Case study:
‘Damn the second line…’
…the helpdesk manager complained. ‘My staff log the call, carefully fill out the
trouble ticket and assign it to second line. And for all the good that does, we may
as well have written the call details on a brick and thrown it into the North Sea,
because the second-line technicians never get back to the user unless they’re
repeatedly kicked. And then we get it in the neck from the user. And they never
fill the solution field in. Best you’ll ever get is ‘fixed’ from somebody who won’t
take the time to do his job properly.’
‘Yes, that does seem like a problem,’ concurred the process consultant, before
wending his inquisitive way towards the second line’s frantic and slightly messy
office.
The second-line manager was just as reciprocally insistent.
‘Damn the helpdesk,’ he proposed, instructing his computer to print off a
summary of the calls recently assigned to his team before thrusting it toward the
consultant’s retreating nose. ‘Here. Just look at some of the rubbish they send
us. It’s like as soon as they believe any enquiry to be even slightly technical, they
shut their brains down and press the ‘assign’ button. As a result I get hundreds
of unnecessary and badly written assignments. My staff have to come in early
and work late every day. We have to chase the user to ask him questions the
helpdesk has already asked. It’s annoying and embarrassing.’
‘Yes, that does seem like a problem,’ the process consultant agreed, secretly
conceding to himself that it was perhaps time he started earning his fees. ‘What
do you think is causing it?’
‘It’s straightforward,’ came the emphasized response. ‘If the helpdesk only asked
a few simple questions, they would be able to diagnose many more of these
enquiries and fix them on the spot.’
‘What questions are these?’ enquired the consultant.
‘Oh, various,’ offered the second-line manager.
‘Have you ever given the helpdesk a list of these questions?’
‘Now when would I have time to do that?’
So the helpdesk manager had a dependency on the second line, which in return
had dependencies on the helpdesk. These issues had never been formally
discussed between these two. The process consultant briefly wondered whether
his most appropriate and professional response would be to write a report on the
absence of a working interface between these interdependent functions or to
drag the two so-called managers into the car park and violently bang their heads
together, ranting ‘Talk to one another, for pity’s sake!’