It’s 16:00 on the first Friday in April
Jeff is sitting in his office chair, and responds at the first ring of his CISCO VoIP phone.
Bob’s screams come out of the receiver and Jeff instinctively pulls it away from his ear.
Bob isn’t satisfied that the tickets opened by his group are always resolved by the Service Desk in biblical time.
Jeff babbles something and tries to calm Bob by giving not-too-convincing explanations about the lack of personnel and having started new procedures. Bob continues to vent his anger, adding that he wants a plan describing the measures to be implemented that will improve the situation.
Jeff had planned to spend a weekend in a chalet in the Dolomites where he could rest. But now he realizes that instead he will have to spend it checking lots of tickets. That’s because the Service Desk raises tickets via e-mail from all company departments, and manages them with Excel.
Jeff will have to calculate the ticket management times and draw up a “plausible” document describing the subsequent improvement activities, along with the dates in which the effectiveness checks will be carried out.
An hour later in the office of a competing company
Bill’s phone rings.
Bill sips his coffee from his white ceramic mug, sets it down and answers.
On the other end Karl, famously known for his outbursts of anger, is complaining that he will go to his boss because his group has told him that the time to resolve incidents escalated to Bill’s unit is intolerable.
Bill waits for him to stop screaming. Then he connects to Grafana, sets a filter to isolate the tickets raised by Karl’s department, and with a calm and firm tone, says:
“Karl, your department opened 47 requests this month. The average response time for these tickets was 26 minutes, the average time for incident resolution ranges from 3.3 hours to 14.2 depending on its business impact, while the resolution time for service requests goes from 19.6 to 76.4 hours depending on the urgency reported. The tickets are all assigned, and the only 4 that are still open are waiting for further information from your units. I suggest you ask your group which of these tickets are not in SLA, and indicate them to me so that I can verify them.”
“Ah I was forgetting … ”
“Based on the numbers I have just communicated to you, I realize that the management times that we are currently delivering are those referred to in our Platinum contract, while right now you are paying for a Silver. Let’s talk with your manager on Monday and check if it’s appropriate to rethink the level of contract support.”
Bill senses a moment of hesitation on the other end, and then hears Karl says angrily, “This is not over!”
Bill hangs up the phone, finishes drinking his coffee, and sets the mug back down on the desk. He looks at it for a moment and smiles, and then takes his jacket and bag and heads out of the office, ready for a well-deserved weekend.
Karl instead will spend his whole weekend looking for tickets that are managed but not in SLA, but he won’t find them.
On Bill’s white ceramic mug, two words in large letters stand out: Data Matters!
Be like Bill. Talk to your EriZone consultant.
Gabriele Cecco
Technical Consultant at Würth Phoenix
For several years I have been managing processes with trouble ticket systems. After having worked with some of those, EriZone impressed me for its features and flexibility, so I moved with my wife from Piedmont to South Tyrol to become part of the Würth Phoenix System Integration team as Technical Consultant. I spend my free time travelling, exploring my new neighborhood, or if I have to stay at home I binge-watch tv series.
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