[AusNOG] after hours staff requirement
Julien Goodwin
ausnog at studio442.com.au
Mon Sep 17 18:59:55 EST 2018
Some level of IVR prompt with clear company details is a good idea.
$PREVIOUS_EMPLOYER had a US support number that was very similar to one
of Rackspace's (IIRC they were 888-NNN-NNNN and we had 800-NNN-NNNN),
that number simply redirected to the onduty engineer.
Normally it was easy to tell the cases apart, although sometimes they
wouldn't believe you, one person took three attempts, and I'm still not
sure they believed me. This would have been amusing, had it not been 3am.
On 17/09/18 18:45, Mark Foster wrote:
> 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
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>>> http://lists.ausnog.net/mailman/listinfo/ausnog
>>>
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>>
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>> --
>>
>> Kind Regards,
>> *Nick Pratley*
>> P: 0448 379 418
>> E: nick at npratley.net <mailto:nick at npratley.net>
>>
>>
>>
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>
>
>
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