Monday, December 10, 2007

A properly constructed voicemail, Part I

"Hi, this is Fred, the DB is down. Call me.", is not an appropriate message.

First of all, Fred who? Fred in accounting or Fred in customer service. It makes a difference to me.

Which DB is down? OK, so you don't know the exact database, tell me the application you are using.

Oh, and Fred, leave me a number where I can get back to you. It's 2:00 in the morning and I'm nowhere near a computer to lookup your number.

A properly constructed message would have been:
"Hi, this is Fred in accounting. I'm having a problem logging into Oracle Financials and am getting a 404 error message. Please call me at extension 1234."

1 comment:

Robert Vollman said...

I had our Tier-1 support team tape this to their walls:
1. What is the severity of the issue:
- Drop everything and help us, because we can't continue
- Get to it when you can
- Somewhere in between
2. What exactly was the user doing, step by step, what is the desired result, and what was the actual result
- If this is performance, tell me how long it took, and how long it should take
3. List which users this affects: just one, a subset, or all of them
4. List which machines this affects: just one, a subset, or all of them
5. List which environments it affects: just one, a subset, or all of them
6. Mention when the problem was first observed (or if it was always this way)
7. Mention what changed in the time frame immediately prior to when the problem was first observed. (new users, config changes, patches, reports, system activities, anything you can think of).