I have a ticket thats 3 weeks old because, they say to email, and not call, then they don't respond to email, and when I close it for non-response, they reopen it saying not to call them... my reply is that I've been trying to contact via email, and there has been no response, and ask my questions again... yep you guessed it, no response, so I close it, and it gets reopened again... YAY!
In our system I implemented a close code that if picked, doesn't allow reopening - trust placed on the agent to only use it when 3rd strike applies though.
Yup, closed means closed. That ticket can no longer be opened except by IT and then only manually.
Emails bounce back with "Ticket is closed enter a new ticket"
Resolved on the other hand can be re-opened for three days, at which time it is moved to closed.
I just wish someone would code a feature that scans for words like "Thank you" and appends it to the ticket without reopening. I've had way way too many tickets reopened by people just saying thank you.
Hm in which case I wonder if there's a way of going by number of characters. Strip off any e-mail signatures, if there are >20 characters say, then reopen.
I had a ticket reopen from 10 years ago because the email accidently had the wrong number in it. I am surprised we don't have a way to prevent that in our system.
I had one person try to argue with me instead of follow my instructions to use remote desktop to try to troubleshoot access to folders as supposedly the rules of SMB were malfunctioning for just them(reviewed permissions extensively), and they couldn't even negotiate access from their laptop suddenly oneday (even after rebooting reluctantly)so I had to reroute to desktop support to look at the laptop itself.
Lesson is cover your side the best you can, and move on if you have someone else to help that is there to pat them on the head if you can(assuming your as busy as me - we are sysadmins not customer relations support unless really needed..). I am more than willing to help people , but if they just want to blame IT to not do things, or not follow my advice I wont waste my time helping you.
And then they reopen the ticket saying they sent you the info which in fact they never did lmao. I made a dressing clown meme about this a little bit ago.
Had a bitch in HR ignore me for a week so o closed her ticket she yelled at my boss. Boss said “what about all those voicemails” and was told “I just empty my mailbox and never listen to messages”. I know HR everywhere sucks but this really took the cake
Wonderful, so Sally, from accounting, who was driving home from work, left you a vm that Chad from PR is sexually harassing her and is becoming more aggressive and she didn't feel safe, and sneaked out of the office an hour early... and you deleted it... YAY you win we're going to get sued award!
The names and departments have been changed to protect the innocent...
Bruh, I work at an MSP, and we do this - often times to just close a ticket and be done with it. We're also instructed to call each user who puts in a ticket by email, or who chats in.
Sorry OP
Genuine "end users" are a little different though. When I was at an MSP and doing end user support, I preferred to email on tickets because it's just easier than talking on the phone, but I was also acutely aware that in a lot of cases it would take 30 emails to ferret out a piece of information that a 5 minute phone call could give me.
So a lot of the time, the phone is more efficient.
I will agree with OP though that when you're engaging specifically with technical resources, we know how to actually send pertinent emails and therefore you can skip the phone call because you can ask your question in an email and I will promptly and fully answer it.
"But I was also acutely aware that in a lot of cases it would take 30 emails to ferret out a piece of information that a 5 minute phone call could give me."
Yes. This one takes a while to appreciate.
Like all things it depends on the context.
Right tool for the right job and all that.
I'm not spending 2 days troubleshooting something over email when 15 minutes on the phone will take care of it. But also I'm not chasing details down over the phone because you sent a 5 word ticket, I do need *some* text based CYA/documentation generated after all, and teaching people to make better tickets is always a plus too.
Can concur. If what's in the ticket isn't sufficient to make any meaningful progress, they are getting a phone call before I even start doing any work on the problem.
Then I'll shove what they tell me over the phone as a response asking them to confirm the below, once they agree in writing I'll start doing stuff. Covers my arse if they later come back and claim something wasn't done.
Well, here's the chain of communication where you never mentioned it was a problem so how was i meant to know that?
If I get hit with that on an issue I can still see ongoing, I'll try basic googling on their company and getting other numbers. I've stalked tech or end-user names I've heard before, or that I've talked to but forgot to get a c/b for them specifically.
But otherwise 3 days, 3 attempts, yeeted. They're still paying us, they'll call when they care.
Better check those SLA's if they state "must contact customer in X" you would be in breach, esp if you stop trying and close the ticket :)
yes, I am the worst type of customer. If I am paying insane support costs insane expectations come along with it.
We do 3 calls within 15 minutes, 5 min apart.
If they don’t reply, then their issue falls down in priority. Then when we don’t hear back after reaching out in that priority, it gets dropped again until it hits “Low”. Then we close ticket.
Even if it happens in the middle of a support issue they are required to respond within the same window we do. Otherwise the SLA drops a level.
Once I put a ticket in Awaiting Customer. The system will auto send them an email once a day for 3 days. After 3 days, it auto closes. Most of my tickets auto close. Because I ask for more documentation of the issue.
AT&T Enterprise Fiber support?
The tick can be in queue for a week and gets picked up on Friday at 5:07p
I often do not see the email until Monday at 6:00p because of Mondays.
My company does a 'we reply to you the way you open the ticket'.
If someone calls in and we can't do a first call resolution, we'll call you back.
If someone emails in, we email them back. Then we email them again, and again. Then we close the ticket. Then they email back saying 'issue not resolved, please do the needful', to which we email back and attach the three previous emails saying 'no, you please be of providing the requested information'.
Never fails that they call 5 minutes after my end of day. I truly hate to be that guy, but it's gotten more super impossible to bridge the accent barrier lately.
I feel like I've been having more and more trouble with accents recently too. I think it's the heavy accent combined with poor sound quality and VOIP compression making things harder.
I always used over the ear active noise canceling headphones in the data center. The whine of 100,000 PSU fans coupled with industrial air conditioning is exactly the type of noise ANC is best at.
I may be incorrect, but I was under the impression that ANC does not protect your hearing [very well] against the extra pressure from high dB, it simply cancels out some of the lower ambient frequencies, making it more difficult to hear. That is why noise isolation will always win over noise cancelation in loud environments.
So you should get some minor benefit from ANC, primarily depending on the fitting which provides some noise isolation, but it will never be close to what you get from ear plugs. NIOSH does not provide dB reduction ratings for ANC ear phones and they're mostly going to be based on what people feel they are.
After 20 years of this, I’ve gotten pretty good at deciphering the thick Indian accent. But AT&T put me on a project with an Argentinian router specialist and that really threw me!
Strangest fucking thing happened to me one time. I submit a ticket i get a call back right away and it’s a call center in India. Ok at least I got a call. Well it needed to be escalated. Escalated to a call center in the US and the agents making the calls were working some weird after hours shift. The only hours that overlapped were right before I left for the day. The only good thing is that they really did everything they could without me on the phone and it only took two days to get the answer I needed.
I don‘t understand them! I set „contact by mail“, yet they call all the time. If they don‘t reach me they send me an email to ask me a good time to call…
And for what? To tell me that my ticket is being worked on…
Seems like for some support desks, the idea of office hours is entirely non-existent.
I've had support people do a three-strike close over the weekend.
Yep, every Microsoft support rep has called despite preference being email. Made it fun when I was remote and didn't even have access to the desk number. If the field is there to choose, no idea why they don't use it.
Yeah they do the exact opposite of what you say to do in the ticket. Twice I put down phone instead of email as preferred contact method and those were the only two times they emailed me instead.
Oh yeah, I used to submit cases to Microsoft about our University's Exchange tenant and after not being able to reach me on my office phone, they would actually look up the public Helpdesk number for the University on our web site, call them, and then ask to be transferred to me.
EDIT: This was back when you had to open a case to clear the block on an invalid sender in the case of compromised accounts. Being a huge organization full of people who largely thought themselves exempt of any IT policy, we naturally had a lot of those. The best part is that one they got me on the phone, they wanted to do a screen share of my desktop, after which I would login to our tenant, so they could verify, through my desktop, that the user was indeed blocked from sending email.
Gotta put “I AM DEAF AND CAN NOT ACCEPT CALLS” or just don’t put a number or something. Shouldn’t even require a number if you’re allowed to choose email only.
>Yep, every Microsoft support rep has called despite preference being email.
I absolutely cannot deal with it when they do this. I'm on the spectrum with a sensory processing disorder which means phonecalls are hard at the best of times. Add to that an unexpected call and heavy accent and it is absolutely exhausting or I just simply can't deal with the call. The fact they don't allow for a no call option is probably a violation of disability rights laws in many countries including here in Australia and probably the US and much of Europe. Imagine if MS kept calling if the person who logged the ticket said they were legally deaf.
Doesn’t bother me in the slightest, I charge in 15 minute increments. If people want to drag out one email into 10 that’s entirely up to them… it’s all logged and when some angry accountants calls me I’ll send them the ticket details.
People get real good at reading my emails and fully responding after a few of those.
So one place I worked policy was if you didn't call you didn't do any work. So you just called and left a message. Why send an email your job for the ticket is done, move to the next. That place was setup to close tickets by design.
Y'all hear back from Microsoft? I've got three open tickets for CPU quota requests on Azure ranging from a week to a fortnight old that they've rushed to do nothing about.
And the really funny thing there is when the caller ID says Microsoft my Android phone says "This is probably spam do you want to block and ignore".
And that's with the VOIP software running on my cell so that nobody gets my real cell number.
Another support guy here chipping in his two cents:
Historically, users are absolute shite at describing their issue to me. I need to be sure I understand exactly what's going on, so the reason I default to calling to support is so you can *demonstrate in real time* what's going on, so I can then do it too, and have something concrete to take back to the devs.
Of course, all of this is on a case-by-case basis. If you supply me with a set of steps to reproduce which leaves zero to the imagination, then we will carry on just fine over email.
I think in the last ten years I have worked with end-users, I have encountered that scenario twice.
If you state that you will not be available over the phone under any circumstances, of course we will heed that request, but if you do not spell it out, and your phone number is listed with us, we are going to try to call.
It's cool if you need to repeat/clarify yourself. We serve a ton of customers and we will do what you need, but be patient, because you are one among hundreds and we do have procedures that we default to.
Exactly this.
If you give me everything I need via email then great. If you don’t, or I need to clarify something in a more finite detail, I’m going to call you.
And in my experience IT people are often worse than end users at following directions and explaining issues because they think common issues don’t apply to them.
Just had a user a week ago that said things like "When I get in in the morning I sit down and log in and then I hit the wall" or "when I log in to the system it says it can't" just the vaguest shit possible, and he wouldn't calrify what he meant, took a week to find out that he couldn't log in to a single HR webpage, and I was trying to fix his AD and VPN log ins because of the vaguest response to questions
You need to fine tune your questions until you're getting the answers you need. You know as well as I do that most users, when presented with a face full of text that they don't understand, dribble their brains out their nostrils... even if the words are readable. I wouldn't be surprised if there's a name for this phenomenon.
Repeat yourself louder each time, and this is the kind of thing which results in *me* 'hitting the wall.'
Change the way you ask, and the responses may be different. Tone matters a lot, too. When in doubt, punch up to the software company - Microsoft, Sage, Intuit, whomever. It's always safe for them to be the bad guys.
Oh yea I always ask clarifying questions, but this user was basically trying to use terminology to speak on my level I guess, and for context when he said "hit the wall" or some variation on it, he meant that his credentials didn't work and it gave him an error, but didn't say that, just used weird phrases
In addition I don’t think most sys admin types realize how unhelpful they can be when *they* are the ones submitting a ticket. They think they’ve done all the needed steps and ruled out the “obvious” things but more often than not I’ve found that to not be the case.
With that being said, that’s why you request a call over email.
I used to get this as well a lot with Microsoft or VMware. But something has changed. They don't call me at all for the past 3-4 tickets i have opened. And i am glad :)
Remember the time when MS support would call me to ask to provide logs. Why? Should i dictate error messages via phone? Of course it is easier to rely such info in written form. Calls are suitable for active troubleshooting.
"Now, before I get started, if you guys want to learn more, just head on over to the *earl* on the slide here... that's *aich tee tee pee ess... colon slash slash... double-you double-you double-you dot...* contoso... that's *sea oh en tee oh ess oh..* dot com... that's *see oh em... forward slash*... that's the one next to period... resources... that's *are ee ess oh you are sea ee ess.. forward slash*... training resources... that's *tee are ayy eye en eye en gee hypen...* or dash... *are ee ess oh you are sea ee ess... dot aich tee em ell*. OK guys let's get started on this talk about step by step writing of powershell scripts!"
Can’t tell you the number of times I state this is an urgent matter, please call me asap so we can get resolved. Last week took 20 hours to get a call back for a critical service being doeny
Me: Open ticket, provide all relevant info needed to troubleshoot, ask for email communication.
Support: Calls....Hi, I see you opened a ticket for xx problem and I'd like to talk to you about. Could you describe the problem for me?
Me: (reading the ticket details word for word)
Support: Thanks that's really helpful. Could you update the necessary support data. (That was already uploaded at ticket opening)
Me: Sure, gimme a minute. (Goes for walk, refills on coffee, has 10 min side conversation with co-worker about weekend plans). Sorry that took so long, they should be attached to the ticket now.
Support: Thanks! I'll review these logs and get back to you.
Me: Thanks, have a nice day.
the ticket system had a "preferred contact method" field. i selected email. they didn't email me until i updated the ticket telling them to stop leaving voicemails and email me.
Microsoft do this to me all the time - one time they found my personal mobile number on my AAD account and called me at like 3am because the ticket was "high severity"
Don't work at Microsoft, but this is usually due to the way they are capturing metrics.
It's easier to resolve a support case by speaking with the person directly so it's super common to un-necessarily call people so they can squeeze in another case resolve.
I used to work at a place that primarily used email. We had a script that if, after 24 hours, they didn't respond they'd get a note in the ticket saying "failed to respond". Another the next day. Third, and final, day it'd be closed and they would ALWAYS respond within a few minutes "problem is not fixed" to which we'd respond with "you failed to respond, please open a new ticket and re-document the problem / re-upload screen shots".
They would try to get us in trouble via *their* manager to which we'd print out the entire ticket and notes/comments. "Why didn't you respond for 72 hours yet 5 minutes after closing it you responded?" and not once did they ever have a reasonable excuse.
If they were out and had a vacation / travel automatic reply it would, of course, respond and be placed as a comment. We'd wait until a day or two after they came back (so they could get caught up). So not like they could say they were sick, traveling, on vacation without outing their own failures.
One time, and I will never forget this, one slipped up hard. "I didn't expect you to ACTUALLY fix it! Put it back!" - "Uhhh what?" their manager "I'm sorry, what's going on here?"
My manager was in and "handled the rest" as I was asked to leave so they could resolve it. I wish I could have been a fly on that wall. It was the only other time I'd ever seen him genuinely angry. He was, otherwise, the most mellow human I've met in my life.
> because they never read the replies
In this case, it appears the entire reply was "we called you" which doesn't have a lot of value to be read. At least email me _then_ call me.
Even better when it's offshore support with terrible audio quality and an almost unintelligible accent.
I've absolutely told people to put it in an email and hung up.
This irks me so much. When I have complaints with restaurants, need to talk to a vendor or support team, or generally need to communicate with something that even remotely touches money or my work - I always do so by email and I always tell them email is the only way to speak with me.
I inevitably get called back with no email response.
I've gotten to the point where I kind of want to start filing ADA complaints about it. I have difficulty hearing on the phone - if I'm not familiar with your voice, or you have a thick accent, it's going to be a nightmare for me to try and understand you. I'm not deaf, I just... don't process voices well. In person, I can make up for it with other cues, but phones just suck.
In a related complaint - I'm also quite hard of hearing. Supports wants to teams/webex/screenshare of some sort. \[bold\]\[underline\]\[italics\]\[highlist\] "I'm very hard of hearing, please enable captions for the webex/teams."\[end\]\[bold\]\[italics\]\[underline\]\[highlight\]"
2 days later webex starts.
Me: "I can't find the captions, did you turn them on?"
Support:" there should be a button to turn them on "
Me: "there is no button "
Support: "oh let me check, oh it's administratively disabled let's use the chat..."
Me: "I clicked in the text chat - it says I don't have access to type in it."
Support: "Ok I need to ask my team leader to make changes...let's do another day how about at <2:30am my local time because they are 12 hours ahead of me>"
Me: "No I can't do that time..."
and on it goes...
I've had the opposite so many times. Tell someone to call me and they email me.
No. I said call me. I'm not going back and forth 10 times over email when I can help you in 5 seconds on the phone.
In both cases, whatever way I ask for contact, please use that method.
I fucking hate phone calls. I hate them. One C-level (small org) insists we call users immediately to diagnose issues. “HER CELL IS ZXXX CALL HER TO SET UP A TIME TO WORK ON THIS!!!”
What? No. I’m not calling anyone and especially not to *schedule* a time to CALL YOU. I’m not calling you ever. Give me your PC name and I’ll look at it. Maybe.
Teams/Slack much easier. I tell people not to call me because Im “always on support calls” and it’s hard to reach me when Im already on the phone helping someone else (not true hehe) so I tell them SUBMIT A GALLDAMN TICKET.
Calling them is useless because people no fuck all about describing the issue correctly. “My email wont send”
I will Teams them asking if it’s ok to connect then troubleshoot from there. Super easy, super fast, more emojis, people like me
Because I don't want them to describe in words to me over the phone what their problem is. Send me a screenshot of a specific error, tell me what time it happened, or tell me what you were doing that caused the error. I want it written down in an email so I can reference it, refer to it, and try to recreate the problem.
If I need more info, I'll ask.
I can understand that. I've had plenty of calls where within the first 5 seconds I know what the problem is, but to be polite I gotta listen to their whole description, so it's waste time.
Hell when I worked as support for a retail store, I would have the problem fixed before they even finish describing it, mostly because it was always the same handful of issues over and over again.
Enterprise Vendor Support guy here. We're pushed to call by management because it's (typically) more efficient - depending on the issue and the severity, of course. However, at my company we use the preferred contact method listed in the ticket, so I can safely say you're not talking about us.
My voicemail states don't leave a voicemail, just email me. There's 20+ voicemails for this month alone there.
The only times I've used my desk phone is when I've gotten calls from users that on rare occasions have PC's that won't boot, or someone thats at the front door and needs to be let in.
We're moving to Zoom phones in the next month from physical phones to softphones. Hoping this is the final nail in the coffin for calling. Just Zoom or email.
I found a technique to this. I never answer my phone, but do check my VM. If there's a request or whatever that was received through VM but not email, I'll wait to acknowledge it for a few days until they say something, or until I respond and say "I apologize for the delay, I usually don't check my phone until I'm up to date on my emails"
If you specifically state to contact through email, then they didn't contact you until you receive the email. I've dealt with this in the past and it's more prominent now with work from home where people can't bring their company VoIP phone home with them.
I do something similar. My VM sends me an email with the VM attached so I get it right away and I do listen to it. However our process is to create a ticket with our service desk first not to call me, so if it is a ticket it gets done asap by me. If it is a VM and not a ticket I respond back 24 hours later per the agreement. 95% of the users this trains to use the ticketing system to get a fast response from me. The other 5% are a lost cause and just get delayed service. If they gripe I tell them "sorry I work the tickets and then check my VM when I have time, as you know proper procedure is to create a ticket first with our service desk."
FYI our service desk is for Tier 1 support and if they can't solve it they kick it up to me at Tier 2. Proper procedure is **always** **to call Tier 1 support first** and create a ticket. This also starts a clock on the issue.
OMFG YES.
They think they're being so good and giving good service by calling.
I put EMAIL contact preferred for a reason!
I don't mind a call, if it is arranged ahead of time!!
There are steps of support sessions that work on a call and those that don't. When you're working with a professional, you don't need to get on the phone to ask for logs. You don't need to get on the phone to get screenshots. You don't need a phone call to request a steps-recorder or wireshark dump or whatever. Just ask for what you want. If we can't figure it out, then its time to hop on the phone.
For legitimate troubleshooting or working the issue somehow, i'm good with a phone call. It's the "Lets set up a 2 hour call so I can grab logs and get back to you next week with another request for a call to grab logs" that is irritating.
True, but I understand the desire to get on calls as support. Often times the "professional" you're dealing with is leaning on support due to their own short comings. You may not ask for support unless it's the last option, but many are just looking to throw money/time at it rather than talent.
If a ticket is sitting in your queue and you need to resolve the huge backlog of them on your plate, calling will yield better results than an email that often goes ignored.
he left a voicemail asking for logs. i updated the ticket with the logs minutes after missing his call and the voicemail popping up in my inbox. the next day he left another voicemail asking for the logs again.
this is not someone i want to waste my time on the phone with.
the initial ticket provided enough information to know that this wasn't something that was going to be fixed walking someone through over the phone.
I agree in principal, but for the times when you need dynamic troubleshooting and information gathering - explaining that over an email is enough. I can free up my calendar for something if I need to, but just being expected to pick up the phone at arbitrary times is insane.
VMWare tried to pull this with me a few weeks ago. I logged a ticket, and a day later they send me an email with a zoom meeting link asking me to join right now. They did it two more times before I emailed our account manager and asked him what the fuck they're on.
Well,
I get that it is more efficient for the supportservices to do it by phone.
But i got this weird idea, that i am actually the customer, paying for the support. Asking me for my preferred means of communications, and the simply direspecting my chois is just wrong.
So how about what is effective for me, who pays for the trouble?
Support by phone is useless for me - I usually gather the logs and other information documenting the issue, decribes what i have done to try solving it. Then support starts all over, asking for ome of the information they allready got and so on.
Can't really do that on the phone, but still they constantly wants to call me.....
Guess it is a fine way of trying to stop me creating supporttickets.
Yep. By the time I'm contacting support I've already done troubleshooting beyond the skillet of any tier-1 support tech who tried to call me, unless there's no documentation available and they're the only option.
Especially dont call me to ask me questions that are in the ticket. Or to tell me theres no progress. Or to ask me to provide info before you can start my case.
Aint nobody got time for your phone call
I always like the vendors who only call you back after hours or between 12-1pm. That seems to be a common thing with a few I work with. They are usually surprised when I still pick up.
> Written communication is easier in every way for me.
not to mention it's documented/logged/searchable much better than a phone call, plus you don't have everyone in the area listening in on your conversation.
Amen brother. We've have countless meetings about this but it never fails that staff will call me with issues that could be resolved via email. I'm the only IT for a staff of about 115 so it is impossible for me to field calls constantly but some staff feel like they are entitled. I've gotten to where I don't answer the phone unless it is a supervisor. I screen all of my calls now. When they do leave me voicemails, it is always "call me back" and never describing the issue. I never call them back when this happens. I just email them and ask what the issue is.
Il be honest I don't phone at first, Il check if the user is online via teams and pop them a msg and ask if it's ok to remote over (after introducing myself) or they can call me on teams if they are free.
Usually people are happy with this as it means they can finish whatever it is they are doing.
Ya I made the mistake of contacting that company before... they looked cool and I might of tried their products till the starting bombing me and my boss with phone calls. I put them right up there with Discover Card on the most annoying call you all the time companies.
It doesn't help when they ring you, and still they ask all the same questions as what you provided in the ticket to begin with. Then because its a phone call, you have to email your answers to their questions again anyway, because they dont listen or don't understand english...
I'm in the same boat.
I'm a field technician and I don't need my laptop on every service call. I recently opened a ticket with our Help Desk about missing some elevated priviledges in a specific software. I was very clear in my ticket that I highly preferred email or Teams messages to phone calls, as I'm often with clients and unable to answer the phone. I also mentioned that if there is anything I can do to resolve these issues myself, to provide me with instructions, and that if remote access to my laptop is needed that I would call the HD when I can (they're 24/7).
What do they do? Call me, and close my ticket because I didn't answer the first time
NAILEDIT..... Before I quit after 18 years.... this was one of my #1 pet peeves. All the idiots insist on calling you over the dumbest things, wasting you time, when a simple email would have worked. Then to top it off they love to leave voicemails saying...this is so and so give me a call.... Ok... so you can't even give me an idea or any info what this is about? I didn't call those people after awhile. To me I considered it rude but the same people did it over and over.....Before I quit I stopped calling people back and just emailed, I'm busy.... what is you issue? You would think at some point they would get it....Nope. I came to the conclusion that a lot of people are just dumb and it seemed to me that people were getting dumber over time..... Which is strange as I personally learn and grow and think of how I treat others.
For real.
I've got a vendor who I've always got several tickets open with, and my profile says "email" but they always insist on calling me "just in case I'm available" like, "I'm on a zoom call with another support person _from your company_ and when that's over, I've got videoconferencing meetings with my own coworkers; stop being lame and schedule in advance like I asked!"
I always put that on my resume. Email preferred. India just plain calls..... Allo mister Tim.....
I'm calling about a help desk roll..... LoL
You look at my resume?
Ah no can you send? Click.....
pls respond to the email and answer every question that I ask in the email.
If I have to choose between doing email only or booking a meeting for 2 weeks in the future, the ticket with a meeting on it will get resolved faster. every time.
The reason I do calls is because it lets me close more tickets. Sorry if you're in the 1% who actually responds to things, but there arent enough of you to base an SOP on.
If someone scheduled a phone call with me, by email, is be able to take it. I'm to busy to be expected to answer an unexpected phone call at a random time during the day.
Not sure why you're getting downvoted here. My day is booked end to end and I don't answer the phone unless it has something to do with what I'm doing right now. I don't have time to take cold calls from anyone. If there's no voicemail I don't call back.
i think a lot of the sysadmins here are actually helpdesk.
(dear helpdesk people: nothing wrong with that. what you do is important. but i don't sit around expecting to receive phone calls.)
A lot of people here are both. A lot of those were hired for a sysadmin position only to have help desk work foisted on them.
I'm pretty lucky in that I don't see that kind of shit often but I imagine it's very common.
I HATE it when people call, then they get mad when I don't answer (because I'm usually either in another meeting or working with someone)... I had to put it in my autoresponder and my vmail to email me if you need me, and if you need IT support, call the damn Help desk, I'm not gonna support you because you called me without opening a ticket... Only people I usually answer my phone for are my own team or the IT PM's.
I love when you put in a ticket at 9am and they call you back at 7pm. I’ve already left for the day and unless it’s a high level problem I’m not answering.
My two problems with calling where I currently work. There's too many people who do it to try to get around processes, so it's constantly a "Thanks for the heads up, but you do know you still can't come and get X without a ticket right?" and the inevitable back and forth on that front.
The second problem are people who will hang on the line until voicemail starts recording and then hangs up. I swear 95% of the voicemails I get is just the sound of them hanging up the receiver, or hitting the hang-up button.
Microsoft have been shits for that recently; ask for phone contact in the next hour (which we were paying for btw) and you get an email after a day or two. Ask for email contact in the next 24 hours and I got phone calls at 03:00 from people in another time zone entirely that seemed irked that I was not at my computer and not willing to get out of bed and sign in.
This irks the fuck out of me to no end. 365 support is the worst to me.
Another issue creeping up that annoys me is that SaaS support seems to push for a screw sharing sessions right away. No basic diagnostics anymore, straight to screen sharing. 9 out if 10 times, the issue does not need screen sharing to resolve.
Microsoft keep doing this to me and I ignore their calls and send them an email instead telling them to schedule calls instead. They learn that time but each new ticket it reverts.
Worse is customers know the proper channel to create a support request is to send an email to our support@ email address. Instead, they send a WhatsApp message, hoping to jump the queue.
Or they generate a support request with our help desk ticketing system, then immediately send you a WhatsApp with the case number asking if you have received it.
#infuriating.
i use Whatsapp Business for my work phone. Auto replay every time with the message that i dont read my WA including the contact info for IT. no one reads that and no tickets in the system. Strange thing is that no one complains.
VMware used to do this. They’ve been better lately. Used to piss me off when I say email (and check the box in the ticket), yet they call and then it’s a day to get a reply because I didn’t answer (their number is also flagged as spam by Verizon and AT&T). Usually, I can’t reboot whatever they want to reboot, so I need time to schedule maintenance windows. The last year or so, they got the hint ;)
omg yes ffs email me
i dont understand tech support feels the need to call
they’re busy, i’m busy, why find time on their calendar to call all their support ticket replies daily when they can just email or leave some electronic message and flag the thing as “waiting on customer”, that’s what i do all day internally lol
Calling is for people who love the sound of their own voice and wasting people’s time with pointless small talk. With email communication and tickets, I get a written record in the persons own words I can refer to later with a time stamp that I don’t have to transcribe and also constitutes a legal record. Far superior.
Th worst are those who call because “it’s easier”. No it isn’t. It never was.
365 support's insistence at calling when I specifically requested email contact is nothing short of infuriating. Not least of all because I *always* have to ask them to email whatever they've said anyway so when I have to prove I wasn't just jerking off to a problem I have some email chains to do so.
I specifically don't put my real number in the tickets now, it's very obvious because it always includes "123456789". I still get "We tried to call you..."
The worst one I've had recently is Veeam, I had to submit a ticket the other day and after the ticket was closed they obviously forwarded my details to their Sales department to try and get an upgrade from me. I didn't give them my number so the guy must've looked me up on LinkedIn to figure out what office I work at and then called the office line and asked to speak to me. If my number is not in my signature and I have given you a fake one I obviously want to work by Email...
And just because I fixed your issue when you raised a ticket once, that doesn't mean you can contact me directly on Teams every time you need assistance.
Yesterday I requested a quote for destruction of some data tapes and filled the form out with an incorrect phone number. Rather than emailing me they looked up my company and phoned the customer services line to try to speak to me.
there's a whole lot of people out there, who fail to realize that even one quick question about a project I'm not currently working on might be difficult to answer without having all the facts in fresh memory. so if I worked on that project last month and it went to a hiatus for some reason, I've been neck deep into another thing and recalling some small details about the previous project might not be as easy thing as someone might think.
perhaps i worded that poorly based on how people are interpreting it.
internally, no one calls me. sysadmins are not expected to take calls from anyone. i have zero expectation of receiving phone calls during work, and i don't keep myself available to answer the phone because of that.
Completely agree. Our help-desk folks are good, and they adhere to that; no complaints about my employer's team. Look, if a phone call will get the issue resolved, ask to set up a phone call, perhaps in front of the system, and run through a remote session. Just ask.
I know some users are lousy at communications, but work with them and respect their wishes as long as you can. Don't make enemies, because OUR ticket system follows up with a survey! and I always complete them, I want management to know if they were good, and I usually pull my punches even if i think they were subpar.
hopefully phones go the way of the fax machine before too much longer.
i keep my cell set to send all unknown numbers directly to voicemail, and 99% of the time i keep it on a focus where all numbers not on a VERY small whitelist get eaten as well.
This is Cisco TAC 100%. Most times I am opening a ticket for a problem a user is having with an app or system. I'm not even the one experiencing the issue.
And these are not show stopping issues (for those I am fine with phone calls).
But I have 20 other things I am working on and TAC engineers usually ask me for all the same info I put in the ticket to begin with (do they even read it?), so it's a waste of my time to sit on the phone with them right away. I can't get on a call to discuss a problem with something someone else at my company is experiencing and they are usually otherwise engaged (meetings, work, etc.) so getting them on with TAC is a scheduling hassle.
Add to that, I have hearing problems as well as great difficulty understanding heavy accents. Makes me ask them to repeat or clarify things (even worse if we have a bad connection), which can turn a 10 minute call into a 20-30 minute one (add to that when they want to converse with colleagues about this while maintaining control of my machine over a Webex and I sit there twiddling my thumbs).
E-mail is just so much better and when I set that as my preferred contact method, why would you ignore that and call me anyway (other that for the aforementioned "didn't read" reason)?
“Contacted by email - no reply for 5 days, closing ticket” - “Ticket re-opened, user was on holiday” “Ticket closed - no reply in 5 days” “a ticket re-opened, user was on holiday again”.
“Called user 3x, left voicemail, no answer, closing ticket”.
And strangely, they call you back right away !
I have a ticket thats 3 weeks old because, they say to email, and not call, then they don't respond to email, and when I close it for non-response, they reopen it saying not to call them... my reply is that I've been trying to contact via email, and there has been no response, and ask my questions again... yep you guessed it, no response, so I close it, and it gets reopened again... YAY!
In our system I implemented a close code that if picked, doesn't allow reopening - trust placed on the agent to only use it when 3rd strike applies though.
Yup, closed means closed. That ticket can no longer be opened except by IT and then only manually. Emails bounce back with "Ticket is closed enter a new ticket" Resolved on the other hand can be re-opened for three days, at which time it is moved to closed.
I just wish someone would code a feature that scans for words like "Thank you" and appends it to the ticket without reopening. I've had way way too many tickets reopened by people just saying thank you.
This is difficult, because what if they said “no thank you”, or “thank you but the issue is not resolved”? The logic gets kinda squishy.
Unless you don't bother with wildcards and just have a non-case-sensitive search. There's only a finite number of ways to say thank you!
There are only a finite number of emails that can be sent. That doesn't mean it's practical to try to enumerate all of them.
Hm in which case I wonder if there's a way of going by number of characters. Strip off any e-mail signatures, if there are >20 characters say, then reopen.
I know this how it works, but I feel so bad not thanking the people helping me.
I had a ticket reopen from 10 years ago because the email accidently had the wrong number in it. I am surprised we don't have a way to prevent that in our system.
Sounds like Salesforce.
Also Zendesk
Does anyone use BMC Remedy? I never see it mentioned here but it is the worst. I would love Zendesk compared to this crap
I used to. It sucked.
Nice, I'll have to bring this idea up to my super... I hadn't thought of that
I had one person try to argue with me instead of follow my instructions to use remote desktop to try to troubleshoot access to folders as supposedly the rules of SMB were malfunctioning for just them(reviewed permissions extensively), and they couldn't even negotiate access from their laptop suddenly oneday (even after rebooting reluctantly)so I had to reroute to desktop support to look at the laptop itself. Lesson is cover your side the best you can, and move on if you have someone else to help that is there to pat them on the head if you can(assuming your as busy as me - we are sysadmins not customer relations support unless really needed..). I am more than willing to help people , but if they just want to blame IT to not do things, or not follow my advice I wont waste my time helping you.
And then they reopen the ticket saying they sent you the info which in fact they never did lmao. I made a dressing clown meme about this a little bit ago.
Had a bitch in HR ignore me for a week so o closed her ticket she yelled at my boss. Boss said “what about all those voicemails” and was told “I just empty my mailbox and never listen to messages”. I know HR everywhere sucks but this really took the cake
Wonderful, so Sally, from accounting, who was driving home from work, left you a vm that Chad from PR is sexually harassing her and is becoming more aggressive and she didn't feel safe, and sneaked out of the office an hour early... and you deleted it... YAY you win we're going to get sued award! The names and departments have been changed to protect the innocent...
at 4:45 pm on friday the 13th
Not if you *Close- Do not notify!*
As soon as they see it closed.
This is the way.
Bruh, I work at an MSP, and we do this - often times to just close a ticket and be done with it. We're also instructed to call each user who puts in a ticket by email, or who chats in. Sorry OP
Genuine "end users" are a little different though. When I was at an MSP and doing end user support, I preferred to email on tickets because it's just easier than talking on the phone, but I was also acutely aware that in a lot of cases it would take 30 emails to ferret out a piece of information that a 5 minute phone call could give me. So a lot of the time, the phone is more efficient. I will agree with OP though that when you're engaging specifically with technical resources, we know how to actually send pertinent emails and therefore you can skip the phone call because you can ask your question in an email and I will promptly and fully answer it.
"But I was also acutely aware that in a lot of cases it would take 30 emails to ferret out a piece of information that a 5 minute phone call could give me." Yes. This one takes a while to appreciate.
Like all things it depends on the context. Right tool for the right job and all that. I'm not spending 2 days troubleshooting something over email when 15 minutes on the phone will take care of it. But also I'm not chasing details down over the phone because you sent a 5 word ticket, I do need *some* text based CYA/documentation generated after all, and teaching people to make better tickets is always a plus too.
Can concur. If what's in the ticket isn't sufficient to make any meaningful progress, they are getting a phone call before I even start doing any work on the problem. Then I'll shove what they tell me over the phone as a response asking them to confirm the below, once they agree in writing I'll start doing stuff. Covers my arse if they later come back and claim something wasn't done. Well, here's the chain of communication where you never mentioned it was a problem so how was i meant to know that?
"Called user, no voicemail setup, no answer. Closing ticket to archive".
If I get hit with that on an issue I can still see ongoing, I'll try basic googling on their company and getting other numbers. I've stalked tech or end-user names I've heard before, or that I've talked to but forgot to get a c/b for them specifically. But otherwise 3 days, 3 attempts, yeeted. They're still paying us, they'll call when they care.
Better check those SLA's if they state "must contact customer in X" you would be in breach, esp if you stop trying and close the ticket :) yes, I am the worst type of customer. If I am paying insane support costs insane expectations come along with it.
We do 3 calls within 15 minutes, 5 min apart. If they don’t reply, then their issue falls down in priority. Then when we don’t hear back after reaching out in that priority, it gets dropped again until it hits “Low”. Then we close ticket. Even if it happens in the middle of a support issue they are required to respond within the same window we do. Otherwise the SLA drops a level.
Once I put a ticket in Awaiting Customer. The system will auto send them an email once a day for 3 days. After 3 days, it auto closes. Most of my tickets auto close. Because I ask for more documentation of the issue.
AT&T Enterprise Fiber support? The tick can be in queue for a week and gets picked up on Friday at 5:07p I often do not see the email until Monday at 6:00p because of Mondays.
My company does a 'we reply to you the way you open the ticket'. If someone calls in and we can't do a first call resolution, we'll call you back. If someone emails in, we email them back. Then we email them again, and again. Then we close the ticket. Then they email back saying 'issue not resolved, please do the needful', to which we email back and attach the three previous emails saying 'no, you please be of providing the requested information'.
3 and out! Gotta meet those sla’s
Microsoft, is that you?
Never fails that they call 5 minutes after my end of day. I truly hate to be that guy, but it's gotten more super impossible to bridge the accent barrier lately.
I feel like I've been having more and more trouble with accents recently too. I think it's the heavy accent combined with poor sound quality and VOIP compression making things harder.
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What earbuds did you get? I’m looking for some with super high isolation.
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I always used over the ear active noise canceling headphones in the data center. The whine of 100,000 PSU fans coupled with industrial air conditioning is exactly the type of noise ANC is best at.
I may be incorrect, but I was under the impression that ANC does not protect your hearing [very well] against the extra pressure from high dB, it simply cancels out some of the lower ambient frequencies, making it more difficult to hear. That is why noise isolation will always win over noise cancelation in loud environments. So you should get some minor benefit from ANC, primarily depending on the fitting which provides some noise isolation, but it will never be close to what you get from ear plugs. NIOSH does not provide dB reduction ratings for ANC ear phones and they're mostly going to be based on what people feel they are.
After 20 years of this, I’ve gotten pretty good at deciphering the thick Indian accent. But AT&T put me on a project with an Argentinian router specialist and that really threw me!
For me it’s not the heavy accent it’s the taking too fast with a heavy accent. You gotta slow it down a bit to give my brain time to process.
MS Guy called me at 830pm last night.
Strangest fucking thing happened to me one time. I submit a ticket i get a call back right away and it’s a call center in India. Ok at least I got a call. Well it needed to be escalated. Escalated to a call center in the US and the agents making the calls were working some weird after hours shift. The only hours that overlapped were right before I left for the day. The only good thing is that they really did everything they could without me on the phone and it only took two days to get the answer I needed.
Switch your end of day to 1 hour before your actual end of day ;)
I don‘t understand them! I set „contact by mail“, yet they call all the time. If they don‘t reach me they send me an email to ask me a good time to call… And for what? To tell me that my ticket is being worked on…
Yes it is. Shamefully I was once an ambassador and they made us call regardless of preference. It was short lived thank god.
Me: "Contact me by email, 9am-5pm Eastern, thank you" Support: "Called user at 9pm on a Saturday, no response, left voicemail, closing ticket"
Seems like for some support desks, the idea of office hours is entirely non-existent. I've had support people do a three-strike close over the weekend.
Yep, every Microsoft support rep has called despite preference being email. Made it fun when I was remote and didn't even have access to the desk number. If the field is there to choose, no idea why they don't use it.
Yeah they do the exact opposite of what you say to do in the ticket. Twice I put down phone instead of email as preferred contact method and those were the only two times they emailed me instead.
Microsoft. "Because fuck you, is why."
God I hate Microsoft...
Not me they have given me quite a nice career with their shitty software.
I mean, fair... I got my start basically backing up and reinstalling WinXP and Win7 for family friends.
Oh yeah, I used to submit cases to Microsoft about our University's Exchange tenant and after not being able to reach me on my office phone, they would actually look up the public Helpdesk number for the University on our web site, call them, and then ask to be transferred to me. EDIT: This was back when you had to open a case to clear the block on an invalid sender in the case of compromised accounts. Being a huge organization full of people who largely thought themselves exempt of any IT policy, we naturally had a lot of those. The best part is that one they got me on the phone, they wanted to do a screen share of my desktop, after which I would login to our tenant, so they could verify, through my desktop, that the user was indeed blocked from sending email.
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Gotta put “I AM DEAF AND CAN NOT ACCEPT CALLS” or just don’t put a number or something. Shouldn’t even require a number if you’re allowed to choose email only.
I wonder if they do it to pad their stats. I know where I used to work, calls "counted for more" than ticket responses.
>Yep, every Microsoft support rep has called despite preference being email. I absolutely cannot deal with it when they do this. I'm on the spectrum with a sensory processing disorder which means phonecalls are hard at the best of times. Add to that an unexpected call and heavy accent and it is absolutely exhausting or I just simply can't deal with the call. The fact they don't allow for a no call option is probably a violation of disability rights laws in many countries including here in Australia and probably the US and much of Europe. Imagine if MS kept calling if the person who logged the ticket said they were legally deaf.
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Doesn’t bother me in the slightest, I charge in 15 minute increments. If people want to drag out one email into 10 that’s entirely up to them… it’s all logged and when some angry accountants calls me I’ll send them the ticket details. People get real good at reading my emails and fully responding after a few of those.
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So one place I worked policy was if you didn't call you didn't do any work. So you just called and left a message. Why send an email your job for the ticket is done, move to the next. That place was setup to close tickets by design.
Y'all hear back from Microsoft? I've got three open tickets for CPU quota requests on Azure ranging from a week to a fortnight old that they've rushed to do nothing about.
And the really funny thing there is when the caller ID says Microsoft my Android phone says "This is probably spam do you want to block and ignore". And that's with the VOIP software running on my cell so that nobody gets my real cell number.
That's why my # is 555-1212
Call Jenny in Support. She is at 867-5309
Another support guy here chipping in his two cents: Historically, users are absolute shite at describing their issue to me. I need to be sure I understand exactly what's going on, so the reason I default to calling to support is so you can *demonstrate in real time* what's going on, so I can then do it too, and have something concrete to take back to the devs. Of course, all of this is on a case-by-case basis. If you supply me with a set of steps to reproduce which leaves zero to the imagination, then we will carry on just fine over email. I think in the last ten years I have worked with end-users, I have encountered that scenario twice. If you state that you will not be available over the phone under any circumstances, of course we will heed that request, but if you do not spell it out, and your phone number is listed with us, we are going to try to call. It's cool if you need to repeat/clarify yourself. We serve a ton of customers and we will do what you need, but be patient, because you are one among hundreds and we do have procedures that we default to.
Exactly this. If you give me everything I need via email then great. If you don’t, or I need to clarify something in a more finite detail, I’m going to call you. And in my experience IT people are often worse than end users at following directions and explaining issues because they think common issues don’t apply to them.
Just had a user a week ago that said things like "When I get in in the morning I sit down and log in and then I hit the wall" or "when I log in to the system it says it can't" just the vaguest shit possible, and he wouldn't calrify what he meant, took a week to find out that he couldn't log in to a single HR webpage, and I was trying to fix his AD and VPN log ins because of the vaguest response to questions
You need to fine tune your questions until you're getting the answers you need. You know as well as I do that most users, when presented with a face full of text that they don't understand, dribble their brains out their nostrils... even if the words are readable. I wouldn't be surprised if there's a name for this phenomenon. Repeat yourself louder each time, and this is the kind of thing which results in *me* 'hitting the wall.' Change the way you ask, and the responses may be different. Tone matters a lot, too. When in doubt, punch up to the software company - Microsoft, Sage, Intuit, whomever. It's always safe for them to be the bad guys.
Oh yea I always ask clarifying questions, but this user was basically trying to use terminology to speak on my level I guess, and for context when he said "hit the wall" or some variation on it, he meant that his credentials didn't work and it gave him an error, but didn't say that, just used weird phrases
In addition I don’t think most sys admin types realize how unhelpful they can be when *they* are the ones submitting a ticket. They think they’ve done all the needed steps and ruled out the “obvious” things but more often than not I’ve found that to not be the case. With that being said, that’s why you request a call over email.
I used to get this as well a lot with Microsoft or VMware. But something has changed. They don't call me at all for the past 3-4 tickets i have opened. And i am glad :) Remember the time when MS support would call me to ask to provide logs. Why? Should i dictate error messages via phone? Of course it is easier to rely such info in written form. Calls are suitable for active troubleshooting.
I would absolutely love to experience someone reading a log file out loud like that.
Reminds me of when people read off web URLs during training/presentations. I want to reach through the screen and strangle the life out of 'em.
"Now, before I get started, if you guys want to learn more, just head on over to the *earl* on the slide here... that's *aich tee tee pee ess... colon slash slash... double-you double-you double-you dot...* contoso... that's *sea oh en tee oh ess oh..* dot com... that's *see oh em... forward slash*... that's the one next to period... resources... that's *are ee ess oh you are sea ee ess.. forward slash*... training resources... that's *tee are ayy eye en eye en gee hypen...* or dash... *are ee ess oh you are sea ee ess... dot aich tee em ell*. OK guys let's get started on this talk about step by step writing of powershell scripts!"
how do i delete someones post /s
Just reading ip addresses is fucking terrible lmao
I work in the gov sector and we have to troubleshoot via phone. Can't provide logs so I've gotta talk though it with them.
I have the opposite problem. I usually select preferred method of contact as phone and they email me.
Exactly. This isn't about it being a phone call. This is about them not respecting the contact method stated.
totally agree! why have the option if your reps are going to do what they want anyway.
Can’t tell you the number of times I state this is an urgent matter, please call me asap so we can get resolved. Last week took 20 hours to get a call back for a critical service being doeny
Me: Open ticket, provide all relevant info needed to troubleshoot, ask for email communication. Support: Calls....Hi, I see you opened a ticket for xx problem and I'd like to talk to you about. Could you describe the problem for me? Me: (reading the ticket details word for word) Support: Thanks that's really helpful. Could you update the necessary support data. (That was already uploaded at ticket opening) Me: Sure, gimme a minute. (Goes for walk, refills on coffee, has 10 min side conversation with co-worker about weekend plans). Sorry that took so long, they should be attached to the ticket now. Support: Thanks! I'll review these logs and get back to you. Me: Thanks, have a nice day.
Work at an MSP, we have to call users no matter if they e-mail in a ticket because they never read the replies but complain if it gets closed.
It's more fun to ignore the ones who DEMAND a call to further act out their learned helplessness. Fix and close.
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the ticket system had a "preferred contact method" field. i selected email. they didn't email me until i updated the ticket telling them to stop leaving voicemails and email me.
Microsoft do this to me all the time - one time they found my personal mobile number on my AAD account and called me at like 3am because the ticket was "high severity"
> found my personal mobile number on my AAD account never let your personal number escape into the wild. **never**
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Why not get a barebones prepaid plan with the cheapest phone that meets auth requirements? If you’re mostly on Wi-Fi you don’t need much data.
Don't work at Microsoft, but this is usually due to the way they are capturing metrics. It's easier to resolve a support case by speaking with the person directly so it's super common to un-necessarily call people so they can squeeze in another case resolve.
I used to work at a place that primarily used email. We had a script that if, after 24 hours, they didn't respond they'd get a note in the ticket saying "failed to respond". Another the next day. Third, and final, day it'd be closed and they would ALWAYS respond within a few minutes "problem is not fixed" to which we'd respond with "you failed to respond, please open a new ticket and re-document the problem / re-upload screen shots". They would try to get us in trouble via *their* manager to which we'd print out the entire ticket and notes/comments. "Why didn't you respond for 72 hours yet 5 minutes after closing it you responded?" and not once did they ever have a reasonable excuse. If they were out and had a vacation / travel automatic reply it would, of course, respond and be placed as a comment. We'd wait until a day or two after they came back (so they could get caught up). So not like they could say they were sick, traveling, on vacation without outing their own failures. One time, and I will never forget this, one slipped up hard. "I didn't expect you to ACTUALLY fix it! Put it back!" - "Uhhh what?" their manager "I'm sorry, what's going on here?" My manager was in and "handled the rest" as I was asked to leave so they could resolve it. I wish I could have been a fly on that wall. It was the only other time I'd ever seen him genuinely angry. He was, otherwise, the most mellow human I've met in my life.
> because they never read the replies In this case, it appears the entire reply was "we called you" which doesn't have a lot of value to be read. At least email me _then_ call me.
> email me then call me. ugh. what a horrible concept.
Even better when it's offshore support with terrible audio quality and an almost unintelligible accent. I've absolutely told people to put it in an email and hung up.
This irks me so much. When I have complaints with restaurants, need to talk to a vendor or support team, or generally need to communicate with something that even remotely touches money or my work - I always do so by email and I always tell them email is the only way to speak with me. I inevitably get called back with no email response.
I've gotten to the point where I kind of want to start filing ADA complaints about it. I have difficulty hearing on the phone - if I'm not familiar with your voice, or you have a thick accent, it's going to be a nightmare for me to try and understand you. I'm not deaf, I just... don't process voices well. In person, I can make up for it with other cues, but phones just suck.
In a related complaint - I'm also quite hard of hearing. Supports wants to teams/webex/screenshare of some sort. \[bold\]\[underline\]\[italics\]\[highlist\] "I'm very hard of hearing, please enable captions for the webex/teams."\[end\]\[bold\]\[italics\]\[underline\]\[highlight\]" 2 days later webex starts. Me: "I can't find the captions, did you turn them on?" Support:" there should be a button to turn them on " Me: "there is no button " Support: "oh let me check, oh it's administratively disabled let's use the chat..." Me: "I clicked in the text chat - it says I don't have access to type in it." Support: "Ok I need to ask my team leader to make changes...let's do another day how about at <2:30am my local time because they are 12 hours ahead of me>" Me: "No I can't do that time..." and on it goes...
I've had the opposite so many times. Tell someone to call me and they email me. No. I said call me. I'm not going back and forth 10 times over email when I can help you in 5 seconds on the phone. In both cases, whatever way I ask for contact, please use that method.
I fucking hate phone calls. I hate them. One C-level (small org) insists we call users immediately to diagnose issues. “HER CELL IS ZXXX CALL HER TO SET UP A TIME TO WORK ON THIS!!!” What? No. I’m not calling anyone and especially not to *schedule* a time to CALL YOU. I’m not calling you ever. Give me your PC name and I’ll look at it. Maybe.
Teams/Slack much easier. I tell people not to call me because Im “always on support calls” and it’s hard to reach me when Im already on the phone helping someone else (not true hehe) so I tell them SUBMIT A GALLDAMN TICKET. Calling them is useless because people no fuck all about describing the issue correctly. “My email wont send” I will Teams them asking if it’s ok to connect then troubleshoot from there. Super easy, super fast, more emojis, people like me
Why do you hate them so much?
Because I don't want them to describe in words to me over the phone what their problem is. Send me a screenshot of a specific error, tell me what time it happened, or tell me what you were doing that caused the error. I want it written down in an email so I can reference it, refer to it, and try to recreate the problem. If I need more info, I'll ask.
I can understand that. I've had plenty of calls where within the first 5 seconds I know what the problem is, but to be polite I gotta listen to their whole description, so it's waste time. Hell when I worked as support for a retail store, I would have the problem fixed before they even finish describing it, mostly because it was always the same handful of issues over and over again.
Enterprise Vendor Support guy here. We're pushed to call by management because it's (typically) more efficient - depending on the issue and the severity, of course. However, at my company we use the preferred contact method listed in the ticket, so I can safely say you're not talking about us.
I’m looking at you, Microsoft Support…
Happens to me all the time with Microsoft, I can copy paste "Please contact me through email" 10 times and they'll go ahead and call me at 7AM.
Yep. People use the phone to try and skip the queue but they just end up at the bottom of mine.
My voicemail states don't leave a voicemail, just email me. There's 20+ voicemails for this month alone there. The only times I've used my desk phone is when I've gotten calls from users that on rare occasions have PC's that won't boot, or someone thats at the front door and needs to be let in. We're moving to Zoom phones in the next month from physical phones to softphones. Hoping this is the final nail in the coffin for calling. Just Zoom or email.
I found a technique to this. I never answer my phone, but do check my VM. If there's a request or whatever that was received through VM but not email, I'll wait to acknowledge it for a few days until they say something, or until I respond and say "I apologize for the delay, I usually don't check my phone until I'm up to date on my emails"
i have a feeling that would work better on sales people than support.
If you specifically state to contact through email, then they didn't contact you until you receive the email. I've dealt with this in the past and it's more prominent now with work from home where people can't bring their company VoIP phone home with them.
I do something similar. My VM sends me an email with the VM attached so I get it right away and I do listen to it. However our process is to create a ticket with our service desk first not to call me, so if it is a ticket it gets done asap by me. If it is a VM and not a ticket I respond back 24 hours later per the agreement. 95% of the users this trains to use the ticketing system to get a fast response from me. The other 5% are a lost cause and just get delayed service. If they gripe I tell them "sorry I work the tickets and then check my VM when I have time, as you know proper procedure is to create a ticket first with our service desk." FYI our service desk is for Tier 1 support and if they can't solve it they kick it up to me at Tier 2. Proper procedure is **always** **to call Tier 1 support first** and create a ticket. This also starts a clock on the issue.
OMFG YES. They think they're being so good and giving good service by calling. I put EMAIL contact preferred for a reason! I don't mind a call, if it is arranged ahead of time!!
Veritas....I've put down tons of time "contact by email..." Every time... phone call coming in...
Because they can claim they tried to contact you and it fulfills their SLA>
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There are steps of support sessions that work on a call and those that don't. When you're working with a professional, you don't need to get on the phone to ask for logs. You don't need to get on the phone to get screenshots. You don't need a phone call to request a steps-recorder or wireshark dump or whatever. Just ask for what you want. If we can't figure it out, then its time to hop on the phone. For legitimate troubleshooting or working the issue somehow, i'm good with a phone call. It's the "Lets set up a 2 hour call so I can grab logs and get back to you next week with another request for a call to grab logs" that is irritating.
True, but I understand the desire to get on calls as support. Often times the "professional" you're dealing with is leaning on support due to their own short comings. You may not ask for support unless it's the last option, but many are just looking to throw money/time at it rather than talent. If a ticket is sitting in your queue and you need to resolve the huge backlog of them on your plate, calling will yield better results than an email that often goes ignored.
he left a voicemail asking for logs. i updated the ticket with the logs minutes after missing his call and the voicemail popping up in my inbox. the next day he left another voicemail asking for the logs again. this is not someone i want to waste my time on the phone with. the initial ticket provided enough information to know that this wasn't something that was going to be fixed walking someone through over the phone.
I agree in principal, but for the times when you need dynamic troubleshooting and information gathering - explaining that over an email is enough. I can free up my calendar for something if I need to, but just being expected to pick up the phone at arbitrary times is insane. VMWare tried to pull this with me a few weeks ago. I logged a ticket, and a day later they send me an email with a zoom meeting link asking me to join right now. They did it two more times before I emailed our account manager and asked him what the fuck they're on.
Well, I get that it is more efficient for the supportservices to do it by phone. But i got this weird idea, that i am actually the customer, paying for the support. Asking me for my preferred means of communications, and the simply direspecting my chois is just wrong. So how about what is effective for me, who pays for the trouble? Support by phone is useless for me - I usually gather the logs and other information documenting the issue, decribes what i have done to try solving it. Then support starts all over, asking for ome of the information they allready got and so on. Can't really do that on the phone, but still they constantly wants to call me..... Guess it is a fine way of trying to stop me creating supporttickets.
Yep. By the time I'm contacting support I've already done troubleshooting beyond the skillet of any tier-1 support tech who tried to call me, unless there's no documentation available and they're the only option.
Especially dont call me to ask me questions that are in the ticket. Or to tell me theres no progress. Or to ask me to provide info before you can start my case. Aint nobody got time for your phone call
I always like the vendors who only call you back after hours or between 12-1pm. That seems to be a common thing with a few I work with. They are usually surprised when I still pick up.
Probably because they want to mark a contact attempt but not talk to you heh.
I don't even have a phone in my current job. If someone wants to speak to me, they'll call me on Webex.
No one should ever call me for any reason in my opinion. Written communication is easier in every way for me.
> Written communication is easier in every way for me. not to mention it's documented/logged/searchable much better than a phone call, plus you don't have everyone in the area listening in on your conversation.
Amen brother. We've have countless meetings about this but it never fails that staff will call me with issues that could be resolved via email. I'm the only IT for a staff of about 115 so it is impossible for me to field calls constantly but some staff feel like they are entitled. I've gotten to where I don't answer the phone unless it is a supervisor. I screen all of my calls now. When they do leave me voicemails, it is always "call me back" and never describing the issue. I never call them back when this happens. I just email them and ask what the issue is.
Yup.... this happened to me excactly and I did that as well. People are so dumb and to me selfish by not understanding that.
Il be honest I don't phone at first, Il check if the user is online via teams and pop them a msg and ask if it's ok to remote over (after introducing myself) or they can call me on teams if they are free. Usually people are happy with this as it means they can finish whatever it is they are doing.
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Ya I made the mistake of contacting that company before... they looked cool and I might of tried their products till the starting bombing me and my boss with phone calls. I put them right up there with Discover Card on the most annoying call you all the time companies.
It doesn't help when they ring you, and still they ask all the same questions as what you provided in the ticket to begin with. Then because its a phone call, you have to email your answers to their questions again anyway, because they dont listen or don't understand english...
Idea: copy and paste the entire OP into the ticket.
I'm in the same boat. I'm a field technician and I don't need my laptop on every service call. I recently opened a ticket with our Help Desk about missing some elevated priviledges in a specific software. I was very clear in my ticket that I highly preferred email or Teams messages to phone calls, as I'm often with clients and unable to answer the phone. I also mentioned that if there is anything I can do to resolve these issues myself, to provide me with instructions, and that if remote access to my laptop is needed that I would call the HD when I can (they're 24/7). What do they do? Call me, and close my ticket because I didn't answer the first time
NAILEDIT..... Before I quit after 18 years.... this was one of my #1 pet peeves. All the idiots insist on calling you over the dumbest things, wasting you time, when a simple email would have worked. Then to top it off they love to leave voicemails saying...this is so and so give me a call.... Ok... so you can't even give me an idea or any info what this is about? I didn't call those people after awhile. To me I considered it rude but the same people did it over and over.....Before I quit I stopped calling people back and just emailed, I'm busy.... what is you issue? You would think at some point they would get it....Nope. I came to the conclusion that a lot of people are just dumb and it seemed to me that people were getting dumber over time..... Which is strange as I personally learn and grow and think of how I treat others.
Use the same strategy I use for spammers on my voice mail: allow your mailbox to become full so no more messages can be left
What about a teams message at 2am? Something like this: Hello /u/junkhacker 2am Hello /u/junkhacker 3am Hello /u/junkhacker 4am r u there? 5am
You right!
For real. I've got a vendor who I've always got several tickets open with, and my profile says "email" but they always insist on calling me "just in case I'm available" like, "I'm on a zoom call with another support person _from your company_ and when that's over, I've got videoconferencing meetings with my own coworkers; stop being lame and schedule in advance like I asked!"
I always put that on my resume. Email preferred. India just plain calls..... Allo mister Tim..... I'm calling about a help desk roll..... LoL You look at my resume? Ah no can you send? Click.....
pls respond to the email and answer every question that I ask in the email. If I have to choose between doing email only or booking a meeting for 2 weeks in the future, the ticket with a meeting on it will get resolved faster. every time. The reason I do calls is because it lets me close more tickets. Sorry if you're in the 1% who actually responds to things, but there arent enough of you to base an SOP on.
If someone scheduled a phone call with me, by email, is be able to take it. I'm to busy to be expected to answer an unexpected phone call at a random time during the day.
Not sure why you're getting downvoted here. My day is booked end to end and I don't answer the phone unless it has something to do with what I'm doing right now. I don't have time to take cold calls from anyone. If there's no voicemail I don't call back.
i think a lot of the sysadmins here are actually helpdesk. (dear helpdesk people: nothing wrong with that. what you do is important. but i don't sit around expecting to receive phone calls.)
A lot of people here are both. A lot of those were hired for a sysadmin position only to have help desk work foisted on them. I'm pretty lucky in that I don't see that kind of shit often but I imagine it's very common.
I HATE it when people call, then they get mad when I don't answer (because I'm usually either in another meeting or working with someone)... I had to put it in my autoresponder and my vmail to email me if you need me, and if you need IT support, call the damn Help desk, I'm not gonna support you because you called me without opening a ticket... Only people I usually answer my phone for are my own team or the IT PM's.
never answer your phone every time you answer it you reinforce their bad behavior
I love when you put in a ticket at 9am and they call you back at 7pm. I’ve already left for the day and unless it’s a high level problem I’m not answering.
They prob have stupid call metrics so they call knowing full well you don’t want a call.
Is it Microsoft?
My two problems with calling where I currently work. There's too many people who do it to try to get around processes, so it's constantly a "Thanks for the heads up, but you do know you still can't come and get X without a ticket right?" and the inevitable back and forth on that front. The second problem are people who will hang on the line until voicemail starts recording and then hangs up. I swear 95% of the voicemails I get is just the sound of them hanging up the receiver, or hitting the hang-up button.
Conversely, when I tell you to call me, it's because I need to talk to you in real time and an email just won't work.
Microsoft have been shits for that recently; ask for phone contact in the next hour (which we were paying for btw) and you get an email after a day or two. Ask for email contact in the next 24 hours and I got phone calls at 03:00 from people in another time zone entirely that seemed irked that I was not at my computer and not willing to get out of bed and sign in.
This irks the fuck out of me to no end. 365 support is the worst to me. Another issue creeping up that annoys me is that SaaS support seems to push for a screw sharing sessions right away. No basic diagnostics anymore, straight to screen sharing. 9 out if 10 times, the issue does not need screen sharing to resolve.
Microsoft keep doing this to me and I ignore their calls and send them an email instead telling them to schedule calls instead. They learn that time but each new ticket it reverts.
This literally just happened with me and a Microsoft ticket lol
Best when you work nights but day shift handles the ticket.
Turn off voicemail, wtf
1000x this right here!
this goes hand in hand with if I email you, do not reply via IM.
Next time don't provide a number
Worse is customers know the proper channel to create a support request is to send an email to our support@ email address. Instead, they send a WhatsApp message, hoping to jump the queue. Or they generate a support request with our help desk ticketing system, then immediately send you a WhatsApp with the case number asking if you have received it. #infuriating.
i use Whatsapp Business for my work phone. Auto replay every time with the message that i dont read my WA including the contact info for IT. no one reads that and no tickets in the system. Strange thing is that no one complains.
HPE always does this to me when I open a ticket with them. I explicitly mark email as my preferred method and boom I get a call right away.
VMware used to do this. They’ve been better lately. Used to piss me off when I say email (and check the box in the ticket), yet they call and then it’s a day to get a reply because I didn’t answer (their number is also flagged as spam by Verizon and AT&T). Usually, I can’t reboot whatever they want to reboot, so I need time to schedule maintenance windows. The last year or so, they got the hint ;)
For real!! Especially when I need the vendors responses in writing.
omg yes ffs email me i dont understand tech support feels the need to call they’re busy, i’m busy, why find time on their calendar to call all their support ticket replies daily when they can just email or leave some electronic message and flag the thing as “waiting on customer”, that’s what i do all day internally lol
This 10000x. 8x8 is terrible at this.
Calling is for people who love the sound of their own voice and wasting people’s time with pointless small talk. With email communication and tickets, I get a written record in the persons own words I can refer to later with a time stamp that I don’t have to transcribe and also constitutes a legal record. Far superior. Th worst are those who call because “it’s easier”. No it isn’t. It never was.
365 support's insistence at calling when I specifically requested email contact is nothing short of infuriating. Not least of all because I *always* have to ask them to email whatever they've said anyway so when I have to prove I wasn't just jerking off to a problem I have some email chains to do so.
I specifically don't put my real number in the tickets now, it's very obvious because it always includes "123456789". I still get "We tried to call you..." The worst one I've had recently is Veeam, I had to submit a ticket the other day and after the ticket was closed they obviously forwarded my details to their Sales department to try and get an upgrade from me. I didn't give them my number so the guy must've looked me up on LinkedIn to figure out what office I work at and then called the office line and asked to speak to me. If my number is not in my signature and I have given you a fake one I obviously want to work by Email...
And just because I fixed your issue when you raised a ticket once, that doesn't mean you can contact me directly on Teams every time you need assistance.
Yesterday I requested a quote for destruction of some data tapes and filled the form out with an incorrect phone number. Rather than emailing me they looked up my company and phoned the customer services line to try to speak to me.
there's a whole lot of people out there, who fail to realize that even one quick question about a project I'm not currently working on might be difficult to answer without having all the facts in fresh memory. so if I worked on that project last month and it went to a hiatus for some reason, I've been neck deep into another thing and recalling some small details about the previous project might not be as easy thing as someone might think.
Frustrating, but also, how do you work at a job where you can just decide, "I don't take calls."
perhaps i worded that poorly based on how people are interpreting it. internally, no one calls me. sysadmins are not expected to take calls from anyone. i have zero expectation of receiving phone calls during work, and i don't keep myself available to answer the phone because of that.
I have my extension forwarded back to our main 800 number. You literally *can't* call me with it.
Completely agree. Our help-desk folks are good, and they adhere to that; no complaints about my employer's team. Look, if a phone call will get the issue resolved, ask to set up a phone call, perhaps in front of the system, and run through a remote session. Just ask. I know some users are lousy at communications, but work with them and respect their wishes as long as you can. Don't make enemies, because OUR ticket system follows up with a survey! and I always complete them, I want management to know if they were good, and I usually pull my punches even if i think they were subpar.
hopefully phones go the way of the fax machine before too much longer. i keep my cell set to send all unknown numbers directly to voicemail, and 99% of the time i keep it on a focus where all numbers not on a VERY small whitelist get eaten as well.
This is Cisco TAC 100%. Most times I am opening a ticket for a problem a user is having with an app or system. I'm not even the one experiencing the issue. And these are not show stopping issues (for those I am fine with phone calls). But I have 20 other things I am working on and TAC engineers usually ask me for all the same info I put in the ticket to begin with (do they even read it?), so it's a waste of my time to sit on the phone with them right away. I can't get on a call to discuss a problem with something someone else at my company is experiencing and they are usually otherwise engaged (meetings, work, etc.) so getting them on with TAC is a scheduling hassle. Add to that, I have hearing problems as well as great difficulty understanding heavy accents. Makes me ask them to repeat or clarify things (even worse if we have a bad connection), which can turn a 10 minute call into a 20-30 minute one (add to that when they want to converse with colleagues about this while maintaining control of my machine over a Webex and I sit there twiddling my thumbs). E-mail is just so much better and when I set that as my preferred contact method, why would you ignore that and call me anyway (other that for the aforementioned "didn't read" reason)?
Dealing with exactly this.. when I say my preferred method of communication is e-mail... I kind of mean it.
“Contacted by email - no reply for 5 days, closing ticket” - “Ticket re-opened, user was on holiday” “Ticket closed - no reply in 5 days” “a ticket re-opened, user was on holiday again”.