About the habits of our users and technical support

We have an office, a warehouse, a lot of stores in the country and a bunch of tech-savvy users who know how to sell board games. It is interesting to observe how this whole ecosystem evolves in terms of work with technical support. Therefore, below is a quiet observation post without any advice or conclusions. Just such a life.

Here, for example, sellers realized that not all exit administrators are equally useful. Older points can monstrously quickly change the necessary information. Therefore, different engineers are now being asked for different cases. Someone should do the work at least 10% faster than usual or somehow show the quality - and immediately the calls will start in the spirit:
- Hello. Support?
- Good day.
- And who is visiting today?
- Misha.
- Ahhhh ... And when is Valera?
- Valera tomorrow to 15. So what did it break for you?
- Yes, no, no, everything is in order. Everything is good today. Tomorrow will break. At 11:30.
')
And why? Because Valera miraculously not only changed the monitor, but also very impressively disassembled the “tails” of wires on Taganskaya. He is not the first person who undertook to solve this problem, but the first who solved it to the end. That's what sellers have confused there:



And that's what he did:



God knows what a feat, but the point was impressive. This is his skill (and the fact that he loves the cake) almost immediately became known to all network sellers. Actually, not everyone even guessed that you can ask the admin to do this. A couple of days later, a couple more photos naturally appear in the report:





This will continue 14 more trips, according to the number of stores in the city. At the same time, the elders themselves are far from humanities. How to disassemble the cables - so "no, we can not, we are afraid, but what if we screw up." And how to solder the power supply unit with a promotional soldering iron from the Brigade, because it's faster than waiting for an on-site engineer to arrive - so please. They repaired themselves. Cashier is idle.

Not always very clever users knock on support. Let's start with the fact that you need to call for support, then wait for the engineer (or connect it remotely), they don’t know anyone’s face ... They also need to write a ticket in a form that is not trivial for everyone. Since our work is very tightly connected with communication, and the atmosphere in the office is not said to be very formal, it begins to steer the natural interface. What to do? That's right, you have to look around and find the one who fumbles in the question. Animators will not understand, call center operators are busy. Therefore, the solution is damn simple and always unambiguous - there is the 1C team. They all help on the software. If my keyboard doesn't work - it's not difficult to help, right? Almost software. They take something tasty and try to bribe the developer with it. From this, the developer eventually gets fatter.

This continues until someone from 1C does not become too many friends, or he does not cease to climb through the door. Accordingly, he then writes an angry letter of support, they say, what are you throwing off your users to me? And begins to lose weight and refuse. The correct process is restored for about two weeks, friends grumble a little, but they understand that such is peace and order. Yes, and friends themselves temporarily becomes less. Then it starts again:
- Hello! Tim, something's not working here ... It's for you, right? Can you connect-see quickly, customers are? Last time I was asked to reboot, and I rebooted before. And you immediately do ...
Tim is a sweetheart, he is loved by all the shops. Naturally, he will not refuse. And you have to re-gain weight.

Calling to the wrong address sometimes gives rise to very strange situations. For example, since we have many, many shops in a terminal farm with 1C, an office, a warehouse, and a couple more objects, if a channel is lost, it is not always clear who to knock. The store has a sign with typical symptoms and phone numbers for solutions. So, once we continued to pay one of the backup Internet channels. As luck would have it, the connection fell, the switch to the store in the store went. The seller called the engineering service "iron" admin. And he asked to urgently solve. And I must say that our IT specialists support each other in every possible way and do not throw the ball. URGENTLY - ok, it will be. And the admin began to recruit provider. True, he did not know specifically, the provider at the point changed: he was guided by the printout, and not the current status in the database. As a result, it turned out that:
- There is no Internet, because the accident.
- A specialist has come to you.
- The specialist is looking for a break on the line.
- Need a replacement equipment.
- Replacement of equipment will be made within 3 hours.
- Another physical break detected.
- Oppa! Everything is connected, but you have not been our client for three months already.
Ours did not know about the contract, but they did not know about where the iron had gone. Two loneliness found each other.

This struggle for the result before the victory manifested itself again when the commercial director brought a broken laptop. Several buttons on the keyboard are not pressed. But not WSAD, but random. They gave it to the service. A few days later comes the conclusion: the buttons were repaired, but still need to change the screen backlight. About the fact that the screen worked somehow wrong, Dima, handing over the laptop, said nothing. He himself was at the meeting, so they tried to ask a person from the same office. Yes, everything was alright with his laptop, he said he could not rejoice. Only the buttons for something the last days have failed.

Anamnesis is clear. The service itself broke something in the repair process. Since we also have our own repairs, the situation is extremely familiar and clear. Our man began to press: they say, they handed over the whole, only the buttons did not plow, and you are stirring something backlit. Specialists of the service, apparently, have often come across this as well - there are additional failures in the repair process. Therefore, they did not argue. The laptop was repaired in a day. A month later, it turned out accidentally that Dima used it only with external screens. Why? Because the “native” screen was very dim a couple of years ago.

We did not pay for repairs, which we were ashamed of for two whole months. Then the service gave us a certificate for a free laptop repair anywhere in the world. Naturally, we gave the first one to be repaired. They returned the car to us after the diagnosis, but without repair. With a diagnosis of "do not fix it." The certificate was not given back. The balance has been restored.

Once again, a real bum started up in our apartment building (in common with a number of other offices). The problem was the failure of one of the door loops. As it turned out, the man was very strong, so he penetrated around 23:00, simply by tearing the door off the lock electromagnet. At first, no one responded to the invasion, because the first thing that the bum did was to rearrange the light bulbs at the entrance. Why - I do not know. But if there is a big strange person and changes the light bulb - probably, this is support. He was driven out, in fact, by one of the admins. And then the admin himself from the entrance tried to kick out a big and heavy landlord - he was told that someone who was not there was rummaging there. Naturally, his suspicion immediately fell on an atypically dressed person.

In one of the shops, the sellers in the evening of March 9 brought everything in order after the 8th zergash. In the best traditions of admin tales they found a wallowing cable sticking out of the wall. Senior points are pedantic. He knows that if something is lying around in a store just like that, it is an inappropriate use of resources. I think he even turns off the Num Lock to save electricity. So, then he does what hundreds of accountants did to him all over the country. Raises the tail and sticks it in place. In the white box. There are many holes, each fit. And calms down, because harmony is restored. And this is the end of the day, the cars are already off. Extinguishes the light, locks up the store and goes home happy. In the morning it turns out that the network is somehow not there, and not only in the store, but also nearby. And funny engineers are already running around.

One day while moving hardware, one of the hard drives on the server died. In general, nothing terrible, everything was in backup. Just a few shops in the regions at the time of recovery (about half an hour) were supposed to knock out checks at the cash register equipment in manual mode. Three days later, with indignation, they are calling from Chelyabinsk:
- When can you already use the cashier?
Since then, we know that we need to speak not only about the beginning of the technical works and their term, but also about the ending.

Illiterate users are divided into ordinary and heroic. Ordinary ones, for example, when a cleaning woman used to water the router in the accounting department for several days with the flower (he was under it) - we, accordingly, learned this by a ticket. And the heroic ones are when the wires were sorted out in the same accounting department, they found some kind of superfluous, 6 millimeters, two wires, a millimeter of insulation. Selflessly and decisively cut with scissors. As a result, half of the neighboring entrance was left without electricity - a building was once used as a temporary shelter for wiring, and has since been abandoned.

There are many routines: usually repairs and upgrades. Users regularly break down keyboards (just technical wear), often the screens are on their own, power supplies, coolers and hard drives fly regularly. Another frequent replacement - batteries ups. It is unpleasant with them that we have a part of reserve sources without monitoring, therefore we sometimes find out about the need for replacement not immediately. Standard work in the last year yet - the replacement of RAM. Sellers got the idea that you can easily and quickly upgrade, doubling the RAM - and then it will be more comfortable to work. It is cheap and does not affect the familiar working environment. As this valuable information spread through stores, all new tickets for such a task arose. But with the upgrades there is another ambush - many are very afraid to write, even if the computer is breathing its last. For example, in one store, we had a monoblock on the Atom, which was launched on the occasion of an emergency replacement, for a long time. Already many times it was suggested to change it, but the sellers persistently refuse: “everything is set up here, do not touch”. Works - do not bother. Sometimes in similar cases with planned upgrades, people really resist replacements.

Another story about a strange psychology - in 1C there is a backup base, which is needed for a number of technological disasters on the core servers. At first, it was simply written on it “reserve base” - users thought it was like a second mirror, you can poke. Then they wrote “reserve base, do not enter” - they still enter, they create difficulties with synchronization. We wrote a letter with an explanation for everyone, changed the name to “Test base, do not choose” - there were fewer calls, but they did not pass. As a result, the 1C team had to configure the database with an error so that it fell at the start. In case of an accident, the admin connects and changes the config in 5 seconds.

The most stupid mistake in the store - once they hooked up the cash register after the update and did not test it on a special test piece. The device came to life and realized that it was his finest hour. And rushed to print checks as not in itself. Turned it off after about a minute, when we realized that something had gone wrong. The store wrote refunds for several hours - and these are rather dreary and complicated statements, and there, according to the standard, three pieces of paper are required per check.

Once we learned in advance about a power outage at the entrance, it was supposed for 25 minutes. They invented a whole system of forwards of phones, prepared extension cords for those who move with laptops, tested Wi-Fi operation under double load ... While users gathered and passed to another entrance, they turned on the light. But we still have a great backup scheme. Actually, it came in handy when workers knocked down icicles on the building - together with ice, the brave guys with well-sharpened shovels managed to knock down the provider cable.

In distant regions, any minor inaccuracies in the instructions can turn into a psychological catastrophe. For example, when we deployed a point in one of the cities beyond the Urals, the sellers configured everything exactly according to the instructions. The problem is that the fields on the screen for the example with the name of the Moscow manager. So in the database appeared 6 "twins" with passwords, naturally, exactly eight stars. To ourselves, we laughed, but understood that people wanted the best and did the best of their understanding. And the joint is not behind them, but behind us. Of course, changed the instructions for the future.

There are a lot of bands with providers. A typical example is at 4 stores in our Beeline main channel. Was. One of the contracts was in dollars, the rest in rubles. In the fall, the exchange rate dramatically changed, and we called the manager to say that we were either disconnecting or let's re-index in rubles. The manager agreed and said he needed a statement. We sent by courier. They lost him. Then we wrote it again, they already sent their courier. And lost again. We disconnected from them and told the manager about it. Moved to reserve. For the past six months, they have been sending us the wrong bills after the expiration of the contract, they are looking for all three applications (two for the transition and one for disconnection), and by telephone they say, “Yes, yes, I’ve transferred everything. Well, we are a big company, we do everything slowly, bureaucratic ”. The last chord was the call, forwarded from the common office number to the head of the IT service:
- Good day, Beeline worried.
- Yeah! Finally! Are you on the application?
- What? No, you have debt.
- Yyyy, here is such a story, check your documents.
- So you refuse to pay the debt?
- No, everything was fine until you started to lose documents.
- Shame on you! You're just some kind of moral monsters.
- Wow. Are you from Beeline? Right from the office?
- No, collection service N.
- Aaaa, well then goodbye.

There are strange tickets. For example, on the outsourcer falls empty only with the heading "Operators, problems of access to the Internet." A normal person would close it immediately or return it back. The duty officer figured out and repaired everything, thanks to him. The operators felt a sharp degradation of the channel and decided that you need to write as short as possible to pass. Therefore, the letter came out "as of the last forces."

Another memorable ticket is an exchange bug. Customer incorrectly calculated shipping costs. He (a bug, not a client), with cold calm, tracked down three departments. The main problem was that the buyer was not a very friendly guy. He sent a letter, which at the mention in the society of the ladies would consist solely of stars. Due to the abundance of variables in this system of equations, it was not possible to identify the symptoms of an error and the way it was reproduced from the first time. Just a couple of weeks, some dialecticisms from the letter slipped into the communication of purchasers.

In the malls their providers. This is a real mafia. Where the usual service costs 3 thousand rubles a month, in the shopping center take 15-17. We somehow decided to hack them and connect the ADSL from MGTS along with their wired telephone. So the monopolist provider is so monopolist that he didn’t even let the installer go to the booth. Like, wired phone, too, we will do. Carry 5 thousand more. So we sit on Yota's whistle in the end.

Yes, and finally - a little life hacking. Every time when we connect the second channel with a reserve to the store, we will definitely call the manager of the first provider and report this fact. “You know, we used your internet connection here, and on Kurskaya we decided to connect the N + 1 provider, tomorrow the work will begin.” This is 100% true. The manager in the client care script is better to suggest conditions. The manager concludes that if we connect the second provider, this is care. And here it offers us better conditions. Works in 99% of cases with a variety of providers.