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We all hate those customers who persist in giving us their life story before getting around to telling us their problem. They'll go on for sometimes longer than five minutes with all kinds of ultimately irrelevant information before they finally tell you the crux of the problem. ("...so, long story short," (Too late!) "I need my password reset.")
I had one of these calls earlier today. I could tell straight away that a lot of the Caller's "life story" ramble wasn't relevant to the issue, and making matters worse was she actually gave me the crux of the problem fairly quickly, but... she kept talking. And talking.
And talking some more.
She finally paused long enough that I was able to troubleshoot her issue. [AppZ] wasn't working. Generally [AppZ] is one of a few applications at The Client which has a workstation-specific license. This means that if a user were to go to another workstation (due to their regular terminal not working or whatever), they would not be able to use [AppZ].
Complicating issues was the fact that the user logs into [Network A] using the virtual workstation setup, "MANA." (Not its actual name) 99% of MANA users end up on one of many "pooled" virtual workstations. (i.e., on one logon, they end up on workstation 1ABC2, but the next, they'll end up on 9XYZ8) This makes it difficult for Caller to get access to [AppZ], but they managed to get it to work.
Until recently, that is, when she started getting an error message. This, on top of a separate error in a different application, which is a known issue on MANA workstations that is in the process of being corrected. She'd worked with her close support to get the separate error resolved, and apparently had scared the [AppZ] error into working while she was on the phone with them. But, naturally, the error had returned, so she called ITSD and got me.
That previous paragraph? It took her about five minutes to get to that point.
I worked my magic, of course. Problem was, the usual fixes for the [AppZ] error in question weren't working. I was about to send a trouble ticket up so someone above me could look at it, when I tried one last thing. It boiled down to doing a reinstall-- something that isn't always successful, let alone available, particularly on MANA workstations. But it went through, [AppZ] loaded without the error, or crashing, and the Caller was able to open up a template that had been giving her issues as well.
The call probably took twice as long as it needed to thanks to the Caller's need to frequently restate the life story of the problem, plus regale me with how long its been since she was able to get some of her work done thanks to the various issues she'd been having, blah blah blah yakkity shmackity.
I had one of these calls earlier today. I could tell straight away that a lot of the Caller's "life story" ramble wasn't relevant to the issue, and making matters worse was she actually gave me the crux of the problem fairly quickly, but... she kept talking. And talking.
And talking some more.
She finally paused long enough that I was able to troubleshoot her issue. [AppZ] wasn't working. Generally [AppZ] is one of a few applications at The Client which has a workstation-specific license. This means that if a user were to go to another workstation (due to their regular terminal not working or whatever), they would not be able to use [AppZ].
Complicating issues was the fact that the user logs into [Network A] using the virtual workstation setup, "MANA." (Not its actual name) 99% of MANA users end up on one of many "pooled" virtual workstations. (i.e., on one logon, they end up on workstation 1ABC2, but the next, they'll end up on 9XYZ8) This makes it difficult for Caller to get access to [AppZ], but they managed to get it to work.
Until recently, that is, when she started getting an error message. This, on top of a separate error in a different application, which is a known issue on MANA workstations that is in the process of being corrected. She'd worked with her close support to get the separate error resolved, and apparently had scared the [AppZ] error into working while she was on the phone with them. But, naturally, the error had returned, so she called ITSD and got me.
That previous paragraph? It took her about five minutes to get to that point.
I worked my magic, of course. Problem was, the usual fixes for the [AppZ] error in question weren't working. I was about to send a trouble ticket up so someone above me could look at it, when I tried one last thing. It boiled down to doing a reinstall-- something that isn't always successful, let alone available, particularly on MANA workstations. But it went through, [AppZ] loaded without the error, or crashing, and the Caller was able to open up a template that had been giving her issues as well.
The call probably took twice as long as it needed to thanks to the Caller's need to frequently restate the life story of the problem, plus regale me with how long its been since she was able to get some of her work done thanks to the various issues she'd been having, blah blah blah yakkity shmackity.
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