Tag: customer service

Handcuffed

We just had a really frustrating issue come up at work. The customer had access to their system locked down hard, for perfectly valid and acceptable reasons. They had issues with applications crashing and we couldn’t get in to see what happened. There were a slew of people from my company, the hardware vendor, and the customer on a conference call and we were all totally stumped. Then one of our tech guys and one of the tech guys from the hardware vendor started hammering away at it and they figured it out.

Sometimes this software support stuff can be incredibly frustrating, but when those frustrating moments get resolved… oh man is that satisfying. Even in a case like this where the folks who support my application ended up being innocent bystanders (the issue and the fix ended up having zero to do with us) it is still immensely satisfying.

Huge tip of the hat to the two guys who eventually worked it all out. As the commercials used to say, it’s Miller time*.

*It’s not Miller time for me. I don’t drink. The sentiment still works though.

I Feel Bad About This

I feel like I dropped a ball at work. I did not, but I feel like I did.

One of the guys in my group was struggling with an issue on Friday. He was sending out chat messages to the rest of us during the morning and I was chipping in where I could. His problem involved a functionality that 10 years ago I was the authority on. It’s been a long time since I’ve had to look into it myself, but I am still often the guy who can straighten things out even though I don’t personally support customers anymore and therefore never have this sort of issue assigned to me directly.

He asked if anyone was available to jump on a video chat and look things over with him. Right about the same time my boss’ boss pulled a whole bunch of people, including me, into a different discussion and I had to shift my focus to that. By the start of the work day today (Monday) my issue was pretty much worked out but my coworker was still struggling. He was on another video call with a few people from other groups and they were trying to figure out what was going wrong. I joined the call and within a few minutes knew what the problem was and how to fix it.

Damn it.

By 10:00am today everything was fine and dandy and right as rain. That’s good. What I am upset with myself about is that if I could have just freed up a few minutes on Friday I could have saved my coworker a lot of stress and had it all wrapped up three days earlier. The customer would have been happy, my coworker would have been happy, and I would have felt like a (very minor) hero. Instead, I feel like let everyone down. Again, I did not, and the thing I was looking at on Friday is really important and has all sorts of upper management eyes on it, but I still wish I could have been there for my coworker sooner than I was. That’s all.

Project Work

I don’t work in a software development group. I work in a customer service group. Every now and then though the programmers in my group are asked to pitch in and help Development hit a deadline, or take on a project when Dev doesn’t have enough staff to go around at that moment.

We recently took on two projects that were pieces of a much larger collection of projects. We were hoping to get the first project done by April or May, and then immediately start on the second project. Instead we brought in another programmer and worked on both of them concurrently with a goal for completion by mid-June.

Today is June 15th. Literally the middle of June.

As of about an hour ago, both of our projects are complete.

In the immortal words of a beer commercial from back in the 80’s…

It’s Miller time.

Awesome job, guys.

I’ll Stop Bitching About UPS

  • June 22, 2020
    • Out for Delivery, estimate 6/22 by 9:00PM
  • June 23, 2020
    • Out for Delivery, estimate 6/23 by 9:00PM
  • June 24, 2020
    • In Transit to Chelmsford
    • Most recent activity: Delivery will be delayed by one business day.
    • Come back later for estimated delivery date.

In other words, they haven’t a clue where my package is. Okay. From now on I will reserve all of my bitching about this subject for phone calls to UPS customer service. You folks won’t have to listen to me anymore.

Clock

My wife and I bought a car last year.  I just saw that I had a voicemail.  I listened to it.  It was the service department at the dealership calling to remind me that daylight savings time starts on Sunday.  They offered to help change the clock in the car, if by chance we need help.

I might be nitpicking here, but I think that’s taking things across the line that separates quality customer service with annoying the shit out of everyone.

That might just be me though.