I feel the frustration of having turned in an issue to the SAP help desk, only to have it bounced back by idiots who appear to not even have read the thing in the first place. There is a way to avoid this – you simply have to out think them. How? By knowing how they think
I had to spend 6 months on the first level help desk in Philly a number of years ago – I think I was being punished for something – not sure. Their methods have madness associated with them that is related to the expectations of the help desk managers and SAP itself. High priorities get the most attention, obviously. After all those are attended to or shipped to level 2, the level 1 guys have to handle so many “other” issues. Based on their severity (low ones are a waste of time and never get answered) they have a time frame in which they must be opened and some action applied and returned to the customer. Handling the issue means opening it and responding and then sticking it back in the customer’s queue. They have a quota to make here and a time frame, so there are several approaches they use to find the “pigeons” they need to make their quota.
One is to review a problem and see if the description request is basically a short one or vague. Another is to take ones who have no note numbers listed in them. The standard level 1 response here is simply to do a search on the OSS note system and send you a lot of notes that appear to be related to the issue. Ever notice that they send you ones that are already on your system in some support pack? That’s because, even though they have the information about which support packs you have, they don’t reconcile it to the notes. That takes too long and they have numbers to meet. Many times you will get some which don’t even apply to your release. They simply don’t take the time to check that out, even though the info is available. Most likely, you’ve already searched the notes and they are sending you the same ones you checked. They don’t know that and they don’t care.
The solution:
Very simple – inundate them with info. Same as the old professor theory – term paper has 10 pages instead of 2 – must be an “A”. Stand at the top of the stairwell and toss the papers down. The ones that weigh the most (have the most pages/info) go to the bottom and those are “A”s. Ones near the top don’t have any information or thought in them, so they must be “F”s. If it takes the level one guy too long to read all your info, he will simply mark it as level 2 and ship it right to them. Get’s it out of his queue and puts it where you really want it.
Tell him EVERYTHING you know about the issue – the more the better. Try to make 2 pages worth of information. Tell them every note you even heard about the issue and which one you tried, and what happened when you did. Put the note numbers in the body of the message near the top. There’s no excuse for missing them. If you tried exotic things or think it may be related to the some other issue – tell them. The more you put in the better, the less you put in the quicker an unusable answer will come back to you.
It may take you a little longer to fill in the message, but it beats waiting 3 days, only to have it come back with useless junk in it. And if they still send it back with just a bunch of notes to look at, and you already mentioned you did those, don’t be shy about shooting the problem right back to them with a nasty-gram attached. When you do, up the priority one level.This pisses them off, but when they point out the priority error to you, just fire back that you’ve lost all kinds of time already because they didn’t read the message in the first place. Then ask to have a supervisor review their messages and replies.
Ouch! They hate that. But you will get some results then – guaranteed.
Now all of that may seem a little cruel and crass, but maintenance support is a big piece of the customer monthly costs for this software and they need to get their moneys worth like everyone else – don’t hesitate to remind them of that. Shoddy help desk practices are not your concern; you just want results.
The other side of the coin is that a lot of customers get a problem and immediately open a message. Lack of due diligence on the part of the customer to try and find the solution in the note system (which I admit can be a pain) or to trace or test the issue, or even to just think, has been the reason the level 1 people usually just fire back a
string of notes. They are not there to simply solve every issue – only the ones you can’t. So make sure you do your part first. Then write ‘em an epistle.Happy typing.
Hope this helps...
