[AusNOG] TPG NOC CONTACT

[Joseph Goldman]

There is another side to the argument - in terms of support for Level 1 
/ cheap labor (not necessarily outsourced, just not paying for someone 
with higher technical skill).

  Would you rather:

   1) Your customers wait on hold for up to 30 minutes
   2) Your customers reach a voicemail system (say after x minutes of hold)
   3) Your customers get a CSR, even if Level 1

  From a company perspective side - I would rather #3 where they can at 
least check the account is not suspended, make sure customer has done 
the real level 1 stuff, and if it is truly out of scope log a call for 
Level 2 (if none available immediately). I feel the customer would also 
be happier with this option even if waiting for a call back, because 
they know a human has made some action on their request and it is not 
sitting in a faceless queue.

  In the company I currently work for, we are lucky enough that support 
requirements are quite low for the size of our customer base and those 
of us who answer the phones also happen to implement the network and 
servers end-to-end, so we will definitely be able to help anyone that 
calls beyond an upstream fault (Telstra fault etc), in which we should 
be able to identify pretty quick.

  Unfortunately I'm stuck on the edge between #3 and #2 - as at our 
current level of load, Implementing #3 would have someone sitting there 
twiddling their thumbs much of the day and would be an unnecessary cost, 
so until we grow and the actual support requirements become larger, I'll 
likely be stuck to implementing #2 for those rare times that everyone is 
unavailable for some reason.

On 11/11/14 18:32, Shane Short wrote:
> I'm not saying I disagree/agree either way, but would you rather cut
> costs on some customer facing staff which a smaller percentage of your
> customer base utilises day to day, or do you cut it from
> infrastructure/engineering, which all your customer base uses?
>
> It's a tricky one that I don't have the answer for.
>
> -Shane
>
> Shain Singh wrote:
>>
>> On 11 November 2014 18:11, Shane Short <shane at short.id.au
>> <mailto:shane at short.id.au>> wrote:
>>
>>     To be honest-- getting someone who's capable of doing that level
>>     of troubleshooting ad-hoc is hard, especially if you don't have
>>     the budgets because you're in a price war with your competitors.
>>
>>
>> Bingo! And that's the mindset across the board with small and large
>> players - that budgetary constraints mean that staff is typically the
>> first place to look for cost cutting.
>>
>> When I worked years ago at KBS Internet and also Connect.com we only
>> had a T2 helpdesk to deal with corporates/wholesales. I also had
>> config access to ALL core/dist/edge routers and sudo access to hosting
>> servers, etc. Things have changed since those days, but they could do
>> it, so surely others can....
>>
>> We are now stuck in a world where the members of this list hire T1
>> people themselves and expect better service from the T1 staff of their
>> transit providers. T1 skill-sets don't really change much in
>> companies, and nor do their pay grades.
>>
>>
>> --
>> Shaineel Singh
>> e: shain.singh at gmail.com <mailto:shain.singh at gmail.com>
>> p: +61 422 921 951
>> w: http://buffet.shainsingh.com
>>
>> --
>> "Too many have dispensed with generosity to practice charity" - Albert
>> Camus
>
>
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