When the moron is the Techie...

[penguingeekgod]

A HUGE lightning storm had just passed over my town, and I notice that I am on digital roaming and calls were not connecting at all. This wouldn't be a problem if the tower weren't only a mile away (there are quite a few dead zones in the area). So I head to the Smalltel store to see is the network was down or if my phone was faulty. I get to the store, and there are 15 people backed in like sardines. I groan... this was going to take a while, especially since there was only one associate on shift. The sales associate was awesome, and all us customers were making small talk while the guy did his thing. All of us in the store had the same problem, INCLUDING THE ASSOCIATE. He was forced to use the land line.

So, the associate gets tech support on the line. He's on the line for 5 minutes and about 3 more people walk in with the same problem everyone else had. We all stop chatting when he repeats to the tech guy, "You're telling me that the tower is up and that there is no outages or other problems on the network? (stupid tech guy) Listen, I have about 15-20 people in the store RIGHT NOW that beg to differ INCLUDING me because our wireless line is down as well. (stupid tech guy) "If you don't believe me, I'll put EVERY SINGLE CUSTOMER I have here on the line with you and YOU, NOT ME, will deal with their problem and YOU will tell them that there is nothing wrong with their service!" (stupid tech guy) "Fine." *slams the phone down* *we all start clapping* *he smiles* "The are sending a maintenance crew to check out the tower, and they may reboot the system. You all should have service in 6 hours."

We all thanked him and filed out peacefully.

[draggar]

See, I can see the "tech guy's point. They do not see exactly what is going on at that exact time. I can look up a network tool, but it is 30 minutes behind (but people who join us from the competition are impressed by this?). We do have the ability to flag towers and/or locations for issues, which are updated in real time.

The tech guy might not have known about the outage because it hadn't been reported yet.

ALthough I can say THANK GOD the customers were all cool about this. In my store, my customers think it is impossible for anything to cause an issue other than the phone. Dropped calls has to be the phone. No service has to be the phone. No messages, it has to be the phone. Their account is off due to non-payment, it has to be the phone.

Can I send some of those customers to my area to do some customer training?

[gunsage]

Typically, an outage in our company is not reported unless...

1. Several calls come from approximately the same area...all of which require approximately the same type of trouble call.
2. Techs are already out in the area communicating with their supervisors...all because of essentially the same problem.

I recall there was one day where I was getting quite depressed because even after running through a fairly decent amount of troubleshooting, there wasn't enough data to suggest that the line was bad (thus, roll a truck) and yet, clearly there didn't seem to be anything wrong with the computer. Solution? Swap the modem, sorry.

Of course, this happened about 10 times in a row. VERY depressing...until one of my supervisors comes barreling down the aisle going "Hey guys! In X area, we are experiencing Y issue! Write down the MAC address and account number and let them know we're working on it" as our queue shot up. Time is not my friend.

[BravoOrig]

We either will notice a bunch of calls from a certain area and have a lead or sup check the CMTS for a bunch of modems offline, which has to be 15% or more. I have access to check that myself so I don't have to bother them, plus I roll outages at night. If 3 truck rolls are put in within a certain amount of time in a given area the system will automatically declare an outage. Of course sometimes the outage is under the 15% but seems like its close, so we'll see what addresses are offline and declare it anyways.

[Stockholm Syndrome]

See, I can see the "tech guy's point. They do not see exactly what is going on at that exact time. I can look up a network tool, but it is 30 minutes behind (but people who join us from the competition are impressed by this?). We do have the ability to flag towers and/or locations for issues, which are updated in real time.

Having been on the other side of similar calls, I can definitely see his point. If we don't have an outage reported yet we are required to go through the motions of "troubleshooting" and filing a ticket and not simply declare an outage to the caller. In this case I could have added a note to the ticket stating that a store full of folks are reporting having the same problem, and hoped the ticket was worked fairly quickly and the network tool updated to reflect an outage. It kind of sounds like the sales associate was being a bit sucky, and wanted to put on a show in front of the store full of customers.