Part of my new work role is to manage customer affecting issues when they reach a high severity status. Lower severity issues are not my (or my colleagues) concern. We just stick to the ones that are "hot".
Yesterday we got a call from the help desk regarding an application that our customer uses that comes from our fiercest competitor (who just also happens to be a partner on this account...grrr). It is a web based collaboration tool that is still very heavily used even though there are other tools that can replace it (that never ceases to amaze me...1 company using multiple tools to reach the same goal). The customer cannot search for his documents and gets an error every time. The server team is called (they will not be the ones to fix it but we have to follow the process) and they look into. L1 pings and traceroutes the server (duh, it is up...the customer was able to log on to it, just not search) and since it is up, it gets passed on to L2 (this really irks me) to investigate. L2 repeats L1's tasks an attempts to log on as the customer would, but they fail (they do not have end user permissions via the web...go figure). They immediately contact the platform L1, but that group is only Mon-Fri, 8 to 5 CET (Central European Time). I know the customer is not going to be happy about this, but a policy is a policy. I try to contact the TL for the platform group and he tells me that the actual app is supported by our competitor (makes sense, it is their app). Armed with this new info, I call our competitor's help desk. I am greeted by a very alert Indian (this surprises me since it is 3 AM their time and he is at home...) who politely tells me the app is no longer supported by his company, that it must be supported by us. This is not meshing well with what the platform TL told me, so I begin to question the polite Indian gentleman a little more aggressively. I tell him what I was told and he gives me a very interesting runaround. Seeing that this is not going anywhere, I end the call (politely) and call our mgmt contact with our competitor. "Curt" is not available but his partner in crime, "Slug" is. Slug gives me the info I am looking for, so I call back the help desk contact and tell him. One of the issues we run into is that our customer calls the application one name, but internally at our competitor, it is known as something else. Once that is cleared up, he finally agrees to look at it but he again informs me that the support is Mon-Fri, 8 to 5 CET (Central European Time). He tells me that the case needs to be lowered to medium in severity so it can be addressed properly. I agree to lower it and we call and tell the customer the news. He takes it well (he is normally pretty even keeled, so no surprises there) and agrees to let them look into it Monday morning CET (we are in the US, Central Time). I hang up with him and make my updates while my colleague/TL makes his (he offered to keep the customer web page updated for me...nice guy).
A couple of minutes after I hang up with the customer, India calls me back telling me that they cannot get in touch with the customer. WHAT? I thought it was not supported during our business hours.
The polite well spoken (if not a tad hyper) Indian gentleman tells me that since we were "concerned" about this issue, the tech agreed to work on it after business hours. I find that just a bit odd because if I was not required to look at something until 8 AM my time and it was currently 3 AM, my butt is going back to bed. Something is fishy with our competitor.
A little while later, I find out what that was.
It seems that a few hours before, our competitor was forced to alter some code for the app and we (my company) updated the server with that code. Fearing that the code blew something up for the customer and not wanting to lose face or the contract for support, they took the call after hours as insurance. "Bastages", as my old roomie used to say.
This may not seem like a big deal to you, my faithful readers, but I can tell you when you have to manage issues that are critical to the customer and you have to do that much detective work just to get a call dispatched...something is wrong. Welcome to my world.
That little gem took us about 3-4 hours to iron out. Once the smoke cleared, my TL/colleague told me to go home early. "After all" he says, "you are on call this weekend." Feh.
I get home and start setting up for on call (laptop connected to the VPN) and wait for my TL's call. While I am waiting, I prep the grill for dinner (brats, and filet mignon). Dinner was going to be very good.
I just got the food my wife prepped on the grill when my TL calls me for handover. Nothing is going on and the issue we were working on is now out of our hands (it is a lower severity and not our concern). He wishes me a peaceful weekend. I pray he is correct. I am logged on via the VPN to work and monitoring the threat board. There is only one new issue open and that is local Swedish issue. It is also a change weekend so many people will not call since they will look at any issues they have are related with scheduled down time.
I can only hope :-)
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