I got a new mouse at work today. Spiffy new wireless jobbie with a tilt wheel (AKA: horizontal scroll) and because I’m a lowly user, I cannot install the drivers and I can’t even plugin a different mouse and have the system recognize it, it takes an administrator. Our local IT guy was off, so I called the Help Desk in Florham Park.
Mike answered the phone. When I explained what I wanted to do he assured me that just unplugging the old mouse and plugging in the new mouse to the same USB port was all I needed to do. He said it works 9 out of 10 times. I said, if I happen to be a number 10 I’d call him back.
Every contact with the help desk generates a ticket number. I got my email telling me that a ticket had been created with the trouble listed as: “client had new mouse he thought he needed someone to install the software. ” Time on the ticket was 3:09:41.
Because I wasn’t sure if the weasel was going to check on my PC status, I went through the motions even though I knew it wouldn’t work. Shutdown PC, unplug old mouse, plug in new mouse, restart PC. Oh, geez, the mouse doesn’t work. Shutdown PC, unplug new mouse, plug in old mouse, restart PC. Look at that, the mouse works.
Once I’ve logged in I notice I have new mail. The trouble ticket has been closed with a solution of: “explained to client that software is not required to operate new mouse.” Time of closure was listed as 3:09:45.
Elapsed time from opening to closing, 4 seconds. Didn’t even give me a chance to see if it was going to work. You don’t think the Help Desk Grunts are graded on average ticket closure time, do you? As I stew whether to call back and open another ticket or not, I get a new piece of email with the subject line of: “Help Desk Customer Satisfaction Survey for Ticket # 26443.”
“The Help Desk is committed to delivering the best service to you our customers. As part of our commitment, we would like to invite you to participate in our online satisfaction survey.” Perfect, I’ll fill out the survey and give them a piece of my mind. There is a clickable link in the email that goes to a server in Florham Park where the survey is hosted. So I click. Nothing happens for a bunch of seconds until the connection times out and I get a “the page is unavailable” error.
Nice service guys. I think I’ll just wait to Monday to let the local guy do it…