Never tell your clients...

I called up my vendor today to ask about the status of one of my cases. And also if they required any additional information. The usual diagnostic reports and whatnot.

But first I asked to be put through to my case's owner. (TSE or technical support engineer).

The guy on the end of the phone let me know that the TSE I was looking for was currently on another call. He asked me if I wanted to hold for a moment, and he would go and see if he could forward my call onto him. I told him to do so.

A moment later, the guy came back on the phone and told me that my TSE was currently busy on another case (apparently some other guy's system had died) and that he would give me a call back later today or tomorrow.

To all the tech support guys out there, please do NOT tell your clients, that the person responsible for your case is too busy to look\work on the case for you.

You can tell them that you are still currently working on the case..... Trying to reproduce the problem... Testing the new patch... ANYTHING .... Lie to them... But never say that you were busy on someone else's case.

No client is going to be happy to hear that.

I certainly wasn't. And so I asked to talk to their Manager instead.

I told the manager that my case issue was lodged a full week ago, and even though its not a priority 1, it still is important to us that it gets looked at. I also told him that since we have provided all the requested information already and that the current TSE was too busy, I would like the case esculated to the next support level.

The manager was very.... obliging. He was 'ok' with everything I asked for, and promised to keep me updated on the current case status. Although I know that once he put the phone down, he would be calling me a B**ch. How do I know this ? I'm a support engineer too. And I know I'll call her names too if I was on the receiving end of the phonecall today.