So you might be wondering, what good has come along with the busy signals and disconnects at just the precisely wrong moment in your conversation with the helpdesk. Believe it or not, this "upgrade" has not been completely fruitless. Once it's stable, this will be more apparent, but since I could use the encouragement and I sure as hell won't get it from users or staff at this point, I submit the following:
Good things about the Great C&P Phone "Upgrade" Incident of 2006
• I’ve learned a lot about phones. It’d be a good resume item if I were looking (which I’m not). I realize that this means nothing to the reader and the caller, but it's not insignificant to me and I am having to stretch a bit to find the positive. While we're at it, I now have a clue what's in the following picture:
• I’ve found that the service we give here really is excellent (when the lines are up). We maintain meticulous records of all calls and do a good job of giving consistent support. The majority of calls to our helpdesk are answered in under a minute by someone capable of resolving the question without a transfer. I haven't seen that level of quality support from any other company except my insurance company (USAA) and American Express. Sorry, Apple, love the product, but there are more than a couple goons manning the phones over at 1 Infinite Loop.
• Internal reports (which our old green-screen system was incapable of accurately generating) are showing that we’re better handling our current volume of calls and with greater distribution amongst our helpdesk members.
• Our sales department gives great web demos. The ones we endured from both equipment vendors were painfully bad. Many of our questions were simple, yet unanswerable by those doing the demo and the "format" was very loose (to put it lightly). Unprofessional.
I don't know if that will remove any of the sting of a disconnect, but this short-term problem will eventually be worked out for long-term benefit. Until then, we've got 6 repair cases open with the equipment vendor and another two with the telco.
Before I continue the story, I'd like to say how excited I am to be attending the Macworld Expo this year. We'll have a small booth in the Apple Developer Pavilion to show off the new 10.1 update as well as ASAP 2.0. While not at the booth, I'll be attempting to crash sessions in the MacIT conference. Sadly, exhibitors don't get access to the Stevenote.
Back to the phones.
(this is the BCM, the brain of the system, and bane of my existence)
Our first big issue was long periods of time were we couldn’t access voicemail. To fix it each time, we’d reboot the system (a 10-15 minute affair during which we couldn’t make or receive calls). Technicians came out repeatedly, scratched their heads, contradicted each other, applied patches, and sent logs overseas for analysis (which proved fruitless). At first, they explained that this was unusual, but after awhile, one of the techs finally told us that it was a known issue and they had released a patch to fix it. Unfortunately, the patch caused other bugs, so the patch was rolled back, then later applied.
As soon as the voicemail situation was resolved, we ran into a much worse issue - dropped calls. Periodically, all lines would simply go dead. Internal calls were fine, but all external lines were dead, both incoming and outgoing. Obviously, for a call center, that’s bad news. Helpdesk members were getting frustrated and a few started using their cell phones to return calls. I’d leave messages, they’d run tests, which would have us down for sometimes an hour, and nothing ever changed. I got our telephone company, ACC, together with Black Box, but that didn’t go well either. ACC failed to show up to a vendor meet and never called to explain why. Finally, AT&T came out and replaced some cabling in the street, which only helped for a day. Technicians are supposed to come out, don’t, and we get no call about it. Bad service abounds.
I know our clients are frustrated. We’re frustrated too and are doing everything in our power to resolve it as soon as possible. Unfortunately, we’re at the mercy of poor customer service.
Now I must say that repeated frantic calls at all levels of the chain have proved somewhat helpful. Our equipment vendor has become more responsive, but at this moment it appears that the telco is more to blame and they're the ones who are terrible. They're a middleman for AT&T, who handles the lines, but I, of course, can't call AT&T directly for support, as I'm not their client. So this extra step is hurting us a lot.
In the midst of this mess, I have identified a few positive things, which I will share next time.
Happy belated Thanksgiving and welcome back. On with the story.
After wasting a month looking at the 3Com system, we decided to investigate our previous vendor, Nortel. I have no explanation for why we didn’t look at them first other than it never occurred to me that we could “upgrade” and preserve our current system design. Not having to retrain the staff on an entirely new system was very appealing.
We started talking with Black Box (a Nortel dealer) about upgrading with all new hardware. Despite a very rough sales process (bad web demos, repeated typos in proposals, having to jump through hoops to get to people who could answer our basic questions) we went with them (yes, I know, all red flags). We bought all new phones (including a fancy wireless speakerphone for the boardroom), hung a new rack, and switched from all analog lines to a voice T-1. After having to learn an entirely new vocabulary (having never implemented a new phone system before), fill out a 30+ page workbook to configure the rack unit (the BCM, aka “brain” of it all), and pay for all of it, I figured that the worst was behind us. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
In late August, the components started arriving and our installer showed up. Despite the fact that the programming I had filled out the immense workbook for wasn’t done properly and we had to redo it all onsite, the install went relatively smooth. We redesigned our call routing, distributed the new phones (which, fortunately, were similar enough to the old ones for the staff to transition smoothly), recorded new messages for those in queue, crossed our fingers, and flipped the switch.
We had a few hiccups at first, but were able to meet all of our goals. The estimated wait time system was working, helpdesk members were able to see who was on the phone and for how long, we could generate useful reports, and our routing was working as designed. We had no idea how sour things were about to turn....
As you may be aware, we've been having phone problems here at C&P for the past few months. To explain what's going on, I've decided to blog about it. Not only will it provide some insight into the situation, but it'll also explain the benefits behind the changes we've made. Also, I'm hoping it'll be therapeutic, since I'm at my wits end with it today and could use a place to vent.
I'll start at the very beginning... (which I'm told, is a very good place to start)
After visiting a local client of ours with state-of-the-art office technology in early 2006, I was inspired to look into a new phone system for C&P. Our existing system, Nortel Meridian, was purchased over 10 years ago and was really showing its age. The administration was all done from a single green-screen PC sitting in a server room and most configuration changes required a reboot *wgucg . Additionally, the reports that came out of it for time tracking were quite unreliable. Knowing that efficiency in call handling is crucial to our business, both in sales and the helpdesk, we were prepared to spend whatever was necessary for a solid product.
So, around March, I started shopping around. Our goals for the system were the following:
• Estimated wait time while in queue
• Web-based wallboarding (a web page showing agent status so that helpdesk members knew who was on the line, who was at lunch, and who was available to transfer to)
• Flexible reporting options (in order to see if we were adequately staffed for the volume of helpdesk calls)
• More options in call center routing (we wanted the sales department to employ a different routing system than the helpdesk)
The first system we looked at was a 3Com solution. These were the cool-looking IP phones that you see on tv all the time (in case you look at the phones). I do. They offered web-based administration with tons of options, even down to individual button programming. Unfortunately, the phones themselves were the only real strong suit of this package. During our multiple web demos we never were able to see the wallboard in action (were just told, “yeah, we have that”), the reports were powerful, yet very clunky (looked like they were designed around the same time as Windows 3.1), and the administration tool was an ugly, awkward, Windows-only affair. Not only that, but the system was pretty expensive (the call center package being ~$45k of the ~$100k expense). For other businesses who don’t need a call center package, I’m sure it’d be great, but it wasn’t for us.
Would have been nice to have those cool-looking phones, though.
(to be continued...)
This month, volume license customers get to begin the adventure of Windows Vista. The rest of us get to wait until late January of 2007. From our testing, I'll share a few observations.
1. It looks cool. The new alt-tab is a worthy competitor to Exposé in OS X (assuming your computer has the graphic might to run it smoothly).
2. Improved user-friendliness. From the redesigned install process, to more intuitive control panels, to the new application launching using the Windows key, and numerous other little changes, it looks like quite an improvement over XP.
3. More "Mac-like". I don't care if it imitates OS X. Imitation, flattery, whatever. If it makes it a better product, so be it. Plenty of other industries "borrow" design elements from each other. Ever notice how many sport sedans look like BMWs nowadays? Designers see winning elements, imitate them, and it becomes a trend. At C&P, we certainly know what that's like, seeing our own terminology used by imitators.
As for the not-so-nice, I'm not pleased about the frequent "phone-home" feature I've heard about. At this point, RC1 appears to run C&P X just fine, but we have had issues connecting to OS X Server volumes. So while it looks good, caution in upgrading is advised (as always).
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