A Reason to be Nice Tech Support |
- A Reason to be Nice
- Want to stay for dinner?
- More from Aviation Maintenance: Listening Skills I
- Fashion faux pas
- I'm so glad you're down
- Why I Quit
- Password reset
- User doesn't understand difference b/w card swipe for authentication and a POS card reader
- High Priority Non Issue
- Supporting a Vista7810MacOS Laptop
- Maybe try another browser?
| Posted: 02 Mar 2018 01:41 PM PST I work at $ISP, a smaller company that provides fiber within about a third of my state. I got a business customer ($cx) transferred to me with the ticket note
I should mention that while we normally only provide service up to the customer's firewall/router, we do host some domain emails. Though none of them on an exchange server. So I take the call and talk to the customer.
Now that's a plight I can understand. And she's not demanding, she is nice and polite. Alright, I can work with you.
I knew we had done this in the past, but I wanted to make sure she wasn't going to get billed more the higher I put it up. I essentially got the response back "Yupp, free for the weekend." Perfect!
I could hear her eyes widen and her smile. And that's more than enough for me. TL;DR: Be nice to your ISP tech, always [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 02 Mar 2018 11:03 PM PST I work for a local IT company and I do service calls for residential customers. On this particular day, I got called to troubleshoot poor wireless performance onsite. Me: Guy dude that does work Customer: Uses internet to Google recipes and ask Alexa questions. Boss: bossman The work performed was pretty simple. Router in place was old G or N class linksys that I spent 5 minutes with before telling the customer it should be replaced. Got new wireless network up and running in the home, and reconnected the wireless printer. This was my last ticket for the day so I was done around 5:45PM. I told the customer she was all set and gave her the run down of what I did. As I'm packing my equipment: C: Are you hungry? Want to stay for dinner? My husband is coming home any minute and you can join us. I remember being really hungry that day, I think I missed out on lunch. The spaghetti and meatballs she was making was too good of a deal to miss out on. Me: Yes please and thank-you I was offered a coke, her husband came home, we sat around their table and enjoyed a meal. Talked about work, school, life, and the busy week ahead. Gave my thanks and went back to the office. Internal notes on the ticket read: "30 minutes of time was spent eating dinner with client." Bossman was happy, customer was happy, and I was full. tl;dr Went to troubleshoot wireless issue, ended up working on relationship with client using spaghetti. [link] [comments]  |
| More from Aviation Maintenance: Listening Skills I Posted: 02 Mar 2018 11:54 AM PST It's been awhile, hasn't it? I'd like to blame life, but really it's just a combination of writer's block and getting sucked into Subnautica. Here's the first of a fun little trio of vignettes. By the way, highly recommend that game. Early in my career, I discovered I had to improve my listening skills. Not to people, of course, but to the engines themselves. You see, every engine has its own 'voice' which, if you listen, can let you know when something is wrong. A stutter in your car can point towards a dead or failing distributor. A knocking could indicate a rod is about to be forcefully ejected through the engine case. An unholy banshee screaming to drag your soul to hell could be a sign of a bent turbine blade. Of course, sometimes, what you don't hear can be just as indicative of a problem… Here's one of three quick tales to illustrate that very skill in action. Mannheim, Germany, 2006 It was a bright and cheerful Monday morning. I exited the back door of our shop to the ramp, walked past our Avionics Shop containers situated beside the hangar and watched as Charlie Company attempted to start one of their helicopters, a UH-60A Blackhawk. I listened to the starting whine of the APU and cocked my head sideways. My Turbine Senses started tingling. Something was wrong—confirmed as the little turbine wound back down and several crew began to cluster near the tail exhaust. I walked up to the gathered crew as the APU (Auxiliary Power Unit) start sequence was reinitiated. Something was off alright, the hum of the start was off, and the telltale tic tic tic of the exciter firing was far too weak and muffled. Suddenly, a fireball shot from the exhaust as the pooled fuel in the exhaust pipe ignited, causing a torching start and an automatic shutdown to protect the engine.
I raised my eyebrows. Another new ignitor? The ignitors are a type glow plug which will create quite a satisfying "snap" as it discharges the electricity delivered by the capacitors in the exciter, but generally a new ignitor shouldn't sound so muffled, nor should it need to be replaced so quickly. Putting those pieces together and adding the odd sound of the engine along with the torching start, I knew what the issue was.
Crewchief1 looked slightly confused, but he was rescued from my contradiction by his Sergeant, who was a part of the gathering.
Well then. I know where I'm not wanted!
I kept an eye on the situation for the rest of the week, but while they kept changing parts they never came to me. Finally, on Friday, a friend of mine in Charlie Company, Crewchief2, came by my toolroom to visit.
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| Posted: 02 Mar 2018 05:13 PM PST I work as a mid level sys admin for a software company on the service desk team. One day I had a user whose laptop would randomly go to sleep. After some troubleshooting we found absolutely nothing wrong and never saw the problem, so we had them take it to see if it persisted. Next day, same issue. Thinking it was likely hardware we swapped the hard drive to a new one and sent them off to only have it happen again. New image, no dice. Replaced power supply, still happening. Another user then shows up with the exact same issue on a completely different generation of system. I'm now stumped. While talking with user 2 trying to get context on what it could be I actually see it go to sleep in front of me. I look at their hands and notice they had a fancy looking fitness tracker bracelet. That's when it hit me. I asked them if I could see their bracelet, and sure enough, it has a magnetic clasp. I have them wave it where the lid sensor is and the damn thing went right to sleep. Turns out that User 1 had gotten a similar band for their fitness tracker as well. Hours I spent on this stupid issue. Hours. TLDR: user systems were going to sleep randomly. The magnetic clasp on their fitness trackers were triggering the lid sensor. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 02 Mar 2018 02:15 PM PST $Me: Some dude who knows stuff and offers help for free A while back I upgraded $FF's networking set up. Things like security cameras, NAS backups and wireless suddenly worked more or less as they should.
ONE DAY LATER (with profanity removed)
So I drove over after work.
I then proceed to check tons of things. Everything seemed performant no matter what I did... then the internet dropped. Network transfers were still awesome though - I easily streamed video from the NAS to my phone even though it required multiple network hops and file transfers to the desktops worked well. So I call the ISP... and I wait half an hour.
20 minutes pass and I... get dropped, so I call back.
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| Posted: 03 Mar 2018 12:17 AM PST LTL FTP On mobile, I do apologize for formatting errors. Cast: $M : Me $AT : Annoying Teacher $SSS : "Super" Smart Student So I work in the IT department at a public high school. I went to check on a laptop cart that was in the $AT's room. Upon my arrival $AT tells me that the cart is fine and that her internet is broken, and that it must be the Ethernet cable I replaced a week ago. So first I check the Ethernet cable all good no visible damage, all the while $AT is bitching about how many ticket requests she sent in. When I get to the switch at the back of her class I notice it's not plugged in. $SST, Who is sitting right next to the switch says "I saw it wasn't plugged in, I think that's the problem, I'm pretty good with computers myself" $M "Then why didn't you plug it back in?" $SST "Well I have to focus on my school work, I can't be expected to do your job too" I plugged the switch back in, and told $AT that I had solved the problem. To which she replied "Was it not plugged in?". I turned in my two weeks that day. TL;DR: Teacher has a problem with her internet, a student in her class won't fix it because he can't be expected to do my job, she knew what the problem was the whole time and couldn't be bothered to check on it. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 02 Mar 2018 05:47 PM PST My company makes widgets, we have several websites we run in-house and obviously several departments. We also use some 3rd party websites for things we don't have the resources for, that we don't support. Completely separate entities IT knows really barely anything about, if anything at all. These specific departments source their own vendors and choose them themselves, we literally have zero exposure to them or how they operate. This one comes from the marketing department for an "order management system", whatever that is. I'm Me, user is marketing user (MU). Me: IT this is ME! MU: Hi, I forgot my password for $OrderManagementSystem($OMS), I tried the "forgot password" link but it gives me an error. I check the site and try a "forgot password" against the user's account and confirm, it throws up an Apache type error, yup, site is borked! Good user for trying to help themselves (I think to myself). Me: I see the problem you're having, you're right, the site seems to be down. You can let the webmaster know (Googling, Googling....), their support email is info@$OMS.com, just contact them and give them the information you gave me. MU: But... I need to login to the site to do my job, can't you just reset it for me?? Me: No, this site isn't managed by us, you would need to contact them via the email I sent you. MU: But I just need a password reset, just reset my password. Me: I... can't do that, I don't have access to their system, it is solely managed by them... MU: Ok fine, I'll email them. click TL;DR: I am literally IT of the internet, let me know if you need your gmail password reset. [link] [comments]  |
| User doesn't understand difference b/w card swipe for authentication and a POS card reader Posted: 02 Mar 2018 11:07 AM PST To start, I need to explain that our helpdesk services some 70+ offices in all parts of the state that all do the same thing. Because the users in our company travel a lot, we set up a network printing system through PaperCut which allows you to print to a cloud and release it from any printer connected to that network. The catch is, the users have to swipe a card to authenticate themselves at the printer to release the print jobs. PaperCut is also used to charge each user based on how much they print so wherever it is released, it comes out of the user's annual budget. On this particular morning, the user called and the conversation went as follows: I am $ME and User is $U
At this point, I get remoted into her computer and check to make sure the network printer is online etc. thinking something in the process was not working. The user lets me troubleshoot for 10-15 mins before telling me what the real issue was.
Just then, as if a truck drove through my primary monitor, it hit me. She was swiping his debit card at the card swipe on the printer. I put the user on mute and laughed for a solid 5 minutes with my colleagues before composing myself and calmly explaining the difference between that card swipe and the POS card swipe at the store. She was very nice about the whole thing and she ended up just eating the 6 cents that it cost for her to print his forms. TL;DR: User swiped a debit card at the card swipe authenticator on a printer to avoid being charged for the print job. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 02 Mar 2018 02:04 PM PST Well, there's an issue, but it ain't what she thinks. Cast: Joe - Level 1 tech under me. Solid guy in a second, late-life career. Starlet has been a minor problem for a bit. Nothing serious; just repeated, ongoing, drop-by verbal "ticketing" and the like. Mostly friendly but high maintenance. We've been encouraging her to send tickets the way she's supposed to, but it hasn't been working. Its early afternoon and I'm plugging away at something when I hear Starlet tell Joe, in the cube next to me, that she's having problems with email: she cannot forward messages with attachments. A few weeks before an MS patch caused these same symptoms, and Starlet had other issues around the same time necessitating our replacing her computer, which fixed all her problems at the time. I interrupt Starlet asking if she's sent a ticket for this (I know she hasn't, I have just refreshed the Queue in front of me). She grumbles "I'm just frustrated about this issue that's been going on all morning" but ambles back to her desk just down the hall and sends a ticket. Yay! But it's a high severity ticket. Less yay. And I know that before talking with Joe she had been galavanting around the office shooting the breeze with buddies and pals for at least half an hour. No yay remaining. Joe is capable of fixing this, but I want this handled cleanly, precisely, and with zero room left for Starlet to wiggle in, so I assign the ticket to myself and send her a series of emails with attachments of various types asking her to reply to them. She replies by creating a new message saying the problem is not occurring with the test messages. I reply telling her I need to be very precise about this to both confirm the issue and get as clear a picture of the details as possible, and so I need her to reply with the attachments. She gives another detail: It's only with documents that have been scanned. Easy enough: two more messages go to her from scanned documents. Starlet prevaricates some more, but includes a screenshot of the offending email: the email in the screenshot has a Word document attached (so it sure as heck wasn't scanned) and she's in the "Attachment" tab, which has never had the Forward or Reply buttons (those are only in the Message tab). But Starlet is no longer at her desk. A few hours later she is done dancing about the office again and I meet her at her desk just as Sir Chips drops by. I have her open the offending email while Sir Chips watches and we confirm the correct buttons are right there in the ribbon, and then I have her click on the attachment and we observe the ribbon switches to the Attachment table and the buttons are no longer visible. Finally we confirm we can return to the Messages tab and find the missing buttons right where they always were. Sir Chips and I share a friendly shrug and I close the ticket. [link] [comments]  |
| Supporting a Vista7810MacOS Laptop Posted: 02 Mar 2018 09:27 PM PST To begin, let me provide some context for this support call. There is a man (we'll call him Joe) whom I have known for quite a while who asks me to come over to his house from time to time to help him with computer issues. These issues are generally pretty simple (plugging in the printer to fix it, clicking the "U" button to underline text in Microsoft Word, etc.). Even though I prefer to not spend my time on these things (I'm not getting paid for these jobs), I do enjoy being able to help him. He does try to do his best, and I absolutely respect that. Last week, he called me over because his brother (we'll call him Bill) couldn't get connected to Joe's network. I honestly wasn't quite sure what was going on, but I took the job under the assumption it was something that I could solve. I arrived and Bill explained the issue:
I look at it and the Now for the fun part of this story. The first thing that met my eyes when I opened that computer up was a Windows 10 system with a Windows 8 UI, a Windows Vista start menu, Windows 7 desktop gadgets, and a MacOS dock. Being the young, inexperienced individual that I am, I must admit that I was quite frightened by the sight. Of course I knew how they got there (sketchy third-party applications), but that was still the most horrifying computer I have ever laid my hands on. With his permission, I uninstalled the Windows 8 UI, MacOS dock, and the desktop gadgets (which brought the CPU usage down to about 99% instead of 100%), but I couldn't easily figure out which application was running the Vista menu. It's certainly not the most exciting (or horrifying) story I've ever had, but I think it is certainly the most interesting. I'm honestly kind of looking forward to the inevitable return visit-- I really want to get the rest of the computer cleaned up and in a somewhat workable condition. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 02 Mar 2018 04:45 PM PST Got a call that one of our users couldn't run a program. Looked up the ticket, and surprise, almost no troubleshooting. I call the user, and she tells me her program won't let her sign in. This should be my first clue, but I head out to the site. Once I'm there, I ask her to show me the issue. She navigates to her Outlook, pulls up an email, and clicks on a link. This opens a website in Edge, which immediately tells her to disable TLS 1.0. Due to restrictions, I can't do this, but users were warned not to use Edge since it doesn't play well with sites they use. Per company policy, I duplicate her bookmarks to IE and Chrome, and I ask which she perferrs. It's an immediate issue. I tell her it's against policy to continue using Edge, set the default browser for IE, and left. [link] [comments]  |
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