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Fresh Meat!

I do break/fix & managed services tech support from home. Service is provided as ‘white-label’ (no branding for the company I actually work for) to an ISP, as an incredibly inexpensive add-on.

The ISP recently did a full roll-out, and dropped the startup fee to $0. It’s honestly a great deal, and I trust my co-workers to do just as good a job as we do. It’s a great product for the non-tech savvy to have a tech that can remote-in at any time and help them.

Problem is, the roll-out and price change went way too fast. The ISP’s first line has near-zero training on what we can and can’t help with, what they support themselves because we don’t have access to their databases, and are horrible at disclosing the cost of service. Instead, they just seem to add our service, randomly, to people’s accounts, and make us do their job for them.

We’re pushing against that; hard. We can’t control their actions, of course, and while our name never enters into the picture, it’s just not good business. Even discounting that aspect of things, we were not ready for the roll-out, as the ISP kinda sprung it on us without warning. We went from 5-10 minutes between calls on average, to a 10+ queue at all times, and hold times in the 30-40 minute range (malware removal takes time).

Work has been… insane. I’ve been pulling near-50/week, with some of my colleagues putting in 60/week. That, plus the constant queue and stacking calls 3-4 deep has made me feel I’m not doing my job well for each call, and it sucks.

We just had our first training group hit the floor… and what a relief it has been. They’re still ‘in training’ for the week, of course, so it does pick up at night when their gigantic shift drops off phones to regroup and train and such… but it’s already night and day.

I’m not buried under an avalanche of people ticked off at stupid transfers and extreme hold times. I’m able to chat with the other agents, and help out the new ones, even be a bit goofy in chat! I’m able to tear apart and learn new stuff about the various malware/threats I’m encountering without worry, and actually write-up a couple articles on how to combat some of this stuff. It is way more relaxed and productive, honestly, for all of us.

Staffing issues suck.

submitted by /u/SilentDis
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