IT Jobs and Call logging

[CLAWS]

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.

Very true. Ive always found though that it does help to have a manager who can actually take on board any techy stuff you relate to them and actually know what to do with the knowledge.

My manager at my previous firm clearly did not know her **** from her elbow when it came to IT. I used to attend IT champions meetings with her, the IT Director and some nominated users (lawyers) in order to better the profile of IT. Suffice to say that when she opened her mouth in the meetings she always managed to make the whole of IT look stupid. On top of that she complained that she did not have the time to micro manage us and therefore hired a team leader for a team of 3!

If she hadnt been buggering off to IT and legal conferences 3 times a week then maybe she WOULD have the time! Bit of a no brainer really

Worst scenario was when it was just a meeting between her, the team leader and myself. I threw some ideas on the table which they liked and when she pitched these to the director she repeated everything I said word for word. To add insult to injury I was told she convinced the director that they were her own original ideas!

Suffice to say I am no longer working there and I am no longer in legal IT working for a complete pleb of a manager!

/rant over

 

[memyselfandi]

My goodness.

Roll on CCIE certification... I want a slice of *that* pie!

Just because your company is charging you out at a large sum doesn't mean you will get more than a fraction of that.

My time is charged to customers (by the company at ~£2k/day) ... I only get paid a tiny fraction of that though

(Yes contracting is an option but I prefer stability)

 

[NickK]

because its not your job to ask that
Welcome to the world of work, and seeing things that are wrong but having to accept they are wrong.

Unless you're the guy that has the power to change cross-functional business processes (no guesses to what I'm currently doing)

 

[NickK]

ITIL? We've heard of it....

Ironically one of the key points to ITIL is metrics. Measuring the KPI before, evolving a small change and reviewing it's impact on the KPI set as a whole.

KPIs are notoriously difficult to pin a precise & accurate uni-interpreted description against. Care to define what is a "waste of time"? If it's something that could be automated then could you put a cost against it? (ie your time*your salary).

 

[HunterTony]

Or small support company.

I had a choice between 1st line support in a large corporate and joining a tiny team of, at the time, just 3 people. By going for the latter I was configuring firewalls, clusters and configuring exchange etc within the first month. Of course there was also PC builds, buying licenses, supporting Office and all the other crap, but better that than being lost in a large team of call loggers.

Go small first, then go LARGE

I'm so glad that my first IT Support job (which I start next friday) is with a small, family-run company

 

[Ev0]

Very true. Ive always found though that it does help to have a manager who can actually take on board any techy stuff you relate to them and actually know what to do with the knowledge.

Exactly, and that's what makes a good manager.

Well that and his staff need to be able to convey the techy stuff in a way in which they will be able to understand it, that can be half the problem.

 

[Liquid_Entity]

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.

haha that was just my call stats. Across the week from 7 people this is the totals:

214 47 113 223 258 346 172 = 1373 calls in 6 days of trade.

Crazy stats !

 

[Conanius]

Funny read this thread,

My previous role was that of a Service Delivery Manager. In short a lot of the work revolved around getting the monthly reporting done, so fair to say it was more Service Level Manager with a dab of customer relationship stuff thrown in for good measure.

Firstly, ITIL is nothing more than a framework of best practice. You take from it what you need, and it is not a bible. Think of it as nothing more than a list of processes (good ideas) and a set of common terminology (buzzword bingo).

The huge problem I find in my experience is you get some jumped up idiot who did ITIL foundation, maybe even blagged their way through the manager qualification somehow who has no concept of the real world, and tries to quite literally pick up ITIL and drop it into an environment which is already having issues. It causes complete rage from techies who 'just want to do their job' (play with bright lights and expensive stuff, who the hell are these users who keep calling me?) and importantly senior management just see huge costs and decide that implimenting ITIL caused them.

The reality is that poor quality call logging has a huge impact on IT support environments. Always picking 'Windows Environment' as the system or putting 'reboot' as the fix code for swapping out a toner cartridge or whatever actually totally screws over IT departments.

A major part of my role was trying to do some trending from our call data. Call quality was, in honesty ******* appauling. System names wouldn't be spelt right, empty fields, obscenely low first time fix rate because 'quick fix calls take too long to log' etc.

In honesty, this is caused by toolsets being poorly implemented, usually because the client doesn't have a clue what they want, so someone gives them what they think would work, which in most cases, is something they got from a different organisation with totally different needs.

Service Management toolset configuration done right should have very few fields on the Service Call (At one point I think ITIL recommended Service Calls (read this as the initial part of the call you raise, not a Request For Change, Incident, etc) should have no more than 10-12 fields, including things like customer contact details), should have quick ticketing (those common first line fixes should be templates, nearly all toolsets offer this in one way or another) and opportunities for errors should be edited out (drop down lists for systems etc)

It sounds very much like your consultant is doing the best he can, but cant believe how something as simple as completing a service call is so difficult for you to do. Why not get him to spend some time with you and see how difficult it is, and recommend some changes.

Remember, the reason why the client isnt complaining is in some part (no idea how big!) because he is trying to improve the quality of IT's work

 

[Conanius]

Dear god. I just re read some more of the postings in this thread.

it took me 2 hours the other day to get the paper work done to reboot a live server... - fair enough you say... HOWEVER the server had CRASHED.. the whole system was down and no one could use the system (it was also the only system on that server)

the paperwork is signed off by two people who know NOTHING about IT...

Sounds like a fantastic Major Incident process you have there. The two people who know nothing about IT are probable senior users/stakeholders. In honesty it depends what state your system is in, but if it is total loss and absolutely no one is able to work on it then yes, I'd say go for it. If it is partial loss I'd be using those two people who know nothing about IT for their business contacts to help communicate that you needed to do an urgent reboot to restore service.

It is just a waste of time, i understand some calls needs to be logged when you are investigating them or they are going to need updates etc. So you do not forgot, but just logging so that the stats go up and the supervisor can then show some graphs and apparently justify our job (realy justify his job).

IT needs to justify its budgets just as much as anyone else does. He is indeed justifying your job as if call volumes are low he doesnt need so many people....

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.

spoken like a true IT Service Desk analyst who hates his job!

You need to log that call, so the guy who analyses the stats can say 'wow, 5400 calls this month to fix XYZ... I wonder if there is an underlying problem we need to fix..' Thus reducing everyones workload in the long run oh, and SAVING MONEY !

 

[Ev0]

haha that was just my call stats. Across the week from 7 people this is the totals:

214 47 113 223 258 346 172 = 1373 calls in 6 days of trade.

Crazy stats !

And that was just her stats, times it by 3 to get approximatley how many calls the 3 person helpdesk takes in a 5 day week in a company of around 2000ish people (at a guess, been 3 years since I worked there).

spoken like a true IT Service Desk analyst who hates his job!

Exactly the impression I got.

 

[matt_fsr]

You need to log that call, so the guy who analyses the stats can say 'wow, 5400 calls this month to fix XYZ... I wonder if there is an underlying problem we need to fix..' Thus reducing everyones workload in the long run oh, and SAVING MONEY !

If we had someone who analysed the stats, this would make sense

 

[sixty]

*snip*

Bloody good post; should be compulsory reading!

 

[Conanius]

If we had someone who analysed the stats, this would make sense

That almost implies that the people who make stats analyse them.

The amount of times that when you question someone about their stats that they either A) aren't consistently calculated month to month or B) they don't have a clue where the numbers come from is beyond frightening.

Again, serious point... offer to make the stats and analyse them, there are plenty of KPI dashboards and the like that you can set up. Something like BIRT is free and can plug into loads of different data sources, even things like excel workbooks... and better yet? it can do automated reporting, so the boss thinks you actually did stay in till 3am to get them out early on the first of the month....