure anything was being done, and asked me to put on the ticket that he wanted someone to call him immediately, so he could be sure someone was actually looking at the ticket.
Then Mr. Impatient asked me what the usual turnaround time is on critical tickets. Now, I did not give him an actual figure for that question. I told him that every ticket is different, and as his ticket was in the queue of a completely different support team, in a completely different office, I had no way of knowing what the turnaround could be. Still, with my noting his call on the ticket with his request of "OMG CALL ME NAO NUTHINS BEIN DONNNNE" logged in as well, this seemed to satisfy him enough.
Sigh.
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