The scripted IVR option with some variations has worked for me in the past.
- Used a 'secret' IVR option, like the IVR says Press 1,2 or 3 but the
secret option is 7 or 8. This presents a prompt "are you sure you wish
to be transferred to the duty engineer?" and does so only after a
second, subsequent confirmation.
- Threatening a charge is interesting, but I would hope unnecessary...
- Use a dedicated phone number for those customers who pay extra for
24/7 support.
I've also overseen a contracted relationship with a third-party
callcentre who were nothing more than a skilled tag-and-bag centre -
they worked for multiple brands, would answer 'as' you, collect
information and follow a flow chart to determine whether to escalate
immediately, or log-a-job for the next business day. That also worked
very well.
I'm a Kiwi, so unless you want a Wellington based option, I doubt a
reference would be useful. But I support the concept - humans can deal
with exceptions (once suitably trained!) and having a third-party option
also gives you alternative BC/DR options when your PBX is taken down by
the very outage your customers are calling you about...
Mark.
On 17/09/18 20:10, Nick Pratley wrote:
This. Humans are always better confirming escalation requirements.
I worked on-call for $work before we had 24/7 staff in ops.
The best of both worlds solution for this problem for us was a
scripted IVR.
“Thanks for calling $work. You’ve called outside of business hours.
Hold the line to leave a message and an engineer will attend to this
first thing in the morning. If your issue is critical, press 9 to be
transferred to an on-call engineer. “
*press 9*
“if you’re issue is found to be of a non-critical nature or outside of
your contractual terms an escalation fee of $99 will be charged at the
discretion of the engineer. Press 9 to accept these charges and be
transferred through or hold the line to leave a message “
I think about 5 calls in a 2 year period ever got charged back to the
customer as outside escalation criteria, everyone else logged a ticket
for the morning or had an issue that warranted on-call escalation.
“Is my issue that critical that I want to pay 100 dollars to have it
looked at right away?” That’s a very powerful motivator. If yes, then
we were happy to look at the issue, charge the customer and on-call
engineer bill the company for the call out.
Everyone won. It gave the customer the chance to consider their issue
again and if it was actually critical for their operation.
Just some food for thought. It also beat the scammers (never had a
single one escalated through the IVR - it’s not like we could have
charged them either, but a risk we were willing to take.)
On Mon, 17 Sep 2018 at 5:29 pm, Matthew Moyle-Croft <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Hi,
I’ve got to agree with this. A properly scripted/documented list
will reduce engineer call outs (improving staff morale) and, more
importantly, mean that if they get woken up they know it’s worth
doing something about.
MMC
On 17 Sep 2018, at 4:55 pm, Kisakye Alex <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
I think what a human provides is the ability to sort through
tickets for what can wait until morning and what needs the
engineer to wake up. If you are forwarding the calls directly to
an engineer on call, then half the time s/he is making decisions
on whether to get up or not.
Alex
On Mon, Sep 17, 2018 at 12:09 AM Chad Kelly <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
With most modern PBX systems they will tell you if it's a PBX
call and
give you the option to either answer the call or hang up.
Or you can send the call to an answering machine which means
you can get
to the issue the next morning.
If you are running services that are mission critical that
you need the
phone answered 24/7 then you really need someone in the
office who is
awake and functioning but given what has been discussed a
decent PBX
would be fine as even if you wanted to redirect calls to a
call centre
ware a human answers that is also an option, though less needed.
As a voicemail system would be a lot cheaper and tickets work
better for
more complex issues anyway.
Regards Chad.
On 9/17/2018 4:50 PM, Andrew Jones wrote:
> I can see the benefit of having someone else take the call.
I can remember my days as an on call engineer years ago where
I would get a phone call from the NOC in the middle of the
night, I would need to keep a pen and paper by the bed to
write down basic details, as in my just woken state, I would
forget whatever I was told 2 seconds later.
>
> You don’t want end customers talking to someone who just
woke up seconds ago, as they won't be in a state to properly
take down details and provide a mechanism to follow up
(ticket numbers etc)
>
> Cheers,
> Andrew Jones
> 0435 658 228
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: AusNOG <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> On Behalf Of Chad Kelly
> Sent: Monday, 17 September 2018 4:35 PM
> To: [email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>;
[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>
> Subject: Re: [AusNOG] after hours staff requirement
>
> On 9/17/2018 12:00 PM, [email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> I'm looking for a company to take on our level 1 support,
after hours.
>> 10pm - 8am AEST
>> 7 days a week, including public holidays.
>> Would prefer a local Australian company, but will consider
>> International too.
>> Require a team of sorts, that handles other companies too
as it's not
>> financially viable to have a team dedicated to us as the
volume of
>> calls is bugger all.
>>
>> We'll just redirect the 1300 number to you during those
times, a
>> simple greeting, take down notes and urgency, check the
on-call
>> calendar and call the Engineer to action.
>> Basically, I need you to wake up the Engineer on call:)
> Frankly if this is all you need a decent phone system will
do this without you needing to hire an outsourcing company.
> Most decent PBX systems will redirect to a mobile after
hours or better yet straight to an answering machine that
will email a voicemail message to an engineer.
> That way they can decide if the message is important enough
to bother doing anything about, and frankly if you offer an
on call service you should be charging enough that it deters
unwanted callers from ringing you in the middle of the night
anyway.
> This is why we don't advertise 24/7 support as idiots
randomly spam the ticket system with rubbish which you then
need to delete anyway.
> We offer support for critical issues on weekends for
existing customers only.
> Your PBX also should have a decent blacklist function for
telemarketers.
>
> Regards Chad.
>
> --
> Chad Kelly
> Manager
> CPK Web Services
> Phone 03 5273 0246
> Web www.cpkws.com.au <http://www.cpkws.com.au/>
>
> _______________________________________________
> AusNOG mailing list
> [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
> http://lists.ausnog.net/mailman/listinfo/ausnog
--
Chad Kelly
Manager
CPK Web Services
Phone 03 5273 0246
Web www.cpkws.com.au <http://www.cpkws.com.au/>
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--
Kind Regards,
*Nick Pratley*
P: 0448 379 418
E: [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
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