We'll get right on that for you
Posted by DrHugh@reddit | talesfromtechsupport | View on Reddit | 22 comments
I'm part of a helpline supporting $plmSystem. Recently, our company, $bigCompany, spun off part of its business into $littleCompany. This happened legally over two years ago, but last fall was when $littleCompany switched to their own copy of $plmSystem.
This greatly reduced the tickets we got from $littleCompany users, but a few still come through.
One showed up recently, saying that they have people unable to login, problems using networked PCs (remote Windows logins), all sorts of issues. But...we don't support them, and haven't for several months.
All we can do is contact them and tell them to try their own helpline for their own $plmSystem. It's nice that they think we have the power to do something. I wonder how long it will take for them to realize they have to stop sending tickets to us.
Evening_Region_3838@reddit
Sounds like a classic case of miscommunication during a divestiture! It’s like when the Detective Boys try to solve a mystery without all the clues. Maybe a smoother transition plan could prevent these leftover tickets. Hope they sort it out soon! 🕵️♂️
DrHugh@reddit (OP)
I was told that someone in $littleCompany was told to contact me for a half-hour session on setting up user accounts. It actually took us about ten half-days of meetings to go over everything that one needs to know to set up accounts, and that was necessary because the person $littleCompany hired to be their accounts person had no experience in $plmSystem.
Thank god I wasn't asked to tell their LLM AI how to do it!
KelemvorSparkyfox@reddit
I swear, divestments are worse than acquisitions...
DrHugh@reddit (OP)
I've had good luck with acquisitions. You get introduced to a small team in the company being bought, you can train them, explain how things work, help them figure out how to get their data loaded into our system, make sure they are set up properly to do what they need to do, and be ready to respond when they come at you with questions.
It usually goes pretty well.
With this divestiture, though, I had a meeting early on with the manager of the $plmSystem department in $littleCompany, to talk over various user support issues they will encounter. I pointed out that supporting this software is difficult, because it is big and complicated. They had me set up a meeting with their person who would set up accounts in their $plmSystem, and thought it would take a half-hour. It actually took several half-day meetings over a period of a couple of weeks, because you have to understand how the system is used in order to understand why accounts are configured the way they are.
I offered to train whomever they wanted as a lead for their helpline, but never heard back from them. I will say I'm unimpressed by their communications. Even on the go-live for their own $plmSystem, many people were still calling us, because they didn't know that the change to their own copy was happening. We couldn't inform their users directly, we went through key people like the manager in $littleCompany, who was supposed to be sure such stuff got disseminated. On top of not knowing that, the users didn't know the helpline numbers in their own company, which they should have been using anyway.
I got that tingly feeling of disorganization, but there wasn't anything I could do to fix it.
raydleemsc@reddit
Start by charging for handling their calls for three months, then charge for each call. Explain all this in project meetings as critical part of handover as they need to be responsible for their procedures including self reliance.
DrHugh@reddit (OP)
Unfortunately, that was all handled higher up. In any case, it is a moot point now.
Filosifee@reddit
I once had someone submit a ticket asking us to connect their printer. I worked for an SaaD company that their org used and the helpdesk was for issues with the site. They thought we were the same helpdesk as their IT. Took multiple emails back and forth for them to understand
K-o-R@reddit
Software as a disservice?
syntaxerror53@reddit
Maybe Software As A Disaster. The way M$ is going these days.
DrHugh@reddit (OP)
Your data is in the cloud. Tenuous. Formless. Soon to precipitate and erode the land, rushing into the sea, to be lost forever.
himitsumono@reddit
But AI will tell you where it went.
It will be wrong, of course, but very sure of itself.
DrHugh@reddit (OP)
Take a deep breath! ;-)
Filosifee@reddit
Whoops! Freudian slip
K-o-R@reddit
I mean it wouldn't be the first time they've introduced yet another new abbreviation that I missed.
DrHugh@reddit (OP)
One time, a guy in a product support organization accidentally left our helpline number as the person covering for him in his absence. We started getting calls about some product, but we had no clue where they were coming from; the people said they called the product helpline and got to us. I finally asked what number they called, and called it myself, so I could explain the situation and get it could be resolved.
porpoiseoflife@reddit
Ah, yes. The ever polite dance around the issue of "Not my fucking problem" without getting memos from HR.
fatmanwithabeard@reddit
My current record for support calls for things I no longer support is 17 years.
I did learn that they were still using the stuff that was installed while I was there.
DrHugh@reddit (OP)
We had a divestiture of a whole division once, sold off to another company.
Ten years later, we got a call from someone wanting to access that division's data. We told him no, because -- even if we had it -- it belongs to another company. He seemed to think that if any backups existed, he had a right to them. No sir, that data belonged to the division that got sold. Go to the other company if you want something.
syntaxerror53@reddit
Beats me. Last year, met an old customer who said they were trying to get hold of me for years. Told them I was gone from that particular business 15 years ago. Think the support they were getting after I was gone wasn't as good.
Geminii27@reddit
How are the tickets from the divested company coming through? Do they still have access to your web portal? Are they phoning your helpdesk? Sending email to an externally-accessible helpdesk address?
DrHugh@reddit (OP)
They are supposed to go through their own IT group even before the cutover, but our phone number works externally, so some of them still call us directly. In addition, some of them still have a need to access other $bigCompany systems that haven't migrated yet, so they are on our network and can submit tickets to us that way.
This one came in over the web, so someone with network access submitted it. Which is the wrong way for starting an "I can't access things!" ticket.
Epistaxis@reddit
"I can't access things!"
"Neither can I!"