[AusNOG] after hours staff requirement
Mark Foster
blakjak at blakjak.net
Mon Sep 17 18:45:23 EST 2018
The scripted IVR option with some variations has worked for me in the past.
- Used a 'secret' IVR option, like the IVR says Press 1,2 or 3 but the
secret option is 7 or 8. This presents a prompt "are you sure you wish
to be transferred to the duty engineer?" and does so only after a
second, subsequent confirmation.
- Threatening a charge is interesting, but I would hope unnecessary...
- Use a dedicated phone number for those customers who pay extra for
24/7 support.
I've also overseen a contracted relationship with a third-party
callcentre who were nothing more than a skilled tag-and-bag centre -
they worked for multiple brands, would answer 'as' you, collect
information and follow a flow chart to determine whether to escalate
immediately, or log-a-job for the next business day. That also worked
very well.
I'm a Kiwi, so unless you want a Wellington based option, I doubt a
reference would be useful. But I support the concept - humans can deal
with exceptions (once suitably trained!) and having a third-party option
also gives you alternative BC/DR options when your PBX is taken down by
the very outage your customers are calling you about...
Mark.
On 17/09/18 20:10, Nick Pratley wrote:
> This. Humans are always better confirming escalation requirements.
>
> I worked on-call for $work before we had 24/7 staff in ops.
>
> The best of both worlds solution for this problem for us was a
> scripted IVR.
>
> “Thanks for calling $work. You’ve called outside of business hours.
> Hold the line to leave a message and an engineer will attend to this
> first thing in the morning. If your issue is critical, press 9 to be
> transferred to an on-call engineer. “
>
> *press 9*
>
> “if you’re issue is found to be of a non-critical nature or outside of
> your contractual terms an escalation fee of $99 will be charged at the
> discretion of the engineer. Press 9 to accept these charges and be
> transferred through or hold the line to leave a message “
>
> I think about 5 calls in a 2 year period ever got charged back to the
> customer as outside escalation criteria, everyone else logged a ticket
> for the morning or had an issue that warranted on-call escalation.
>
> “Is my issue that critical that I want to pay 100 dollars to have it
> looked at right away?” That’s a very powerful motivator. If yes, then
> we were happy to look at the issue, charge the customer and on-call
> engineer bill the company for the call out.
>
> Everyone won. It gave the customer the chance to consider their issue
> again and if it was actually critical for their operation.
>
> Just some food for thought. It also beat the scammers (never had a
> single one escalated through the IVR - it’s not like we could have
> charged them either, but a risk we were willing to take.)
>
> On Mon, 17 Sep 2018 at 5:29 pm, Matthew Moyle-Croft <mmc at mmc.com.au
> <mailto:mmc at mmc.com.au>> wrote:
>
> Hi,
> I’ve got to agree with this. A properly scripted/documented list
> will reduce engineer call outs (improving staff morale) and, more
> importantly, mean that if they get woken up they know it’s worth
> doing something about.
>
> MMC
>
>> On 17 Sep 2018, at 4:55 pm, Kisakye Alex <kisakye at gmail.com
>> <mailto:kisakye at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>> I think what a human provides is the ability to sort through
>> tickets for what can wait until morning and what needs the
>> engineer to wake up. If you are forwarding the calls directly to
>> an engineer on call, then half the time s/he is making decisions
>> on whether to get up or not.
>>
>> Alex
>>
>> On Mon, Sep 17, 2018 at 12:09 AM Chad Kelly <chad at cpkws.com.au
>> <mailto:chad at cpkws.com.au>> wrote:
>>
>> With most modern PBX systems they will tell you if it's a PBX
>> call and
>> give you the option to either answer the call or hang up.
>>
>> Or you can send the call to an answering machine which means
>> you can get
>> to the issue the next morning.
>>
>> If you are running services that are mission critical that
>> you need the
>> phone answered 24/7 then you really need someone in the
>> office who is
>> awake and functioning but given what has been discussed a
>> decent PBX
>> would be fine as even if you wanted to redirect calls to a
>> call centre
>> ware a human answers that is also an option, though less needed.
>>
>> As a voicemail system would be a lot cheaper and tickets work
>> better for
>> more complex issues anyway.
>>
>> Regards Chad.
>>
>>
>>
>> On 9/17/2018 4:50 PM, Andrew Jones wrote:
>> > I can see the benefit of having someone else take the call.
>> I can remember my days as an on call engineer years ago where
>> I would get a phone call from the NOC in the middle of the
>> night, I would need to keep a pen and paper by the bed to
>> write down basic details, as in my just woken state, I would
>> forget whatever I was told 2 seconds later.
>> >
>> > You don’t want end customers talking to someone who just
>> woke up seconds ago, as they won't be in a state to properly
>> take down details and provide a mechanism to follow up
>> (ticket numbers etc)
>> >
>> > Cheers,
>> > Andrew Jones
>> > 0435 658 228
>> >
>> > -----Original Message-----
>> > From: AusNOG <ausnog-bounces at lists.ausnog.net
>> <mailto:ausnog-bounces at lists.ausnog.net>> On Behalf Of Chad Kelly
>> > Sent: Monday, 17 September 2018 4:35 PM
>> > To: ausnog at lists.ausnog.net
>> <mailto:ausnog at lists.ausnog.net>;
>> ausnog-request at lists.ausnog.net
>> <mailto:ausnog-request at lists.ausnog.net>
>> > Subject: Re: [AusNOG] after hours staff requirement
>> >
>> > On 9/17/2018 12:00 PM, ausnog-request at lists.ausnog.net
>> <mailto:ausnog-request at lists.ausnog.net> wrote:
>> >
>> >> I'm looking for a company to take on our level 1 support,
>> after hours.
>> >> 10pm - 8am AEST
>> >> 7 days a week, including public holidays.
>> >> Would prefer a local Australian company, but will consider
>> >> International too.
>> >> Require a team of sorts, that handles other companies too
>> as it's not
>> >> financially viable to have a team dedicated to us as the
>> volume of
>> >> calls is bugger all.
>> >>
>> >> We'll just redirect the 1300 number to you during those
>> times, a
>> >> simple greeting, take down notes and urgency, check the
>> on-call
>> >> calendar and call the Engineer to action.
>> >> Basically, I need you to wake up the Engineer on call:)
>> > Frankly if this is all you need a decent phone system will
>> do this without you needing to hire an outsourcing company.
>> > Most decent PBX systems will redirect to a mobile after
>> hours or better yet straight to an answering machine that
>> will email a voicemail message to an engineer.
>> > That way they can decide if the message is important enough
>> to bother doing anything about, and frankly if you offer an
>> on call service you should be charging enough that it deters
>> unwanted callers from ringing you in the middle of the night
>> anyway.
>> > This is why we don't advertise 24/7 support as idiots
>> randomly spam the ticket system with rubbish which you then
>> need to delete anyway.
>> > We offer support for critical issues on weekends for
>> existing customers only.
>> > Your PBX also should have a decent blacklist function for
>> telemarketers.
>> >
>> > Regards Chad.
>> >
>> > --
>> > Chad Kelly
>> > Manager
>> > CPK Web Services
>> > Phone 03 5273 0246
>> > Web www.cpkws.com.au <http://www.cpkws.com.au/>
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > AusNOG mailing list
>> > AusNOG at lists.ausnog.net <mailto:AusNOG at lists.ausnog.net>
>> > http://lists.ausnog.net/mailman/listinfo/ausnog
>>
>> --
>> Chad Kelly
>> Manager
>> CPK Web Services
>> Phone 03 5273 0246
>> Web www.cpkws.com.au <http://www.cpkws.com.au/>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> AusNOG mailing list
>> AusNOG at lists.ausnog.net <mailto:AusNOG at lists.ausnog.net>
>> http://lists.ausnog.net/mailman/listinfo/ausnog
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> AusNOG mailing list
>> AusNOG at lists.ausnog.net <mailto:AusNOG at lists.ausnog.net>
>> http://lists.ausnog.net/mailman/listinfo/ausnog
>
> _______________________________________________
> AusNOG mailing list
> AusNOG at lists.ausnog.net <mailto:AusNOG at lists.ausnog.net>
> http://lists.ausnog.net/mailman/listinfo/ausnog
>
> --
>
> Kind Regards,
> *Nick Pratley*
> P: 0448 379 418
> E: nick at npratley.net <mailto:nick at npratley.net>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> AusNOG mailing list
> AusNOG at lists.ausnog.net
> http://lists.ausnog.net/mailman/listinfo/ausnog
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.ausnog.net/pipermail/ausnog/attachments/20180917/03b70cf0/attachment-0001.html>
More information about the AusNOG
mailing list