On 03/03/2016 10:41 AM, Mary Wood wrote:[color=blue]
Okay, professionals, I need your best thoughts on how to respond to this.
I have three service requests in for GroupWise - oldest is maybe a couple
months old.
I am getting pressure from my supervisor to get them resolved (not that I
myself an not eager, but…).
I’m being sent messages like
“if (support contact) is out for the next couple of days, who else can
help with this today? They have had this for a week or so now. Did you
give them a due date?”
and
“Setting due dates or expectations are vital to being able to deliver
service to our staff. Without these, how are we holding Novell or other
software companies accountable to fixing the situation. Is support a part
of license with Novell?”[/color]
I can see your concern.
[color=blue]
I am just stunned at the moment and have no idea how to ask in a
professional manner, “um, you wouldn’t think of setting due dates for
Adobe or Microsoft, so what makes you think this is different?”[/color]
I do not think that setting due dates is reasonable, since an outsider (to
anything) dictating how long somebody else will take to do work of
quantity X is silly. “Hey you, go run that mile in three minutes. If you
fail, I’ll be upset.” That’s just silly. Even if the task was physically
possible for one person (“Run a mile in five minutes.” does not mean just
anybody can do it, even if they have nothing else to do (eat food, sleep,
avoid working illegal numbers of hours, etc.). I could probably travel a
mile in five minutes, but only if I was falling through the sky.
With that written, I do not think it is unreasonable to ask the engineer
to provide an ETA, and at one point it was policy to transfer calls to a
coworker if out for more than a day or so (I forget the exact rules).
Having an SR open for a month to me implies you have a bug and engineering
is working on it, at which point delivering a deadline (vs. getting an ETA
from them) is, again, silly. On the other hand, if after a month you are
not working with engineering at some level, you should probably ask for an
escalation and get either to a fix or to that point quickly, assuming
you’re on current-ish code.
Being demanding of unreasonable things just lets everybody involved know
that you are unreasonable, and it taints the current situation as well as
all future ones. Being willing to negotiate holds people accountable,
though, and makes you respected, while also getting the respect you
deserve from others.
It’s fun to feel angry sometimes, but in the end it’s just silly and makes
one look childish. Do not give in.
–
Good luck.
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