Urgent: Help needed TODAY!

Posted by Hobbit_Hardcase@reddit | talesfromtechsupport | View on Reddit | 47 comments

Ticket 1: Sunday 1450

Hi there,
We urgently need help today to solve access issues to a SharePoint site we’ve created. Is someone available to jump on a call?
My number is 0712345678, though a video call would be preferred so that I can walk you through the site.

Ticket 2: Sunday 1505

Hello,
This is indeed urgent. Please can someeone get in touch with us asap?

Ticket 3: Sunday 1517

Hello,
Does anyone know how to get IT support on a Sunday? Not getting a response from the usual email address (in cc). Does anyone have a phone number or other ideas?

We don't have cover on a Sunday, unless you are on the VIP list. And the people on the VIP list have the number of the VIP Support guy. He gets paid specifically to be reachable at any time.

The Agencies we cover don't pay for general On-Call, Out of Hours or weekend support. They can, if it's prebooked and someone agrees to do it for them. I have in the past and they whined like children because it cost them £hundreds and they didn't end up needing anything.

The VIP Support guy replied (he's a helpful chap like that) on Monday at 0900 to ask if they were still having issues and it took them 90 mins to say yes, it's still very urgent :/

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OnlyProblems@reddit

Ah yes, the old "This is extremely urgent and I need a phone call" with 0 details. Love these.

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captainsnacks11@reddit

I was a web developer at one stage. Had a brand new client who submitted a ticket with "URGENT" as a prefix to the ticket title. No worries, got it done for her same day.

After that point, every ticket submitted was labelled urgent.

After the 3rd or 4th ticket like this, I realised that the piss was being taken and if everything is urgent, then actually nothing is urgent. I treated them as normal priority tickets from then on. No complaints at all.

Only left us when they sold the business.

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Ill-Kaleidoscope4825@reddit

I once had a senior member of staff do this. I dug my heels in and tried to insist on email communication, and she pulled rank

A ten minute conversation ensued, which would have been two sentences in an email.

At the end she said "wasn't this easier than an email?". I wish I'd said no.

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awkwardsexpun@reddit

"No. I also need you to send a recap of this conversation via email."

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Ill-Kaleidoscope4825@reddit

🤣

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The_Truthkeeper@reddit

You absolutely should have said no.

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Ill-Kaleidoscope4825@reddit

I chickened out. I wish I hadn't

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Coldfreeze-Zero@reddit

I have been in IT for quite some time, senior support/consultant, at one point you have seen it all and the no becomes a standard part of your vocabulary.

Yet a justified "No." will always feel incredible.

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Fearless-1265@reddit

We've had clients do that, they're usually the ones where if you ask for more details they eeither don't reply for another hour or they reply with something along the lines of "we can discuss on call" and it turns out to be a 40mins call for something that could have been solved in 10mins on email.

Elegant-Winner-6521@reddit

Our smallest, least paying client went absolutely ballistic because automation-feature-for-which-there-is-an-easy-manual-override was not working, and instead of doing the manual thing which would have taken them 4 minutes, they decided to call the support line 27 times throughout an entire sunday. Monday morning was fun, lots of threats to leave us and report us to trading standards and all the rest.

You know. Kind of like someone throwing a tantrum and sitting at the bus stop for several hours while composing a plan to ruin the bus company because the bus didn't show up, when they could have walked it in 10 minutes.

cvc75@reddit

Kind of like someone throwing a tantrum and sitting at the bus stop for several hours

Worse, complaining because the bus didn't show up on a Sunday, when the timetable at the bus stop clearly said there was no service today.

PrinceFan72@reddit

It's so often the smallest customers who pay the least who cause the biggest number of effort in the team. Multiple tickets about the same thing, rather than updating the original, everything is urgent when needing a response but never being available to solve the issue.

It's so often the smallest customers who pay the least who cause the biggest number of effort in the team.

It's basically a rule in every industry.

I think it's because the money they pay is a lot more personal (that $5k might be directly out of their savings account instead of allocated to a departments' quarterly budget), and the leadership don't have enough staff to fob off annoying admin work to someone else.

action_lawyer_comics@reddit

Yeah. I worked retail in a bike store once and I saw that sometimes. The person used to buying Huffys for less than $100 feels like the 300 hybrid bike they bought two years ago makes them a VIP, ignoring the fact they walked past a row of bikes that all started at 2000 to get to the service counter.

This was 10 years ago so adjust those prices for inflation in your head

My first ever job was as a car detailer. Had a lot more problems with Honda and Nissan people than I did from Ferrari owners

(not that there's anything wrong with hondas. Also, porsche customers were the absolute worst).

ravoguy@reddit

20% of your customers are 80% of your problems

NotYourNanny@reddit

The rest of that adage is "and if you get rid of the, you'll double your profits."

Dienoth@reddit

Truth right here

awetsasquatch@reddit

That's 100% it, I worked for a small company who's owner went ballistic that Microsoft wouldn't respond within 20 minutes because they pay for outlook. Didn't last long at that job, and the company collapsed maybe 5 months later

Also everything should be free because “they’re such a good customer!”

TheNecroFrog@reddit

Yep, one of our smallest customers who paid us less than I earn in a a quarter, wanted service credits for 10x what they paid us.

lol no

Naive_Figure188@reddit

Fire them.

I have already made that case to our directors, who are so removed from daily operations they just see that small amount of money trickling in and think no further about it.

mito88@reddit

kindly do the needful and revert with top priority

pcfriek1987@reddit

whoever sents me an email with "do the needfull", is instantly ignored for a week :)

spaceraverdk@reddit

Just know that I would be writing "do the needful" with a smiley face at the end. Especially if we were colleagues.

10art1@reddit

Why?

8BFF4fpThY@reddit

Because it means "I've done nothing to help the status of this issue and I'm putting all of the responsibility on you, even if it isn't your job. Also, I won't be responding in any useful way ever agian"

Exactly that :)

boli99@reddit

see also "urgent ticket submitted at 1659 on a friday"

followed by

"angry followup at 0901 on a monday because nothing happened"

AngryCod@reddit

I've honest-to-god had a call come in at 1659 on a Friday from someone who was in their car, on the way to the airport to catch an overseas flight for their two-week vacation and they wanted me to install VPN and some other apps in preparation for their trip. It came in on the Urgent line. To this day, I don't know how they thought that was going to work.

DMercenary@reddit

To this day, I don't know how they thought that was going to work.

"Wave the wand magic man and make the magic box work."

bluggabugbug@reddit

Because IT is magic!

remorackman@reddit

Technomagically delicious !

I_call_Shennanigans_@reddit

I mean... They aren't wrong. But still.

Teberoth@reddit

which will inevitably start with "I sent a request in last week that still has not..."

JanB1@reddit

So they technically wrote an e-mail 2 business-minutes ago...

Snowenn_@reddit

I've had a couple of these. One time I even did some overtime on friday to try and fix the problem for them. But I didn't have enough knowledge about that part of the software and needed another colleague to help me out, but they didn't work overtime so I had to wait for monday. Then I got cussed out on monday (by the customer) for it not being fixed. That was the last time I did overtime for that customer.

JohnnyricoMC@reddit

and it took them 90 mins to say yes, it's still very urgent :/

Every single time. The louder they scream something's urgent, the longer they themselves take to actually reply to information requests in response to their calls.

misterschmoo@reddit

We used to get customers unhappy with, you know, submitting tickets and waiting for them to get answered, insist on calling us, I would be like, yeah we don't have phones, so you can insist all you like.

rayjaymor85@reddit

"But ABC123 who we used to have support us had 24/7 phone support!!!"
"Yes, that's why they charge 4x what we charge...."

The worst is when a coworker does something for a client/user that is above and beyond normal procedure and now they expect it every time.

“But so and so did this for us!”

I got a verbal reprimand for responding to an annoying client that said this “but I’m not so and so and that wasn’t procedure.”

Everprism@reddit

A company I worked for had so many issues like this they stopped supporting Sharpoint access issues. The department was required to have at least two site owners and those people were responsible for adding access when needed. People would complain that they didn't want to bother the site owners 🙄