Ticket, Work Order, Service Request, etc. We all know what these things are and how much they help our daily lives. The problem is, some of our end user refuse to use these systems and instead fall into one of these categories.

• The Caller – This is the person that will call your direct line no matter what the problem is. Of course, you are not answering because you are working on something mildly important for someone else. You think to yourself, “I will let it go to voicemail and create a ticket for them when I am done with this.” Two minutes later you notice, no voicemail, must to be important…but, wait, they are calling again. “Still busy,” you think to yourself. Still no voicemail, must not be important. Five minutes later, you hear someone approach your cube…”Is your damn phone broken?” Sigh.
• The Visitor – This is the person who visits your desk constantly while you are working on getting the CEOs new laptop setup before he goes out of town for a conference. “Can you come take a look at my computer? I am having trouble sending this funny picture to my daughter.” or “Can you come install solitaire on my laptop? I need something to do on my flight to the Bahamas that leaves in 1 hour.”
• The Friday 5 O’clocker – A combination of the above two examples but they interrupt you walking out the door on Friday at 5PM. The unfortunate thing is, their problem is usually serious, but they’ve known about it since Wednesday. *slits wrists*
• The Opportunist – This person will not call, visit or submit a ticket. Sounds good, huh? But wait…while you are walking down the hall to your next task, they spot you. “Hey Jason! I need your help! Can you come take a look at this?” “Actually no, I am going to fix the payroll system so you can sit their and get paid to browse PureRomance.com all day.” Is my face red yet?

How do we get our end users to use these systems that help us help them more efficiently? Well, I just may have some suggestions for you.

• Refuse to answer the phone. Unless its the CEO or your boss, I think you are pretty safe on this one. If they leave a message, put in a ticket for them and delete the message. They will see the email that a ticket was created and hopefully get the hint. If they visit you like “The Caller”, just tell them you just got back to your desk. They don’t know any better.
• Tell them, “Put in a ticket, please.” It seems so simple but yet it isn’t. Most users will push the issue, like it is a huge inconvenience to send an email to the TrackIT email address. Just tell them, “I’m working on a high priority item for the CEO (or my boss) right now. Put in a ticket so I can get to after and I don’t forget about it.” The forgetting part is usually what kicks them into gear. They don’t want you to forget about them.
• Tell them you need their assistance. The Friday 5 o’clocker is the guy that wants you to work on his problem while he packs his shit up to leave for the weekend. Oh no! Tell him, “I need you to be here while I work on this. I will need you to log into the system and run some reports to verify that it is working. This will probably take about 2 hours.” Usually, after hearing about this they say, “Oh. It’s not that important. Wanna just work on it on Monday?” You say, “Of course! I need you to put in a ticket for that.” Suckers.

The key to all of these is to be consistent. Reward the people that do it right by entering a ticket, and when they do it wrong it takes longer for the issues to get resolved. You are not being a jerk, you are doing your job as best you can and need end-user cooperation to do it.

No related posts.