Actually, My Problem IS Your Problem

Well, that’s an issue you have to take up with the Provision Support Team.

I think it’s actually an issue that your team should raise as an escalation.

No. It’s part of a team of new users. That’s what the PST team is for.

A classic “That’s not my problem” response. We’ve all heard them. Whether it was from an unhelpful customer service rep that is unhelpful, or from another department that isn’t interested in assisting you.

Typically, there’s not a lot you can do. However, it helps to understand your position and the position of whomever you are talking to. Everyone has things important to them just as you have things important to you.

When contracts are involved, each party has requirements and service level agreements that the other party has to meet.

Yeah, that’s all well and good, but what does it mean? It means that just because someone tells you that they can’t help you, doesn’t mean it’s true.

We recently had a call from our production floor. A group of our agents had completed their training, started taking production calls and then gone back for more training and then once again go back to production. Our agents taking home inspection calls had this weird “there and back again” training schedule. The client, had to enable their training IDs. Then, enable their production IDs. Then reenable their training IDs. Because they already had their production IDs, we didn’t have to ask them twice to enable the production logins.

Today our problem was that the agents coming out into production for the second time couldn’t use the YTK tool. It’s a tool that lists different types of inspections, home inspections, building inspections, etc. But, they couldn’t access vehicle inspection applications.

As outages go, it’s not a huge deal. The agents could still take calls. And they could handle every call type. . .expect vehicle inspection requests.

So, we escalated to the client’s IT team. It’s what we do. It’s in the contract. But, not every access issue is an escalation. For example, when our agents come out of training for the first time if they don’t have the right access, we don’t escalate.

If new agents don’t have the right access, it goes to the PST team. In fact, if I try to escalate an issue with new agents, the client will refuse to help. In fact, they will tell me it’s an issue I’ll have to take up with the PST team.

Just as they did.

Actually, these are not new agents. They’ve already been in production. They no longer have the access that they had before they went back to training.

If they are coming out of training then you need to create a dropbox request and get it to the PST team. I can have Dave call and explain it if you would like.

Here’s the thing. I understood the contract between our companies. I understood that these agents qualified for an escalation if they didn’t have access. So, I called Dave.

I just wanted to make sure we’re on the same page with outage this morning.

Well, if they’re new. . .

No, that’s the thing. They have already been in production. They had to go back to training and now they cannot access their YTK tool.

So, they aren’t new?

No.

Oh, in that case, let me see what we can do to get their access back.

Dave called his teammember back. At least I assume he did since I got another call fairly quickly.

Yeah, Rodney, it looks like they got set up wrong when they went back to training. We’re working on that now and will hopefully have them resolved in a couple of hours.

Wow, that’s great. Thanks so much for your help.

Could I have gone with an “I told you so”? Sure. I could have made the other person feel bad. I could have explained that I knew the contract better than her.

But, what’s the point? What’s the goal? My dad used to say, “Do you want to be right, or do you want to be sergeant?”

Harry Truman said, “It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.”

I’m interested in being sergeant and I want to get stuff accomplished.

Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.

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