Another very good point
Everything is about the money, it's what drives pretty much everything.
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IT Jobs and Call logging
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Another very good point
Everything is about the money, it's what drives pretty much everything.
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The only time logging faults makes sense imo. Is when it is not an instant fix and you will need to investigate it, you do not have time to look in to it, so that you can keep a track of the specific fault and update as you go. Another good use of call logging is if you think you have a recurring problem to log it and see how often it comes up (often this is never utilised). Any other reason is just a waste of time and done in order to justify some one else jobs. For billing purposes, say you were charging per fault.
Why don't marketing or HR or accounts have to log everything they do in a day ? Why don't other departments or even jobs like mechanics etc log everything they do.
I work in a small firm 100 users +- and everyone knows everyone and when a email or phone call comes through, we generally respond within 10 minutes, depending on how busy we are and the priority etc. We have SLA's at the moment but not on the call logging software, just agreements. But then that does not stop users phoning back 10mins after a call log and asking why we havn't fixed it, even though that would have a 4 hour sla.
But to ask us to log every single thing and then if there is no update on a call put it on hold and put an update saying tehre is no update, just so the sla timer does not go off, is a waste of my time.
Why must IT prove they are doing something, of course they are busy, if they were not needed they would not have a job. Why don't the other departments have to prove they are busy.
Why don't marketing or HR or accounts have to log everything they do in a day ? Why don't other departments or even jobs like mechanics etc log everything they do.
I work in a small firm 100 users +- and everyone knows everyone and when a email or phone call comes through, we generally respond within 10 minutes, depending on how busy we are and the priority etc. We have SLA's at the moment but not on the call logging software, just agreements. But then that does not stop users phoning back 10mins after a call log and asking why we havn't fixed it, even though that would have a 4 hour sla.
But to ask us to log every single thing and then if there is no update on a call put it on hold and put an update saying tehre is no update, just so the sla timer does not go off, is a waste of my time.
Why must IT prove they are doing something, of course they are busy, if they were not needed they would not have a job. Why don't the other departments have to prove they are busy.
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It's not proving you are busy, it's proving that there are appropriate resources for the job. Which comes in very handy come budget time, and also when a company decides it might need to reduce headcount.
One way to measure that in an IT helpdesk function would be to see how many calls are logged in regards to how many staff you have.
Say you take 100 calls a day, but only log 50 of them. To the business, the audit trails only show a 50 call a day work load. This could be used as a basis to decide where any staff cuts could be implemented.
Other departments will also have to justify their headcount, but as they are by their nature different they will have different ways (KPIs if you will) in which this is measured.
Every department in a company will have to do this in their own way.
And as kefkef says (who has rather a great deal of experience in this field) it's all about the money and contracts.
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Sure in some environments with 1000s users and 10 support staff that makes sense to do, But they could just look at how many emails come through to the support mailbox and how many phone calls are taken. All the supervisor needs to do is actually spend a week seeing how busy everyone is by actually watching and engaging on the desk. No need to force all the support staff to waste their time logging every single thing just so that the supervisor can sit back on facebook all day and take a graph to his boss and say look we can fire one person.
I just think that this call logging reaches a point where it is counter productive, if the only reason to waste like an hour of some ones day logging calls and updating calls, putting them on hold etc. is to see how busy he is, then that is not enough justification in my opinion.
In the specific case my job, there is only two of us and one third line guy who does nothing and comes in twice a week. He barely does anything. But they know that if they got rid of one of us 1st/2nd/3rd line guys that the level of service would go down. We are not asking for help so it seems kind of pointless.
I just think that this call logging reaches a point where it is counter productive, if the only reason to waste like an hour of some ones day logging calls and updating calls, putting them on hold etc. is to see how busy he is, then that is not enough justification in my opinion.
In the specific case my job, there is only two of us and one third line guy who does nothing and comes in twice a week. He barely does anything. But they know that if they got rid of one of us 1st/2nd/3rd line guys that the level of service would go down. We are not asking for help so it seems kind of pointless.
Generally anything is outsourced will be reviewed - ultimately if you were paying a firm to do some work for you - you'd expect proof that it's been done. It's a trail for management. - The company your solutions provider are contracted too will have requested this and they are paying the wages so get on with it!
It's not just IT that have call logging systems - my girlfriend works in HR and has a case tracking system.........
If the system is taking an excessive amount of time to log a call (do you not have some quick call features for trivial ones?) then raise it!
I generally log what I can - even though I try to stay away from 'users' as much as possible!
If I am helping out then I will write stuff down on a notepad and log it when I have a free couple of moments.
There are far, far, far much more annoying things to complain about in IT then logging calls
It's not just IT that have call logging systems - my girlfriend works in HR and has a case tracking system.........
If the system is taking an excessive amount of time to log a call (do you not have some quick call features for trivial ones?) then raise it!
I generally log what I can - even though I try to stay away from 'users' as much as possible!
If I am helping out then I will write stuff down on a notepad and log it when I have a free couple of moments. There are far, far, far much more annoying things to complain about in IT then logging calls
How else can large 'managed service' providers in the education sector charge £140,000 a month to publicly funded colleges for provision of support staff? That doesn't include equipment, or project work (which is anything outside the scope of re-active support), by the way.
EDIT: I should probably add, that's twenty support staff, covering ~2,000 desktops, ~3,000 laptops, two datacentres totalling over 200 servers, around 30,000 users across two major sites and twelve minor sites.
EDIT EDIT: That works out £7000 a head, before equipment costs, project work etc.. How does that compare to everyone else? :/
EDIT: I should probably add, that's twenty support staff, covering ~2,000 desktops, ~3,000 laptops, two datacentres totalling over 200 servers, around 30,000 users across two major sites and twelve minor sites.
EDIT EDIT: That works out £7000 a head, before equipment costs, project work etc.. How does that compare to everyone else? :/
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There are far, far, far much more annoying things to complain about in IT then logging calls
Yeh like IT Managers who dont know sweet fanny adams about IT
Yeh like IT Managers who dont know sweet fanny adams about IT
True.
I think the day you realise how much **** there is out there, is the day you realise how good you actually are yourself.
I've been on so many courses sitting next to IT managers of various organisations who seem to be that dense I can't imagine them a) having any serious technical knowledge b) have the nous to manage/drive an IT department forward.
Where there's a weakness, there's an opening for you though
Well firstly, when a time comes that a supervisor is asked to provide some numbers as to how busy you are, you think he's going to think 'I know, I'll spend a whole week of my time just sitting and watching how busy it is'
Anyway that's not really the kind of thing I'm talking about, as you say you're supervisor knows how busy you are. He'd be a rubbish supervisor if he didn't know your work load.
But what about the IT manager, the director of your function, and the people in HR and finance who are looking to make cuts or make things more efficient? Are they going to spend a week watching you?
As I said earlier, it's a game of numbers that unfortunately has to be played.
Frustratingly it can be annoying the smaller the organisation is.
Yeh like IT Managers who dont know sweet fanny adams about IT
I'd rather have a manager who knew how to manage than a techy who didn't
A manager doesn't have to be all knowing, that's what his team is for, to provide him with the information required for him to take the lead.
Obviously if the manager can't manage his way out a paper bag, or is unable to take anything in as well then yes that's rather useless!
And many people do transition from Techy to manager but not everyone is up to it.
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Deleted member 66701
Deleted member 66701
Having worked my way up from Call center > programmer > designer > environments manager > project manager > programme manager - I concur!
I've never has so many documents, esp spreadsheets, on the go at once!
Yeh like IT Managers who dont know sweet fanny adams about IT
My manager was based down the road, never saw him for months at a time so instead we'd get emails moaning about stuff. Of course these were appropriately filed away under deleted items
MW
Do you have to log the request/problem yourself? Perhpas suggest they introduce some ticket system where user's raise requests and your team can simply put your name to them and update/close when complete.
Where I work if we need something from IT then we raise a ticket - sometimes, if he's passing, then I'll ask the IT guy if he can do XYZ quickly if he's free but even then he'll normally ask me to raise a ticket once he's done.
His manager is in NYC and so he needs to account for his time etc... if a bunch of people asked him to help out with a whole bunch of small tasks and then a bunch of other stuff he was supposed to be working on got delayed then at least his manager can see that he's been busy. Also if he starts getting completely swamped and unable to do additional work then he has a big pile of open tickets to point at and show his manager that he's completely snowed under.
How else can large 'managed service' providers in the education sector charge £140,000 a month to publicly funded colleges for provision of support staff? That doesn't include equipment, or project work (which is anything outside the scope of re-active support), by the way.
EDIT: I should probably add, that's twenty support staff, covering ~2,000 desktops, ~3,000 laptops, two datacentres totalling over 200 servers, around 30,000 users across two major sites and twelve minor sites.
EDIT EDIT: That works out £7000 a head, before equipment costs, project work etc.. How does that compare to everyone else? :/
We charge about a million a year for a four man team covering a few servers.
Soldato
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Similar to myself -- in fact, I regularly get laughs from the people here and my boss' boss (who is in this office) due to the fact that I'll be running around doing this and that, then sit for 20+ minutes filling in and closing the tickets for my activities.
Still, it has to be done.
Soldato
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I took 354 calls in a 5 day week last week. I probably only logged about 70% of them. Most of them were first time fixes and didn't have enough time to log a call in IBM Service Centre with about 15 required fields. I only got 20 seconds to go from 1 call to the next.
I am only shooting myself in the foot for the future by not logging them as it looks like I am not logging everything that comes in. If I had 100% log record and a very high SLA first time fix rate then it is good basis to ask for higher salary etc.
At the moment, the way I log and the way the helpdesk is working we aren't going to get diddly squat.
edit: oh and those 354 calls were on top of the 50 or so a day making outbound calls calling the clients back, logging ADSL issues with 3rd party providers and Wincor Nixdorf for their pathetic hardware support.
Overworked and underpaid is understatement in this role.
I am only shooting myself in the foot for the future by not logging them as it looks like I am not logging everything that comes in. If I had 100% log record and a very high SLA first time fix rate then it is good basis to ask for higher salary etc.
At the moment, the way I log and the way the helpdesk is working we aren't going to get diddly squat.
edit: oh and those 354 calls were on top of the 50 or so a day making outbound calls calling the clients back, logging ADSL issues with 3rd party providers and Wincor Nixdorf for their pathetic hardware support.
Overworked and underpaid is understatement in this role.
Soldato
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You can't report on workload by just watching!
I had to produce figures (average time spent on fixing printers, cost to the organisation etc) for a report on managed printers that SLT had asked me for. thankfully when I was in Support I'd set up the HelpDesk logging system and got management backing to make sure calls were logged in it. So I could give SLT an accurate (and shocking!) figure on how much time was spent on printing in less that half hour.
Couldn't of done that with managers "just watching" and so I couldn't have helped the organisation save thousands.
I had to produce figures (average time spent on fixing printers, cost to the organisation etc) for a report on managed printers that SLT had asked me for. thankfully when I was in Support I'd set up the HelpDesk logging system and got management backing to make sure calls were logged in it. So I could give SLT an accurate (and shocking!) figure on how much time was spent on printing in less that half hour.
Couldn't of done that with managers "just watching" and so I couldn't have helped the organisation save thousands.
For an 'outsource' organisation that charges its' customers for each ticket, then you absolutely must log every contact, frustrating though it may be.
What REALLY annoys me though, is that for all the tickets that I log, 95% of them are a waste of effort. They are never examined, almost no reports are produced, we have no SLA's so can't measure anything against them, and we dont have a problem manager either.
So despite thousands of man hours of work going into generating these logs, their one and only purpose is to keep track of a users incident from start to finish.
ITIL? We've heard of it....
What REALLY annoys me though, is that for all the tickets that I log, 95% of them are a waste of effort. They are never examined, almost no reports are produced, we have no SLA's so can't measure anything against them, and we dont have a problem manager either.
So despite thousands of man hours of work going into generating these logs, their one and only purpose is to keep track of a users incident from start to finish.
ITIL? We've heard of it....
About the same number that my wife usually takes in her job on a helpdesk.
They have a web page that counts the number of phonecalls each operator gets and cross references it to how many calls they've logged tagged as a phonecall to give them a percentage of telephone contacts logged.
If you're up to about 10% or 15%, I forget which, short then they start getting annoyed with you.
If you do get a lot of repetitive calls and cant set up some kind of auto ticket within your helpdesk software, look at using a key macro recorder. I used one a few years ago, where i had a few notepad files with all the text required for the specific calls and all i needed to do when i got one was put the user details in the required fields of the helpdesk software and then put the cursor into the first relevant field, hit the macro software launcher and it just copied and pasted the text from the notepad in to the relevant field, so logging a call was as easy as answer phone, get user details, get incident info, launch relevant notepad file (one click), launch macro software (one click), hit the close call button when finished (one click). So as easy as typing in user details, 3 clicks, job done.
