Questions re working in 3rd line IT support

[Z064life]

Hi

I have worked for a few yrs now. I have got a job in IT support (2nd/3rd line). The majority of my career has been in development. Thus, my question is, in a support environment, what asre the best practices regarding etiquette etc?


Also, what seems to be the most graceful way of handling the below?


1) A ticket you do not know how to do? (Raise with my manager is the first thing).
2) Chasing an internal employee who has started a ticket but has not finished it (I see this SO MANY times!).


Thanks

[Burrow01]

Is this still in application support?

For the second question, is there any SLA on completing the ticket? - Normally I chase the person who owns the ticket, if you don't get any joy then I go to their team lead and ask if there is a problem with workload / delivery etc preventing the ticket from being worked on

[paul_y3k]

A few suggestions (I've been in support roles for quite a while now)

1) Tickets that you don't know how to do ...
- Should not have been allocated to you in the first place
- Perfect oppurtunity to raise with manager for extra training
- Have a stab at it anyway - possilby with the help of other team members - peer to peer training is a great way of picking up new skills - and as it doesn't cost the company any money it's not somethign that get's discourages
- Uncle Google is your friend

2) Tickets not being worked on by others
- If you know the solution, grab it and sort it = Happy end user
- Check for SLA's
- If it's an issue it should be showing red somewhere up the chain - your call manager should notice it and take actions.

[TurricanII]

You could phone the end user to assess whether the ticket can be closed - much more likely to get a response than email tennis! Pop a note on the call with the phone call info.

If you get no reply after a week, you could script a standard response:
---
Hi x,

I am checking up on some older tickets and I spotted your call about x y z. I trust this issue has disappeared or has been resolved due to the age of your ticket and the lack of any further reports of the problem. I will close the call for now, please do raise a new ticket for prompt support if you have any further problems.
---

I guess you should check this approach with your management, and I would recommend you introduce a new status for closed tickets - Abandoned - if you use specific statuses.

[shouldbworking]

You've been doing this for years and still havent figured out those questions?

You need to be more proactive, as indicated by your first line and indeed your questions. The answers on how to do that have already been given.

[Sebo]

shouldbworking said:

You've been doing this for years and still havent figured out those questions?

From my experience of First, Second and third line support (as a customer / user of) the OP will fit right in