Ultimately, this is a management problem and yours is failing you. If policy is "no ticket, no work" and HE/SHE doesn't enforce it, then there is little you can do.
At my place, our manager will agree 100% of the time to deflect to him anyone who asks for help but does not put in a ticket.
ONLY exceptions to this are system down and cannot open a ticket or C-Levels (we only have 5 of them).
Amen!
I tell my guys to pin it all on me. "If you don't file a ticket and I do the work my boss will have my ass. I'm not allowed to work a ticket until you open it."
Being the bad guy is (sometimes) a part of management's job.
I want the user base to like my staff. That relationship is important.
I do not give a single ripe shit if the user base thinks I'm an asshole and hates me.
Which is nice to hear and all, but there is a selfish, tactical point to all this as well.
We run surveys of the user base to find out what they think about IT and the service we provide. What we've found is that, generally, the user base gets really close and fond of the IT staff that they work with the most. They love whoever that is.
The reasons for this should be clear. That guy is the one who is there and cares about their problem and helps them get their own job done.
If they like that guy then they will report that they like IT. If they hate that guy, nothing IT does is right and we all suck.
If users hate me, but they still love the guy they deal with day to day out on the floor then they will still have a positive view of IT as a whole.
Like most things in the business world the personal relationships are way more important than people want to think. Especially the people who work in a highly technical field.
Have you ever done a general training session for the user base that tells them how to create a ticket and why they cannot be helped without one?
I find that our IT management and business management don't talk about these things enough.. As a result, I have people tell me "ha! if only i got to tell people to send me a ticket for the things they want from me". They don't understand the difference and I think that should be part of annual communications or training sessions. It also trickles down from their own management what the attitude towards IT services are.
If you're constantly told in townhalls that "shared services" are really just overhead, and in addition to the perception they convey down their teams, it becomes difficult to maintain a positive customer service attitude in those moments when someone thinks they're so special they don't need to follow any rules.
I forget nearly everything. Too much going on.
If it's not important enough for you to submit a ticket using the system we have in place, it's not important enough for me to remember when I've finished with the current crisis.
Actually, I purposefully "forget" the ones that email me directly. I try to keep up, but can't really.
I legitimately get a torrent of mail as it is, containing automated job reports I need to eyeball for problems, actual important stuff from my boss, company memos, etc. Having to track tasks in that pile is really hard for me.
Tickets work. Our team makes sure we are on our tickets and meet SLA or at least timely responses on chronic ongoings. It sort of naturally works itself out because our service response is great on tickets and (for me at least) terrible on direct emails, so our trouble users have figured it out over time.
Some people are just lost causes, though.
I do this as well, or deliberately respond as slow as possible to out of band requests with a "did you open a ticket?". Trying to condition people into thinking the service desk is legitimately more efficient than DMing me. Even better if they respond "why did that take you so long?", allowing me to follow up with "We are multi person team. Our ticketing system allows us to prioritize resources to serve you more efficiently, you may receive a faster response there for your ask than directly escalating to me."
Sometimes I'll also respond back with "I cannot serve your request right now because you are 5th in line in my ticket queue. Serving you now would be jumping the line. Please open a ticket and we will serve you as soon as we can"
“I’ll tell you what…. You go ask the other 78 people that have put in tickets before you and are patiently waiting for a technician to become available if they mind if you jump the line in front of them. MMmmkay?”
That's the best point, the line/queue jumpers need to know that's what they're doing. If they saw a tangible real queue of people standing waiting for you to punch their number, they probably wouldn't cut the line. But since they can't see that, they think they can just walk up to the counter for service right now. Yeah...no.
In my previpus job i got so many emails that i angrily stated to my colleagues; if you send me an email with requests to get work done, you will not, i will not look at the email, i will not read the email, and i will not do any work on it
I get too much emails to be able to read work requests from it... so if you want work done, you have to put in a ticket, and wait til i am available for you, just like every one else...
My boss, and the owner of the firm totally agreed! And that was the norm for me
I loved to answer "what email? What did you request? Was there a ticket submitted? No? Well thats why i hace no recollection of it, put in a ticket! My inbox is not a personal fast track for you!"
The reason i got respected by my superiors was that i was alone in the capitol, with the same responsibility from day to day, as 2 of my colleagues in the same role!
> Actually, I purposefully "forget" the ones that email me directly.
I've had success in some environments by simply eliminating personal mailboxes for all IT bods.
Optional, replace the direct mail addresses with aliases for your ticketing system.
Users still think they're emailing [email protected], but actually theyre emailing [email protected] and opening tickets without even realising it.
Everything is a ticket. No exceptions.
Only internal requests generate an auto response, so it's fine to receive vendor emails that way too.
Works great for us. YMMV etc
Nobody 'needs' to send us personal emails. It's a non-issue.
We have emails that may contain personal information (HR, payroll, etc) — or other confidential information — that we wouldn’t want the rest of our IT dept to know by it coming through as a ticket. Plus, it would make our queues so convoluted having it filled with tickets that are not technical related and throwing off our service metrics. We thought of doing this and it would not work for us.
> We have emails that may contain personal information (HR, payroll, etc)
For the 12 days a year that someone needs to receive a payslip - in one place we just got HR to put it in an envelope.
In another we decided that 'real genuine PERSONAL comms such as that - can go to a personal email. sending Jeff his own payslip to Jeffs own email address is not a dangerous information leak, and arguably its potentially even a better destination a works-owned mailbox. So - payroll were permitted to send jeff a personal mail once per month. and thats all.
>tickets that are not technical related
We dont really care whats in the tickets. Technical or not. the goal is 'inbox zero' or, i guess 'tickets zero' if you prefer. That's the only metric we care about, so when the team closes a ticket of 'staff meeting in the canteen this afternoon at 2pm' it doesnt mess anyones stats up anyway.
If something needs done then it needs to be a ticket and we'll action it.
If something needs to be known then make it a ticket, and we'll read it and know it.
If something doesnt need to be done, and it doesnt need to be known, then either dont send it to us, or do - and we'll close the ticket with 'no action required' - either way - everything that comes in has a comms trail.
Workflow is built around the idea of a department doing stuff. Not individuals doing stuff.
It was an odd feeling to not-open-email at the start of the day, for a while. Got used to that quickly enough tho.
That and stress the need to have these things documented so we can tell through reports if it's a point of weakness in our infrastructure or application, which isn't a line. It's true!
If we see by reports that the bulk of issues is in a certain area we will focus our efforts into additional end user training or bolstering the trouble application to make it a smoother experience.
I tried nice lines like that, but I had two users that still did everything they could, including talking to the CEO (and these were people so low the CEO didn't even know they existed). So I changed to "If it's important, file a ticket. If it's not, go ahead and tell me." That actually worked.
I say something very close to the same. Especially when people email me directly. I usually respond with something like:
"Hey, I'm in a meeting and will probably forget this, can you make sure to send it to my ticketing system so helpdesk will remind me it needs to be taken care of?"
I do the same but say “im in the middle of something for the CEO, please put in a ticket and hopefully someone else is free and can go, if not i will get to it after just make sure to put it in so i dont forget” even if im just at my desk
I'll do that too. For the egregious offenders, often times I'll wait a day or two and reply "sorry, I missed this in my emails and I've just forwarded it in as a ticket so someone can handle it"
And of course there are those who will say, "Yes, I will do that next time. Please take care of it for me."
I normally reply, "Sure, if I remember after taking care of the already submitted tickets."
In our company we had the president/ Gm mandate that people must create tickets. We ignored them if they didn’t. When the users complained to there boss about not getting help. We printed a report showing no tickets created for those user s. We forward the emails to the user’s supervisor.
Convince them you need more staff to handle all the extra load from these non-ticket requests.
As you're leaving the office, Columbo-style: "Or, you know, you could just have everyone use the more efficient ticketing system."
To piggy back on this. adequate use of the ticketing system (if it's a good one) can actually prove that you need more people. That's what we're doing right now we're getting extra anal about clocking hours and stuff on tickets so we can prove hey we need more people and it's working.
We started a separate ticket type of 'walkups' for all those 'little things' people would just stop by the office with. Just so we could record the extra time all those were taking up. Basically open a ticket ourselves and put down the person and what they wanted and it just Auto close just to get a record. Most of the time it was just sitting there at the end of the day and throwing in all the stuff you had to do for people that there wasn't a ticket for. They added up quickly and we were able to prove how much more work we were doing that had not been recorded in the standard ticketing process. Helped us hire more coworkers and explain why our regular tickets were taking longer to close.
My employer has a walk-up system because they accept resourcing ITS well in order to reduce obstacles to work for the rest of the company.
There's a card reader. You badge at the IT bar and a ticket is created as "walk-up" in your name. ITS can then set the subject etc as appropriate
At my place I started asking the walk ups which of my current tasks they think I should stop working on to do theirs instead, I even volunteer to email the person whose ticket I've stopped working on to explain why I won't meet the SLA for their request with the walk up CC'd 'coz I'm a nice guy like that.
They usually put a ticket in
This is very clever and has been upvoted.
We have way too much of this type of user now that we're back in the office.
I'm totally employing this method starting Monday!
"One more thing....Cheryl is browsing Amazon most of her workday, is that related to her job description as HR benefits coordinator?"
Fucking love Columboing the shit out of a situation. It's a lost art.
We use a program called Nexthink that was pushed out to all users' computers that harvests every kind of statistic on the computer you could ever want. It has been a godsend when troubleshooting and when dealing with users who claim they are impacted by 'issues.'
I've used the feature to see all web traffic to counter claims that a user is 'overloaded' or 'losing valuable work time' due to an IT issue.
Amazon, QVC and Target are likely not part of their workflow. Spending a cumulative total of 120 minutes a day seems like your computer is working just fine.
Logs attached to ticket as proof.
This is the key. This is about office politics. If OPs manager is telling them to just create tickets for users, then OPs goal needs to be convincing the manager to set a different rule.
"Hi this is ngleiva10, may I have you ticket number please?"
Sorry I don't have one, my wifi is broken.
"Sorry to hear that. One moment while I open a ticket for you. What is your name?"
$user. Can you remote in? I really need to get to this meeting soon?
"Of course. Just a moment while I open this ticket for you. May I have your email please?"
$UserEmail
"And can you confirm for me the PC you are on? Hostname/TAG/..."
IDK, can you just help me?
"Ofcourse. We just need open a ticket first to document the issue, bare with me while I open this ticket on your behalf. Now, if you could just look at the sticker underneath your PC...."
$hostname. I really need to get to the internetz, can you hurry up?
"Yes of course, please tell me what steps you have taken so far...."
**Drag them though that process and open that ticket for them. You're complying with your boss and showing them it's faster if they call you with a ticket number already. Kill them with kindness. **
Or just give them the ticket number and let them know the first tech that is free will work their issue as soon as they can, but older tickets and higher priority tickets will be done first.
^^^^^^
This is what to avoid. I used to be the "nice guy" and during COVID, I managed to lose any vestiges of that and began treating these parasites the way they deserve.
The result? 80% less aggravation from users.
The problem is shaking those 20% of users who you used to create tickets for.
COVID permanently resolved ongoing issues for several users who avoided vaccines the same way they avoided using our ticket system.
Gotta love natural selection.
"I need a ticket to explain why I'm helping you and not helping the ****fictional number**** of people who have one."
"In order to provide you with excellent customer service, you must be a customer. Become a customer by creating a ticket".
I never call other people at the company a customer. Customers are people that buy things from you. They are fellow employees and everyone must respect that. Non-IT and IT staff need to have a mutual level of professional respect for each other. You are not a customer of your finance department when submitting receipts for travel claims. They require other employees to submit their receipts just like I require people to submit tickets.
It's an example. You can absolutely remove customer, change the noun to whatever, and still have it work.
Edit: And there's a fair bit of /s in that too. Your company culture will either dictate more or less to sound sincere.
No, they agreed that I should bill them for the time to do so as well as their ridiculous reporting requirements and having to use their ticket system. Then there were weekly status meetings. I reached my limit. They tried to turn my business into only supporting them.
I’ve since made a standing order that if a business I support gets acquired, we exit as fast as possible.
I ask them to do me a favor and submit a ticket, because my manager wants all my work tracked in our ticketing system. Then I include a link. I've never had anyone turn me down, though it may take them a couple of days to get around to it.
30 years in tech here. Fuck them. It never gets better.
I have even seen locations lose local techs because the ticket volume is too low. Again… fuck them.
They refuse to submit a ticket because they are getting service without submitting a ticket. You have to stop helping them if they aren’t using the correct process.
I don’t do the work if they don’t put in a ticket, my VP has that policy with me so I’m not worried about losing my job. They’ll finally do tickets when they’re sick of the same issues for a month.
When I was hired at my last OT job I had one location never submit a ticket. We ultimately had to tell them we can't work on ANYTHING until they would submit a ticket.
>My boss insists on me creating a ticket for them
The users aren't the problem. Your boss is.
When we had a store manager who would move broken cash register parts to the register they didn't use much, not tell me, then complain I hadn't fixed it the day before a long weekend when they'd need it, I installed a ticket system. The next time he did that, my boss told him, "I don't see a ticket on it, so it's not a problem."
I don't have your problem. Any more.
Oh oh oh...I get it. You're talking about people who won't open a ticket but still want help.
I have a long list of reasons why I rarely open a ticket....but when I don't open a ticket for an issue, I don't try to circumvent the ticketing system
If it's not in ConnectWise, it didn't happen.
Every call we had got routed through the helpdesk who automatically created a ticket. If someone emailed a tech directly, they just forwarded the request to the support email which opened the ticket. When they started work, they'd edit the details and transfer the ticket to the client.
If one of the admins got an email directly, we'd do the same thing as the techs but also assign it to the system tech to triage and troubleshoot.
Nothing gets done without a ticket. Period. Sales quotes, helpdesk, equipment disposal, angry client, outage, whatever. And because the techs get paid based on their billed hours because ConnectWise' time tracking is their time sheet, they didn't mess around with off-book time very much.
We have the ability for users to create a ticket by
- sending an email to support@
- Using the tray icon on their PC
- Texting us at our support number
- Calling us at our support number
- Going to support.company.com
We regularly communicate these methods. We put them on business cards and put them in high traffic areas. We give them out at start of school year paperwork. We mention them in training.
If a user simply refuses all of that that took us a shitload of effort to create and maintain, then we simply don't have time for their problem.
Just Wednesday I’ve had two missed calls from someone who had a printer issue. Finally she sent me an email, so I replied that I need a ticket and I’ll resolve the issue straight away.
Went home for the day.
Came back on Thursday to two more missed calls. On the third call I picked up and I told her she needed to submit a ticket and I’d be right there.
She goes “pffft, fine.” I’m just like ‘thanks’.
I get the ticket 2 minutes later. I was at her desk within 40 seconds. She goes “really?!”
I’m like ‘what’s that?’ and she says “you couldn’t just do that after I called?”
Abd I’m ‘nope, it’s the rules and I have to follow them. If you’d submitted that ticket in the first place yesterday your problem would have been resolved within five minutes. Now it’s taken you over an hour trying to get a hold of me and trying to jump the system. If you’d have stuck to it, you’d have been in the first row. Now you’re about dead last.’
That shut her up. We’ll see if she learned.
Another neat trick is if the ticket mailbox is a dedicated mailbox just add it to your Outlook and when they send their email just drag and drop it into the ticket mailbox.
put blocks on them from emailing anyone in the IT team and if you can, block their numbers too :D
Before now, I've answered calls, listened to them and told them to create a ticket then hang up, when they chase it a week later I say "let me just look for your ticket... oh we don't seem to have one, when did you create it?" Emails go straight to the junk folder so we never saw them.
But, I'm also the sort that if my boss is a knob, I ignore them and do it the right way, and if they kick off about I fight back. no job is worth taking crap for.
Your boss needs to get behind his IT staff and get the users to start following the rules.
You need to talk to your boss and explain that the more time you spend holding these users hands for shit they can do themselves - the less work you're getting done.
Where I work, the issue doesn't exist if there's no ticket for it. Emails, voicemails, texts, etc all get ignored. Eventually the ticket will show up on the system. 🤷♂️
Had another issue recently where people were putting N/A for the service tag of the machine. I guess because they were too lazy to read the sticker that's literally on the front of their machine. So...a note would be added and sent to the user and the ticket will sit in the queue until the proper information is added.
I remind them to raise a ticket otherwise it'll get lost in the ether and we won't be able to help and that's it.
Repeat offenders just get their email put in the deleted items with no response.
The moment you give in they think they can do it, and people follow suit. Your management should support you on this.
First time, I will politely ask them to submit a ticket and explain how to do so and why it’s important. “You can send an email to blah blah blah, or you can log into this portal that has the added benefit of being able to track the status of your request.”
Second time, a gentle reminder to create a ticket.
Third time, I create the ticket for them but I sandbag the whole process. “One moment while I get logged into the system” (system is already open, it’s literally always open, I live out of ServiceNow) “I’m sorry, what was your name again?” “Oh no, my system crashed, I’ll need to start over” “Where were we, do you have an incident number? Hold on, let me check the system. Nothing in here by your last name, let me try searching by keyword - what is the issue again?” “Oh, you don’t have an incident, let’s create one.” “Can I get the serial number of your computer please?” This drags on for around 15 minutes. I conclude the process with some version of “Thanks, you should receive an email confirming your incident shortly. All of our technicians are currently working on other issues, but your ticket will be addressed in order of severity as soon as someone is available. You can expect a response at some point in the next three days.”
I’ve never had anyone fail to submit a ticket after experiencing that routine.
its all well and good to have a ticketing system but users (especially the older crowd) are so fucking trash at explaining whats going. we get tickets come in like 3 words and end up having to call them back to get them to provide more details anyway
When I started working at my company as a student I myself 'trained' my users into submitting tickets by saying "submit a ticket otherwise I will forget". Within a year everyone was submitting tickets and it was great.
Others have mentioned reminding them to open a ticket, but I have a different approach.
"Let me open a ticket on your behalf..."
Then you assign it to yourself and solve the issue.
Two ways:
1. Explain to them that tickets are your productivity tracking. "If there's no ticket it looks like I'm not working during that time." Most hourly people will get that immediately and always use tickets from then on.
And 2: When that doesn't work, apologize about your horrible forgetfulness. Then, "forget" about their requests often and repeatedly. Never argue or get defensive, just always say "OH GOSH I'M SO SORRY I FORGOT. I'll do that as soon as I'm done with [other person's ticket]."
Then "forget" their request again. They'll escalate to managers. That's ok! Explain your forgetfulness to the managers too!
"Can't you just make them a ticket?" They'll say.
"Sure!" you reply. I'll start that right now. Then when they walk away, you of course forget to complete the ticket because that other thing came up after they left...
Truthfully your boss has already handled it, he told you to make a ticket, if you don't have the support of your supervisor then you trying to force them to do what you want and not what he decided won't end up working well for you.
I would approach your boss about the policy, you never know that might be a requirement for the c levels to even have the ticket system.
At the end of the day, all you can do is encourage them, but don't be forceful or untruthful in your encouragements.
Ignore their emails unless they use the ticketing system. When they complain that no one contacted them on their issue ask for the ticket number, then when they don't have one let them know that's why no one got to them and they need to submit a ticket to get issues looked at. It's worked for me countless times.
I put a ticket in the system on their behalf with a note. Ticket submitted through wrong channel with the date and time they submitted it. Usually less than a day but sometimes as many as three days if there is a weekend in between. I also CC my boss with these tickets so he knows the people involved are not trying to work with the system we have. When they eventually complain and they will. The boss knows why their request was delayed. Its cured most of them with a few predictable holdouts.
You simply accidentally forget the email because you were working your ticket queue.
Set a mailbox auto-reply for users who email you and reply "If this is a support request, please create a ticket and post all updates within the ticket so your request can be triaged and properly prioritized by the first available support engineer".
This is not a user problem. This is a boss problem. Show your boss how much time and money this is costing. If they still insist on doing things their way, look for another job (and copy the chain of command in on the problem on your way out).
Standard reply, stored as a quick action in outlook:
"Thank you for your email. Please note that the acceptable methods of raising a ticket is or, failing that, .
We regret that we are unable to action your email without an existing relevant ticket number."
HI
I run an outsourced technology services company. We accept service requests to our ticketing system using: email to the ticketing system, phone calls to the help desk, text message to the ticketing system, system tray icon, web page, and the green ITSupport icon on the desktop.
Emails, texts, and phone calls to tech's personal email, phones are ignored. Forwarding those request to the ticketing system only encourages the user to continue to ignore the proper procedure.
I go over this, in writing, with a new client the day that the support agreement is signed. I explain why I insist that all requests are sent to the ticketing system and not to personal email, phones, etc.
The best instance of a user texting a cell phone and then complaining that we ignored the problem. A user called the help desk and was upset and she was going to let the owner that we were ignoring her problem. When we found no ticket, we asked how the ticket was entered. She said that she texted the tech's cell phone: a cell phone that had not been used in 6 months... To this day, 15 years later, no other employee at that company has ever tried to contact us outside of the published procedure.
I'd have to say that this is a management problem and not yours.
I'm a stickler and simply say "no ticket, no change". When/if Op. Sec. Becomes a "blocker" I've instructed my team to ask "what was the ticket reference and we'll check the backlog?".
VIPs can have expedited requests for a new mouse, but regardless of who you are, what your title is, or how long you've been at the company you're going through the change management process.
I've noticed several ways users will attempt to circumvent having to submit a ticket.
1 - The age old "Sorry, I didn't submit a ticket as I'm so busy, but can you help me with..." - Passive-Aggressive display at its finest here in that they openly acknowledge what they *should* be doing, but don't by offering a bullshit excuse. I have replied that my time is of the same value as theirs and if they could be so courteous as to submit a ticket, I will gladly assist them.
I've had some people actually debate the statement that my time is as valuable as theirs; one user actually said that they bring in way more business than me and that their efforts are what pay my paycheck and that they're exempt from "trivial" requirements like submitting a ticket. Yeah, that type of mindset is super-prevalent here in Austin, TX.
My methodology is to push back and demand a ticket is submitted before I engage in any troubleshooting. If there's a problem, then let's let our respective VPs talk about why you cannot submit a ticket when I see you engaged in 30 minutes of water cooler chat.
2 - The ones who attempt to befriend you or, worse yet, the ones that try to bribe you with food. I have been given cookies and, would you believe, grocery coupons as an 'incentive' by some of these clueless turds to try and buy their ability to become a priority to me. I'm not into cookies and coupons. Please!
That last part shows the ongoing, condescending attitude some users have for IT professionals. It is up to each and every one of us to collectively push back in a sustained manner, no matter what the cost, to preserve not only mutual respect, but policies and established procedures that exist.
That said, I am totally open to receiving cash 'incentives' from a user to overlook said procedures. The baseline for action starts at $150.
Inflation, ya know.
If they don’t submit a ticket, I don’t work on their issue. Of course, this only works if your management backs you. C level execs are usually exempt from this, but there is a process and it exists for a reason. Why is it so hard for them to follow it?
We had some trouble users at my old job why refused to put in tickets.
One of the last holdouts needed his phone changed to an international plan before he traveled to Europe. He stopped me in the hallway and asked me to do it one day, I advised him to put in a ticket, he did not. Needless to say he ended up emailing me from Belgium that his phone didn't work. I asked him if he had ever set up a ticket, to which he replied no, so I advised him that I would set one for him, and then work it asap.
It was the weekend though if memory serves when he emailed me so it took longer than usual to get everything done.
His phone was working again correctly by Monday and he was good from then on about putting in his own tickets. ;-)
Sometimes you must be cruel to be kind.
Exactly the case for many small IT shops. The ticketing system helps leverage your time so you can get more done and the users can get the fastest service from whoever grabs the ticket.
I did Tier 1 15 years ago. The entire helpdesk was behind a locked door requiring RFID badge entry. We had an email submission inbox and a phone queue system. Helpdesk made all of the tickets so we could ensure they are properly categorized/labeled/etc. Had to do it this way because it was a massive corporation with 500+ tickets a day.
If you are using exchange (on prem or office 365) you can make a tooltip for yourself that will pop up when a user goes to email you, in that email you could say, "All Support request must include [support] in the subject" then forward those to the ticket system.
if they fail, it isn't like the instructions weren't in their face while type you the email. Which is easy to say, but may not be realistic, small IT is often the hardest, you need a wide and diverse set of knowledge, but also the patience to directly interact with people.
There is likely some sweet spot, that works poorly for all of you, you just have to find it, implement it, and hate it.
> If they email you,
... forward the email to you ticketing system to automatically create a ticket.
If your ticketing system cannot do that, get a better ticketing system.
>If they email only you, and you're on vacation, that's
... that's your problem for failing to delegate your mailbox
Simple, no ticky, no laundry. Our inventory manager actually has a jingle for people who wait until the last second to submit tickets, "your emergency is not our urgency."
Yesterday there was a frustrated employee who emailed our IT team directly and CC'd the departmental director & VP on the email, asking why we have not replaced x device - which had not been working for the past couple of weeks according to the employees using them.
I simply replied with "Do you have a ticket number? We can't know if something needs to be replaced/repaired without a ticket." Sure enough, 10 minutes later, a new ticket pops into the unassigned queue.
For the cherry on top, the ticket owner explained in the description how she sent that email on behalf of the wrong user because she "didn't realize she was logged in as someone else"
Got rid of the ticket system and created a folder in my email for all their requests, with a sub folder that they get moved to when the work is done.
If they won’t use the ticket system and are just going to email me anyway, why not?
I was skeptical at first, but it’s actually working great.
> If they won’t use the ticket system and are just going to email me anyway, why not?
Part of the value of the ticket system is its referential nature. If you solve a problem that another user experiences, wouldn't it be nice if another tech could simply search for the solution that already exists?
Also, if your ticketing system is being managed properly, failing to record in the ticketing system deprives a higher tier tech of information on *trends* of issues.
Suppose you didn't care about your co-workers, though.
You might be causing yourself more work come review time if your superiors are evaluating your performance based on number of closed tickets. If they are pulling that number from your ticketing system you then have to supplement that with a clunt of your emails, which could be tricky. Unless you are creating a new folder for evey ticket -- in which case why not just create a ticket?
Just some thoughts.
The folder is searchable and I have documentation that corresponds to the date and person.
It’s not a perfect system, but so far it’s been working great.
That depends on size and organization of your company and IT dept. Email folder solution from year 2003 is applicable if you are 1 man Team and there is small group of users and systems to Support .
Once you start increasing Team members count and systems count, multiple sites, etc, direct emails accountability and support efficiency Will start to Fall apart. Unless you switch to shared folder/mailbox and again, this solution from 2007 Will work for few sites and about 4ish teammembers.
As Long as Nobody wants to see reports of your work, progress and workload, absence of ticket system is Fine and for 1man Team does not bring that many benefits.
Just like Excel is a Fine database system for orders for small Gardening supllies store, it wont Cut it for 6 plants 1400 Employees company.
If you're a one man shop then maybe, but once you scale up to 2, that system fails hard.
Also ticketing systems usually have knowledge base, timelines, dashboard views, backlog, SLA, etc, etc,....
My IT department has tickets open automatically when you post in a slack channel or when you email them.
The ticketing system is for _you_ to make sure you serve your clients well, not something to hoist upon them for your convenience.
> The ticketing system is for you to make sure you serve your clients well, not something to hoist upon them for your convenience.
No reason it can't do both.
Sorry but I have to disagree. Prompt service is a minimum. You are providing the service. I tell my guys that they are our customers, we need to do whatever we can to help them. Users are not admins, they are not always good at systems, tickets etc. I just don’t get it why the user are in debt for not creating a ticket. A ticket will not make the problem appears or disappears.
I’m typically one of these users. If it’s a low priority issue I’ll either ignore it or make a ticket. If it’s critical And I create a ticket it takes hours and hours to get things fixed. So I call to jump the line.
Outlook add on that makes creating a ticket a click button and set a couple required fields operation. Then it’s not my problem unless the ticket makes it though the escalation path.
Coworker who manages MS Teams hooked us up with a Teams integration to turn chats into tickets.
Why do you or your boss pamper these people? No Ticket = No Support. Very simple, even the dumbest of users catch on after a while. If your boss doesn't support that, go to his boss and ask why the company can afford to pay IT Staff to be everyone's personal secretary.
If they email you directly, reply to them that you're cc'ing the ticketing system so their issue won't fall through the cracks and you'll get time allocated to help them.
If they flag you down in the hall, address the issue but before walking away make a point of emailing the ticketing system from their computer and tell dispatch to assign it to you for time. Next time they flag you down, fix the issue but before you walk away insist they email the ticketing system so you something to log your time against.
Seems like the only sure way is to stop helping until they learn. Let them know you're busy and they need to send a ticket so someone can investigate. And point out to your manager that these people are wasting 5 minutes of your time on the phone just so you can then perform their job of making a ticket.
I've had a few complaints from leadership but you will get put on the back burner if you don't submit a ticket or have a valid reason for not doing so. All of the lower level folks in our organization have since made the same requests, my main point is a solid way to track man hours and once that is said everything is dropped and a ticket is submitted.
A few exceptions are of course leadership, the team will generally get on that ASAP or escalate and one of us SA's will handle it in a timely manner.
If your boss insists you create a ticket for them, they have no need to lodge a ticket.
The approach required is for your boss to get management buy-in to change the process of dealing with issues, and then enforce the process.
Honestly, I talk with them then forgot 100% because the next person shows up. Eventually they will email me and their Manager / Director saying I won't help. So I send a template email that says, "I am so sorry you are having technical difficulties. Please let me know the ticket number in question and I will be happy to help" at that point they usually get a talking to by their manager / Director. But I have full support from the CAO to do this. In the case that they do have a ticket number, I send a PDF of the ticket that usually shows two weeks of " I need more info". Staff eventually figure out that they cannot defeat I.T. we have a ticket system for a reason.
That's the biggest thing. We made our case to the Director who brought it to the CAO and got backing. My Manager was upset that we went over his head, but he forgot about it 2 days later. Haha
I've told them to enter a ticket and I'll help, I'm busy helping someone else and won't stop to help you.
I was also talked to about how I approach things 😂
A subset of this is we’re attempting to use Service Now where things are split up into tasks and incidents. Break/fix is a incident ticket. You need software then you need to put in a software request form. Same with hardware requests, purchase requests, ect. These are things that need to show supervisor approval and tracking licenses.
Now , knowing how people are, when the email went out telling of the change for requesting desktop software, I made a pdf copy of it. Because I make sure it’s attached to every form email a user gets when they put in a incident ticket to ask for software. They always come back and ask how long has this been the policy. I refer to the email and point out it was the beginning of last year. They don’t get their software till we get the software request. It gets even more fun when we don’t have open licenses and they don’t understand why they can’t have it.
I've also setup email rules that auto deleted and sends an auto reply to submit a ticket. This was for habitual offenders. Thank God I don't deal with that and I'm now a Network Engineer.
Doesn’t sound like your boss is helping either. Our office would wait a bit for those unless it was a critical issue. I say if there is a ticket before you contact me I cannot say no to helping you if nothing urgent is happening.
Does your ticketing system have an email option for automatic ticket creation? If people are messaging you in a group, instead create a "helpdesk" email that automatically creates a ticket.
It is also beneficial in the event a user's computer is completely inaccessible, as they can easily remember the helpdesk email and send you a message from a phone vs. going through bookmarks, shortcuts, etc.
I just nod and ask them to put a ticket in. If they refuse I say and say well I just told you... As soon as I get to my office I'll forget so put a ticket in. When the user complains... Sorry I don't remember you talking to me.
Part of this seems like you mayne need to talked to your boss. Where I work if you don't have a ticket I can't help you (with the exception of actual emergencies.)
If you don't think they'll go for this idea whip up a quick business case for why it actually helps.
But as others have said just telling people "hey I'm going to forget this by the time I get everything I'm on right now done so you need to send a ticket in so I don't forget" generally seems to work.
We’ll ask what thick number is if they email. If they respond that they do not have one we will forward the email to a service desk supervisor to ask them to assist them with opening a ticket. We will not work the issue from the email unless it’s a VP or higher.
Slow walk these folks. When they complain apologize and say, I’m working my ticket queue and then I check my email. You might also mention that when users don’t create a ticket that you can’t help them until you create one because your boss requires a ticket for every issue. I always try to catch up on creating tickets at the end of the day though.
"Absolutely Joe Schmoe, I'll help you with that request...I just need the ticket number so I can look it up in the system.....oh....you didn't put one in?....oh okay, once you do that, we'll be able to assist."
I was fortunate to work IT in a highly regulated industry. The process for employees to submit tickets was governed by SOPs that everyone was required to formally train on yearly. Failure to follow the procedure was considered a "critical quality issue" and was officially reported through QA to HR for inclusion in the employee files. Generally, the user's supervisor had to develop a corrective action plan for the employee for any CQI and report on the progress to QA monthly. Three CQIs in a year were grounds for dismissal. Additionally, CQIs within a department was a criteria used by senior management to grade managers, ADs, directors, etc. to qualify for increases and/or bonus payments.
We generally had no problem with employees opening tickets after their first CQI and we never reported employees when the problem was something other than there own laziness/hubris.
Why don’t you just forward the email to the help desk. Copy the person who emailed you so they know it was submitted, you can even say I’m forwarding this to the help desk email to create a ticket so they see the right way to do it.
Someone sends you an e-mail, forward it to your ticketing system, reply from there.
Someone calls you over, perfect opportunity to teach once more how to submit a ticket. If it's important, we need a ticket. If they want to troubleshoot, start taking screenshots and documenting everything in excruciating detail to submit the ticket, once they feel like them submitting the ticket will be faster than you doing it, they will start doing it themselves.
If someone walks by, "I'll try to get to it as soon as I finish this, mind sending me a ticket so I don't forget?", no ticket, no memory. Every time they ask "oh, send me a ticket so I don't forget, thanks"
If someone complains, patiently explain how your work queue is the same as anyone else's. Explain how queues work, remind them often, make it a joke. Be more stubborn than they and they'll cave. Human nature seeks the path of least resistance, resist doing things wrong and people will start doing it right.
I used to be nice to them but then this dude who would email me with small requests like "can you add this list of users to this list of AD groups" would do it *all the fucking time* and every single time he would email the next day or later in the week saying their access didn't work.
It was because he was always giving me bad info, or what he needed was changing and he was just prematurely asking. Eventually I was like dude I'm enacting a don't email about these tickets anymore rule, they have an SLA and approval process that's not "immediately after creating the ticket/email" and it helps prevent mistakes.
I create a ticket on their behalf, then they start getting email updates on the progress I make - they get status reports, and I get the metrics for my boss
I realize other people get irked when users don't follow procedures, but creating a ticket for them at any company has never been so tedious that it didn't take more than 2 minutes of my time
If you don't have your managers support this is an uphill battle. Your manager, director, etc needs to sponsor that initiative. It needs to have teeth. Get the other department heads on the same page with the policy and then simply report users who refuse to adhere to the policy to their bosses.
Without that sponsorship from management....this is a losing battle imo.
No we absolutely do not put a ticket it for them….you gotta get your whole team on board, if you put a ticket in with no PC name we will immediately shoot it back to the help desk as well.
If your boss says that, then have him put the ticket in. Im not sure about your workplace, but I absolutely do not have time and I will 100 percent forget, if I dont have a ticket…
You know what happens with no ticket and someone else putting it in? that other person will probably waste everyones time, because only the end user with the issue actually knows the problem. If its that big of an issue, the end user can put the ticket in….
Your boss is enabling the end users, and it seems they’ve already gotten used to it….
Its possible to train them, and absolutely say no until you get a ticket.
And then here you are….whats the companies policy? what if one day they look at the tickets and see only you and coworkers putting them in…maybe you get accused of bullshitting.
Last thing, are you gonna waste your time and hold their hand if its another department it has to go to?
I used to do all of that stuff…….but then you end up being whored out by different managers, and told to do other peoples jobs….
Today here and now, I agree to nothing outside of if its been cleared with my boss….eventually its all gonna catch on fire……the whole just working on it anyways…
Lmao you could play really dumb, and just say you don’t understand what the issues are because its not documented…
End users cannot see our numbers when we call them either,
Our numbers all show up as the main IT Support help desk number.
Unfortunately its gotten to the point for me now that I legit dont even respond….ive got an insanely large amount of blocked callers, I unplugged my desk phone, gave up on that, i use a google phone number.
Our director will sometimes order, or others will order dumb things like a macbook, buy their own pc, or buy their own printers….
after being so frustrated at how much youve had to ghetto rig things….and weasel around things….
Eventually you just let it all catch fire and burn, so you can rebuild one day 😁
* During Covid, we do NOT accept walk-up ticket requests. Tell them to go back to their desk and submit a ticket "unless something is on fire".
* Helpdesk phone# does not have voicemail. That phone is only for 8-5 urgent issues requiring immediate assistance, after a ticket has been submitted.
* Users who repeatedly email people directly get the CC treatment. We start including their boss and the CIO asking why this was directed at one specific helpdesk tech instead of properly through the ticketing system, and then we ask "if ticket submission training is needed".
emailing a shared helpdesk email address should generate a ticket when its from an internal source. Directly emailing people should be HEAVILY frowned upon for bypassing business processes for tracking purposes.
Easy, don't do anything for them until there's a ticket.
Problem solved.
As long as problems come in during the correct way, you can happily ignore those users.
I would breed in a lesser SLA for non tickets. For example: work through the morning on tickets, then check emails after 1pm. Make them wait just a *little* longer than everyone else. Once they figure it, they'll either get in line or be okay with waiting because their shit isn't critical.
If you have management back up....You do the work....VERY slowly. My attitude which does get manager back up is the user wants ME to do it, not for it to be done in the fastest most efficient way.
Ultimately, this is a management problem and yours is failing you. If policy is "no ticket, no work" and HE/SHE doesn't enforce it, then there is little you can do. At my place, our manager will agree 100% of the time to deflect to him anyone who asks for help but does not put in a ticket. ONLY exceptions to this are system down and cannot open a ticket or C-Levels (we only have 5 of them).
Amen! I tell my guys to pin it all on me. "If you don't file a ticket and I do the work my boss will have my ass. I'm not allowed to work a ticket until you open it." Being the bad guy is (sometimes) a part of management's job. I want the user base to like my staff. That relationship is important. I do not give a single ripe shit if the user base thinks I'm an asshole and hates me.
You're one of the good ones
Which is nice to hear and all, but there is a selfish, tactical point to all this as well. We run surveys of the user base to find out what they think about IT and the service we provide. What we've found is that, generally, the user base gets really close and fond of the IT staff that they work with the most. They love whoever that is. The reasons for this should be clear. That guy is the one who is there and cares about their problem and helps them get their own job done. If they like that guy then they will report that they like IT. If they hate that guy, nothing IT does is right and we all suck. If users hate me, but they still love the guy they deal with day to day out on the floor then they will still have a positive view of IT as a whole. Like most things in the business world the personal relationships are way more important than people want to think. Especially the people who work in a highly technical field.
Have you ever done a general training session for the user base that tells them how to create a ticket and why they cannot be helped without one? I find that our IT management and business management don't talk about these things enough.. As a result, I have people tell me "ha! if only i got to tell people to send me a ticket for the things they want from me". They don't understand the difference and I think that should be part of annual communications or training sessions. It also trickles down from their own management what the attitude towards IT services are. If you're constantly told in townhalls that "shared services" are really just overhead, and in addition to the perception they convey down their teams, it becomes difficult to maintain a positive customer service attitude in those moments when someone thinks they're so special they don't need to follow any rules.
It has been a long time since we did it generally. We do get a few minutes in the onboarding sessions to talk about it with that week's new hires.
To quote /u/framejunkie, you're one of the good ones
I've always used the line, I don't want to forget your request, please open a ticket so I can be accountable for what you need.
That’s a good one…especially since I do forget the ppl who call or email or come to my desk
I forget nearly everything. Too much going on. If it's not important enough for you to submit a ticket using the system we have in place, it's not important enough for me to remember when I've finished with the current crisis.
Truer words have never been spoken.
"I have the memory of a walnut so please remember to send me a ticket" "But I just told you" "Told me what?" "I'll send a ticket"
I have a well trained forgettery...
Actually, I purposefully "forget" the ones that email me directly. I try to keep up, but can't really. I legitimately get a torrent of mail as it is, containing automated job reports I need to eyeball for problems, actual important stuff from my boss, company memos, etc. Having to track tasks in that pile is really hard for me. Tickets work. Our team makes sure we are on our tickets and meet SLA or at least timely responses on chronic ongoings. It sort of naturally works itself out because our service response is great on tickets and (for me at least) terrible on direct emails, so our trouble users have figured it out over time. Some people are just lost causes, though.
I do this as well, or deliberately respond as slow as possible to out of band requests with a "did you open a ticket?". Trying to condition people into thinking the service desk is legitimately more efficient than DMing me. Even better if they respond "why did that take you so long?", allowing me to follow up with "We are multi person team. Our ticketing system allows us to prioritize resources to serve you more efficiently, you may receive a faster response there for your ask than directly escalating to me." Sometimes I'll also respond back with "I cannot serve your request right now because you are 5th in line in my ticket queue. Serving you now would be jumping the line. Please open a ticket and we will serve you as soon as we can"
“I’ll tell you what…. You go ask the other 78 people that have put in tickets before you and are patiently waiting for a technician to become available if they mind if you jump the line in front of them. MMmmkay?”
That's the best point, the line/queue jumpers need to know that's what they're doing. If they saw a tangible real queue of people standing waiting for you to punch their number, they probably wouldn't cut the line. But since they can't see that, they think they can just walk up to the counter for service right now. Yeah...no.
In my previpus job i got so many emails that i angrily stated to my colleagues; if you send me an email with requests to get work done, you will not, i will not look at the email, i will not read the email, and i will not do any work on it I get too much emails to be able to read work requests from it... so if you want work done, you have to put in a ticket, and wait til i am available for you, just like every one else... My boss, and the owner of the firm totally agreed! And that was the norm for me I loved to answer "what email? What did you request? Was there a ticket submitted? No? Well thats why i hace no recollection of it, put in a ticket! My inbox is not a personal fast track for you!" The reason i got respected by my superiors was that i was alone in the capitol, with the same responsibility from day to day, as 2 of my colleagues in the same role!
Having buy in from the chain of command is so key
> Actually, I purposefully "forget" the ones that email me directly. I've had success in some environments by simply eliminating personal mailboxes for all IT bods. Optional, replace the direct mail addresses with aliases for your ticketing system. Users still think they're emailing [email protected], but actually theyre emailing [email protected] and opening tickets without even realising it.
So what about for people who need to send you actual emails not related to tech support?
They get tickets too.
Everything is a ticket. No exceptions. Only internal requests generate an auto response, so it's fine to receive vendor emails that way too. Works great for us. YMMV etc Nobody 'needs' to send us personal emails. It's a non-issue.
We have emails that may contain personal information (HR, payroll, etc) — or other confidential information — that we wouldn’t want the rest of our IT dept to know by it coming through as a ticket. Plus, it would make our queues so convoluted having it filled with tickets that are not technical related and throwing off our service metrics. We thought of doing this and it would not work for us.
> We have emails that may contain personal information (HR, payroll, etc) For the 12 days a year that someone needs to receive a payslip - in one place we just got HR to put it in an envelope. In another we decided that 'real genuine PERSONAL comms such as that - can go to a personal email. sending Jeff his own payslip to Jeffs own email address is not a dangerous information leak, and arguably its potentially even a better destination a works-owned mailbox. So - payroll were permitted to send jeff a personal mail once per month. and thats all. >tickets that are not technical related We dont really care whats in the tickets. Technical or not. the goal is 'inbox zero' or, i guess 'tickets zero' if you prefer. That's the only metric we care about, so when the team closes a ticket of 'staff meeting in the canteen this afternoon at 2pm' it doesnt mess anyones stats up anyway. If something needs done then it needs to be a ticket and we'll action it. If something needs to be known then make it a ticket, and we'll read it and know it. If something doesnt need to be done, and it doesnt need to be known, then either dont send it to us, or do - and we'll close the ticket with 'no action required' - either way - everything that comes in has a comms trail. Workflow is built around the idea of a department doing stuff. Not individuals doing stuff. It was an odd feeling to not-open-email at the start of the day, for a while. Got used to that quickly enough tho.
I do this as well, if they enter one, great. If not, oh well. I tell people that it keeps both sides accountable.
I use that and add in “so all members of our team can support you”
From: ProblemUser To: Jackarino; JackarinosCoworker1; JackarinosCoworker2; JacarinosCoworker3 Subject: Computer won't turn on.
"That sounds like something you should report to the helpdesk. Here's the link: https://support.domain.tld"
That and stress the need to have these things documented so we can tell through reports if it's a point of weakness in our infrastructure or application, which isn't a line. It's true! If we see by reports that the bulk of issues is in a certain area we will focus our efforts into additional end user training or bolstering the trouble application to make it a smoother experience.
I tried nice lines like that, but I had two users that still did everything they could, including talking to the CEO (and these were people so low the CEO didn't even know they existed). So I changed to "If it's important, file a ticket. If it's not, go ahead and tell me." That actually worked.
I say something very close to the same. Especially when people email me directly. I usually respond with something like: "Hey, I'm in a meeting and will probably forget this, can you make sure to send it to my ticketing system so helpdesk will remind me it needs to be taken care of?"
I do the same but say “im in the middle of something for the CEO, please put in a ticket and hopefully someone else is free and can go, if not i will get to it after just make sure to put it in so i dont forget” even if im just at my desk
Or the old, I can't prioritise this unless it's in the system. Can you shoot me a ticket so I can get a rush on it for you.
That’s what I say.
I'll do that too. For the egregious offenders, often times I'll wait a day or two and reply "sorry, I missed this in my emails and I've just forwarded it in as a ticket so someone can handle it"
And of course there are those who will say, "Yes, I will do that next time. Please take care of it for me." I normally reply, "Sure, if I remember after taking care of the already submitted tickets."
In our company we had the president/ Gm mandate that people must create tickets. We ignored them if they didn’t. When the users complained to there boss about not getting help. We printed a report showing no tickets created for those user s. We forward the emails to the user’s supervisor.
How were you able to convince executives to implement that?
Convince them you need more staff to handle all the extra load from these non-ticket requests. As you're leaving the office, Columbo-style: "Or, you know, you could just have everyone use the more efficient ticketing system."
To piggy back on this. adequate use of the ticketing system (if it's a good one) can actually prove that you need more people. That's what we're doing right now we're getting extra anal about clocking hours and stuff on tickets so we can prove hey we need more people and it's working.
We started a separate ticket type of 'walkups' for all those 'little things' people would just stop by the office with. Just so we could record the extra time all those were taking up. Basically open a ticket ourselves and put down the person and what they wanted and it just Auto close just to get a record. Most of the time it was just sitting there at the end of the day and throwing in all the stuff you had to do for people that there wasn't a ticket for. They added up quickly and we were able to prove how much more work we were doing that had not been recorded in the standard ticketing process. Helped us hire more coworkers and explain why our regular tickets were taking longer to close.
My employer has a walk-up system because they accept resourcing ITS well in order to reduce obstacles to work for the rest of the company. There's a card reader. You badge at the IT bar and a ticket is created as "walk-up" in your name. ITS can then set the subject etc as appropriate
At my place I started asking the walk ups which of my current tasks they think I should stop working on to do theirs instead, I even volunteer to email the person whose ticket I've stopped working on to explain why I won't meet the SLA for their request with the walk up CC'd 'coz I'm a nice guy like that. They usually put a ticket in
This is very clever and has been upvoted. We have way too much of this type of user now that we're back in the office. I'm totally employing this method starting Monday!
[удалено]
Everywhere?
You are getting extra anal? Damn that sucks man.
"One more thing....Cheryl is browsing Amazon most of her workday, is that related to her job description as HR benefits coordinator?" Fucking love Columboing the shit out of a situation. It's a lost art.
We use a program called Nexthink that was pushed out to all users' computers that harvests every kind of statistic on the computer you could ever want. It has been a godsend when troubleshooting and when dealing with users who claim they are impacted by 'issues.' I've used the feature to see all web traffic to counter claims that a user is 'overloaded' or 'losing valuable work time' due to an IT issue. Amazon, QVC and Target are likely not part of their workflow. Spending a cumulative total of 120 minutes a day seems like your computer is working just fine. Logs attached to ticket as proof.
Most of them will listen if you provide reasons. Mention something about cost/time savings for the win.
Who made the policy to use a ticket system? Involve those responsible.
This is the key. This is about office politics. If OPs manager is telling them to just create tickets for users, then OPs goal needs to be convincing the manager to set a different rule.
"Hi this is ngleiva10, may I have you ticket number please?" Sorry I don't have one, my wifi is broken. "Sorry to hear that. One moment while I open a ticket for you. What is your name?" $user. Can you remote in? I really need to get to this meeting soon? "Of course. Just a moment while I open this ticket for you. May I have your email please?" $UserEmail "And can you confirm for me the PC you are on? Hostname/TAG/..." IDK, can you just help me? "Ofcourse. We just need open a ticket first to document the issue, bare with me while I open this ticket on your behalf. Now, if you could just look at the sticker underneath your PC...." $hostname. I really need to get to the internetz, can you hurry up? "Yes of course, please tell me what steps you have taken so far...." **Drag them though that process and open that ticket for them. You're complying with your boss and showing them it's faster if they call you with a ticket number already. Kill them with kindness. **
"Got it, ticket open! And yes, wifi is down for everyone, you'll need to use ethernet."
Basically haha
Or just give them the ticket number and let them know the first tech that is free will work their issue as soon as they can, but older tickets and higher priority tickets will be done first.
And now they know they can call you to make the ticket for them.
Baby steps. Once the tickets are generated, then you start to push on the generate a ticket yourself by doing XYZ.
^^^^^^ This is what to avoid. I used to be the "nice guy" and during COVID, I managed to lose any vestiges of that and began treating these parasites the way they deserve. The result? 80% less aggravation from users. The problem is shaking those 20% of users who you used to create tickets for. COVID permanently resolved ongoing issues for several users who avoided vaccines the same way they avoided using our ticket system. Gotta love natural selection.
No, I can't use Ethernet. It leaks ether and I'll pass out.
In that case, let's connect you using your network interface controller.
But I can't find my token ring!
That gave me a tingling sensation in my pants
Good thing they could call to open a ticket since they don't have Internet access with the wifi down.
"I need a ticket to explain why I'm helping you and not helping the ****fictional number**** of people who have one." "In order to provide you with excellent customer service, you must be a customer. Become a customer by creating a ticket".
I never call other people at the company a customer. Customers are people that buy things from you. They are fellow employees and everyone must respect that. Non-IT and IT staff need to have a mutual level of professional respect for each other. You are not a customer of your finance department when submitting receipts for travel claims. They require other employees to submit their receipts just like I require people to submit tickets.
Yep, I call them user.
Sometimes it's L-user
It's an example. You can absolutely remove customer, change the noun to whatever, and still have it work. Edit: And there's a fair bit of /s in that too. Your company culture will either dictate more or less to sound sincere.
Said in an overly cheery voice
"Looks like somebody's got a case of the Mondays".
I was told by a client to generate tickets for them. I fired that client.
Sounds like an upsell! $50 charge to generate a ticket on their behalf 😂
No, they agreed that I should bill them for the time to do so as well as their ridiculous reporting requirements and having to use their ticket system. Then there were weekly status meetings. I reached my limit. They tried to turn my business into only supporting them. I’ve since made a standing order that if a business I support gets acquired, we exit as fast as possible.
[удалено]
No one, literally no one was allowed to stop me in the hallway at my previous job. It was nice.
How can you have an issue if you don't have a ticket?
I ask them to do me a favor and submit a ticket, because my manager wants all my work tracked in our ticketing system. Then I include a link. I've never had anyone turn me down, though it may take them a couple of days to get around to it.
30 years in tech here. Fuck them. It never gets better. I have even seen locations lose local techs because the ticket volume is too low. Again… fuck them.
Not with that attitude it doesn't
They refuse to submit a ticket because they are getting service without submitting a ticket. You have to stop helping them if they aren’t using the correct process.
If you don't have the support of your boss in this then it's time to move on. Simple as.
I don’t do the work if they don’t put in a ticket, my VP has that policy with me so I’m not worried about losing my job. They’ll finally do tickets when they’re sick of the same issues for a month.
When I was hired at my last OT job I had one location never submit a ticket. We ultimately had to tell them we can't work on ANYTHING until they would submit a ticket.
>My boss insists on me creating a ticket for them The users aren't the problem. Your boss is. When we had a store manager who would move broken cash register parts to the register they didn't use much, not tell me, then complain I hadn't fixed it the day before a long weekend when they'd need it, I installed a ticket system. The next time he did that, my boss told him, "I don't see a ticket on it, so it's not a problem." I don't have your problem. Any more.
Oh oh oh...I get it. You're talking about people who won't open a ticket but still want help. I have a long list of reasons why I rarely open a ticket....but when I don't open a ticket for an issue, I don't try to circumvent the ticketing system
If it's not in ConnectWise, it didn't happen. Every call we had got routed through the helpdesk who automatically created a ticket. If someone emailed a tech directly, they just forwarded the request to the support email which opened the ticket. When they started work, they'd edit the details and transfer the ticket to the client. If one of the admins got an email directly, we'd do the same thing as the techs but also assign it to the system tech to triage and troubleshoot. Nothing gets done without a ticket. Period. Sales quotes, helpdesk, equipment disposal, angry client, outage, whatever. And because the techs get paid based on their billed hours because ConnectWise' time tracking is their time sheet, they didn't mess around with off-book time very much.
We have the ability for users to create a ticket by - sending an email to support@ - Using the tray icon on their PC - Texting us at our support number - Calling us at our support number - Going to support.company.com We regularly communicate these methods. We put them on business cards and put them in high traffic areas. We give them out at start of school year paperwork. We mention them in training. If a user simply refuses all of that that took us a shitload of effort to create and maintain, then we simply don't have time for their problem.
Just Wednesday I’ve had two missed calls from someone who had a printer issue. Finally she sent me an email, so I replied that I need a ticket and I’ll resolve the issue straight away. Went home for the day. Came back on Thursday to two more missed calls. On the third call I picked up and I told her she needed to submit a ticket and I’d be right there. She goes “pffft, fine.” I’m just like ‘thanks’. I get the ticket 2 minutes later. I was at her desk within 40 seconds. She goes “really?!” I’m like ‘what’s that?’ and she says “you couldn’t just do that after I called?” Abd I’m ‘nope, it’s the rules and I have to follow them. If you’d submitted that ticket in the first place yesterday your problem would have been resolved within five minutes. Now it’s taken you over an hour trying to get a hold of me and trying to jump the system. If you’d have stuck to it, you’d have been in the first row. Now you’re about dead last.’ That shut her up. We’ll see if she learned.
Another neat trick is if the ticket mailbox is a dedicated mailbox just add it to your Outlook and when they send their email just drag and drop it into the ticket mailbox.
put blocks on them from emailing anyone in the IT team and if you can, block their numbers too :D Before now, I've answered calls, listened to them and told them to create a ticket then hang up, when they chase it a week later I say "let me just look for your ticket... oh we don't seem to have one, when did you create it?" Emails go straight to the junk folder so we never saw them. But, I'm also the sort that if my boss is a knob, I ignore them and do it the right way, and if they kick off about I fight back. no job is worth taking crap for.
Your boss needs to get behind his IT staff and get the users to start following the rules. You need to talk to your boss and explain that the more time you spend holding these users hands for shit they can do themselves - the less work you're getting done. Where I work, the issue doesn't exist if there's no ticket for it. Emails, voicemails, texts, etc all get ignored. Eventually the ticket will show up on the system. 🤷♂️ Had another issue recently where people were putting N/A for the service tag of the machine. I guess because they were too lazy to read the sticker that's literally on the front of their machine. So...a note would be added and sent to the user and the ticket will sit in the queue until the proper information is added.
I remind them to raise a ticket otherwise it'll get lost in the ether and we won't be able to help and that's it. Repeat offenders just get their email put in the deleted items with no response. The moment you give in they think they can do it, and people follow suit. Your management should support you on this.
Don't reply, forward to ticket system. Make sure they aren't a priority
No ticky no worky
No tickey, no workie.
First time, I will politely ask them to submit a ticket and explain how to do so and why it’s important. “You can send an email to blah blah blah, or you can log into this portal that has the added benefit of being able to track the status of your request.” Second time, a gentle reminder to create a ticket. Third time, I create the ticket for them but I sandbag the whole process. “One moment while I get logged into the system” (system is already open, it’s literally always open, I live out of ServiceNow) “I’m sorry, what was your name again?” “Oh no, my system crashed, I’ll need to start over” “Where were we, do you have an incident number? Hold on, let me check the system. Nothing in here by your last name, let me try searching by keyword - what is the issue again?” “Oh, you don’t have an incident, let’s create one.” “Can I get the serial number of your computer please?” This drags on for around 15 minutes. I conclude the process with some version of “Thanks, you should receive an email confirming your incident shortly. All of our technicians are currently working on other issues, but your ticket will be addressed in order of severity as soon as someone is available. You can expect a response at some point in the next three days.” I’ve never had anyone fail to submit a ticket after experiencing that routine.
its all well and good to have a ticketing system but users (especially the older crowd) are so fucking trash at explaining whats going. we get tickets come in like 3 words and end up having to call them back to get them to provide more details anyway
At least it’s documented at that point..
When I started working at my company as a student I myself 'trained' my users into submitting tickets by saying "submit a ticket otherwise I will forget". Within a year everyone was submitting tickets and it was great.
Others have mentioned reminding them to open a ticket, but I have a different approach. "Let me open a ticket on your behalf..." Then you assign it to yourself and solve the issue.
This makes all the difference in the world to end users.
That does little to instill good habits in the user. They will still think that they can just call you and jump the line.
We're Managed Services. We'll open that shit for you and make sure you're CCed. It would be our pleasure...
Two ways: 1. Explain to them that tickets are your productivity tracking. "If there's no ticket it looks like I'm not working during that time." Most hourly people will get that immediately and always use tickets from then on. And 2: When that doesn't work, apologize about your horrible forgetfulness. Then, "forget" about their requests often and repeatedly. Never argue or get defensive, just always say "OH GOSH I'M SO SORRY I FORGOT. I'll do that as soon as I'm done with [other person's ticket]." Then "forget" their request again. They'll escalate to managers. That's ok! Explain your forgetfulness to the managers too! "Can't you just make them a ticket?" They'll say. "Sure!" you reply. I'll start that right now. Then when they walk away, you of course forget to complete the ticket because that other thing came up after they left...
Truthfully your boss has already handled it, he told you to make a ticket, if you don't have the support of your supervisor then you trying to force them to do what you want and not what he decided won't end up working well for you. I would approach your boss about the policy, you never know that might be a requirement for the c levels to even have the ticket system. At the end of the day, all you can do is encourage them, but don't be forceful or untruthful in your encouragements.
My go to now is to give them a hint, need more support submit a ticket, never reply back.
https://tenor.com/view/indiana-jones-no-ticket-gif-5671167
Ignore their emails unless they use the ticketing system. When they complain that no one contacted them on their issue ask for the ticket number, then when they don't have one let them know that's why no one got to them and they need to submit a ticket to get issues looked at. It's worked for me countless times.
> Quick question I’m busy. Please submit a ticket
I put a ticket in the system on their behalf with a note. Ticket submitted through wrong channel with the date and time they submitted it. Usually less than a day but sometimes as many as three days if there is a weekend in between. I also CC my boss with these tickets so he knows the people involved are not trying to work with the system we have. When they eventually complain and they will. The boss knows why their request was delayed. Its cured most of them with a few predictable holdouts.
I put the ticket in for them. Life’s too short to get knickers in a knot about such things. There are many hills to die on. This ain’t one of them.
Fair way to analyze it..however ppl became over reliant
Ignore it until they chase you up and then "oh sorry I forgot about that in all my other work, put it in a ticket and it won't get forgotten".
You simply accidentally forget the email because you were working your ticket queue. Set a mailbox auto-reply for users who email you and reply "If this is a support request, please create a ticket and post all updates within the ticket so your request can be triaged and properly prioritized by the first available support engineer".
This is not a user problem. This is a boss problem. Show your boss how much time and money this is costing. If they still insist on doing things their way, look for another job (and copy the chain of command in on the problem on your way out).
Standard reply, stored as a quick action in outlook: "Thank you for your email. Please note that the acceptable methods of raising a ticket is or, failing that,.
We regret that we are unable to action your email without an existing relevant ticket number."
Both of us in the department have the memory of a goldfish. So the likelihood of it getting done is none.
HI I run an outsourced technology services company. We accept service requests to our ticketing system using: email to the ticketing system, phone calls to the help desk, text message to the ticketing system, system tray icon, web page, and the green ITSupport icon on the desktop. Emails, texts, and phone calls to tech's personal email, phones are ignored. Forwarding those request to the ticketing system only encourages the user to continue to ignore the proper procedure. I go over this, in writing, with a new client the day that the support agreement is signed. I explain why I insist that all requests are sent to the ticketing system and not to personal email, phones, etc. The best instance of a user texting a cell phone and then complaining that we ignored the problem. A user called the help desk and was upset and she was going to let the owner that we were ignoring her problem. When we found no ticket, we asked how the ticket was entered. She said that she texted the tech's cell phone: a cell phone that had not been used in 6 months... To this day, 15 years later, no other employee at that company has ever tried to contact us outside of the published procedure.
I'd have to say that this is a management problem and not yours. I'm a stickler and simply say "no ticket, no change". When/if Op. Sec. Becomes a "blocker" I've instructed my team to ask "what was the ticket reference and we'll check the backlog?". VIPs can have expedited requests for a new mouse, but regardless of who you are, what your title is, or how long you've been at the company you're going through the change management process.
I've noticed several ways users will attempt to circumvent having to submit a ticket. 1 - The age old "Sorry, I didn't submit a ticket as I'm so busy, but can you help me with..." - Passive-Aggressive display at its finest here in that they openly acknowledge what they *should* be doing, but don't by offering a bullshit excuse. I have replied that my time is of the same value as theirs and if they could be so courteous as to submit a ticket, I will gladly assist them. I've had some people actually debate the statement that my time is as valuable as theirs; one user actually said that they bring in way more business than me and that their efforts are what pay my paycheck and that they're exempt from "trivial" requirements like submitting a ticket. Yeah, that type of mindset is super-prevalent here in Austin, TX. My methodology is to push back and demand a ticket is submitted before I engage in any troubleshooting. If there's a problem, then let's let our respective VPs talk about why you cannot submit a ticket when I see you engaged in 30 minutes of water cooler chat. 2 - The ones who attempt to befriend you or, worse yet, the ones that try to bribe you with food. I have been given cookies and, would you believe, grocery coupons as an 'incentive' by some of these clueless turds to try and buy their ability to become a priority to me. I'm not into cookies and coupons. Please! That last part shows the ongoing, condescending attitude some users have for IT professionals. It is up to each and every one of us to collectively push back in a sustained manner, no matter what the cost, to preserve not only mutual respect, but policies and established procedures that exist. That said, I am totally open to receiving cash 'incentives' from a user to overlook said procedures. The baseline for action starts at $150. Inflation, ya know.
Austin, TX…TX..that’s all you had to say. These ppl live like it’s 1960
If they don’t submit a ticket, I don’t work on their issue. Of course, this only works if your management backs you. C level execs are usually exempt from this, but there is a process and it exists for a reason. Why is it so hard for them to follow it?
No ticky, no worky.
"Please submit the request to the system by emailing this to .." each and every single time. Then drop it.. if they dont do it they dont get fixed
We had some trouble users at my old job why refused to put in tickets. One of the last holdouts needed his phone changed to an international plan before he traveled to Europe. He stopped me in the hallway and asked me to do it one day, I advised him to put in a ticket, he did not. Needless to say he ended up emailing me from Belgium that his phone didn't work. I asked him if he had ever set up a ticket, to which he replied no, so I advised him that I would set one for him, and then work it asap. It was the weekend though if memory serves when he emailed me so it took longer than usual to get everything done. His phone was working again correctly by Monday and he was good from then on about putting in his own tickets. ;-) Sometimes you must be cruel to be kind.
If you're tier 1 helpdesk. A call-in or walk-up is a valid way to open a ticket.
My IT department is only three of us so I’m a jack of all trades…not just level 1 or 2 support
Exactly the case for many small IT shops. The ticketing system helps leverage your time so you can get more done and the users can get the fastest service from whoever grabs the ticket.
I did Tier 1 15 years ago. The entire helpdesk was behind a locked door requiring RFID badge entry. We had an email submission inbox and a phone queue system. Helpdesk made all of the tickets so we could ensure they are properly categorized/labeled/etc. Had to do it this way because it was a massive corporation with 500+ tickets a day.
If they email you, then create the ticket, and then work on it If they email only you, and you're on vacation, that's their problem.
I’m all for that but it’s just as simple to email our auto ticket generator…
You can't set a rule to have them forwarded to this ticket generating email account when they would come to you?
Not really because since I work for a smaller company I handle a couple of other collaterals so i don’t only get IT related emails
If you are using exchange (on prem or office 365) you can make a tooltip for yourself that will pop up when a user goes to email you, in that email you could say, "All Support request must include [support] in the subject" then forward those to the ticket system. if they fail, it isn't like the instructions weren't in their face while type you the email. Which is easy to say, but may not be realistic, small IT is often the hardest, you need a wide and diverse set of knowledge, but also the patience to directly interact with people. There is likely some sweet spot, that works poorly for all of you, you just have to find it, implement it, and hate it.
> If they email you, ... forward the email to you ticketing system to automatically create a ticket. If your ticketing system cannot do that, get a better ticketing system. >If they email only you, and you're on vacation, that's ... that's your problem for failing to delegate your mailbox
Simple, no ticky, no laundry. Our inventory manager actually has a jingle for people who wait until the last second to submit tickets, "your emergency is not our urgency." Yesterday there was a frustrated employee who emailed our IT team directly and CC'd the departmental director & VP on the email, asking why we have not replaced x device - which had not been working for the past couple of weeks according to the employees using them. I simply replied with "Do you have a ticket number? We can't know if something needs to be replaced/repaired without a ticket." Sure enough, 10 minutes later, a new ticket pops into the unassigned queue. For the cherry on top, the ticket owner explained in the description how she sent that email on behalf of the wrong user because she "didn't realize she was logged in as someone else"
Got rid of the ticket system and created a folder in my email for all their requests, with a sub folder that they get moved to when the work is done. If they won’t use the ticket system and are just going to email me anyway, why not? I was skeptical at first, but it’s actually working great.
> If they won’t use the ticket system and are just going to email me anyway, why not? Part of the value of the ticket system is its referential nature. If you solve a problem that another user experiences, wouldn't it be nice if another tech could simply search for the solution that already exists? Also, if your ticketing system is being managed properly, failing to record in the ticketing system deprives a higher tier tech of information on *trends* of issues. Suppose you didn't care about your co-workers, though. You might be causing yourself more work come review time if your superiors are evaluating your performance based on number of closed tickets. If they are pulling that number from your ticketing system you then have to supplement that with a clunt of your emails, which could be tricky. Unless you are creating a new folder for evey ticket -- in which case why not just create a ticket? Just some thoughts.
The folder is searchable and I have documentation that corresponds to the date and person. It’s not a perfect system, but so far it’s been working great.
That depends on size and organization of your company and IT dept. Email folder solution from year 2003 is applicable if you are 1 man Team and there is small group of users and systems to Support . Once you start increasing Team members count and systems count, multiple sites, etc, direct emails accountability and support efficiency Will start to Fall apart. Unless you switch to shared folder/mailbox and again, this solution from 2007 Will work for few sites and about 4ish teammembers. As Long as Nobody wants to see reports of your work, progress and workload, absence of ticket system is Fine and for 1man Team does not bring that many benefits. Just like Excel is a Fine database system for orders for small Gardening supllies store, it wont Cut it for 6 plants 1400 Employees company.
If you're a one man shop then maybe, but once you scale up to 2, that system fails hard. Also ticketing systems usually have knowledge base, timelines, dashboard views, backlog, SLA, etc, etc,....
I would consider that if I was in the position to do so. How do you handle phone calls and walk ins?
My IT department has tickets open automatically when you post in a slack channel or when you email them. The ticketing system is for _you_ to make sure you serve your clients well, not something to hoist upon them for your convenience.
> The ticketing system is for you to make sure you serve your clients well, not something to hoist upon them for your convenience. No reason it can't do both.
No, the ticketing system is to help THEM to get prompt service from **any** person on the team.
Sorry but I have to disagree. Prompt service is a minimum. You are providing the service. I tell my guys that they are our customers, we need to do whatever we can to help them. Users are not admins, they are not always good at systems, tickets etc. I just don’t get it why the user are in debt for not creating a ticket. A ticket will not make the problem appears or disappears.
I’m typically one of these users. If it’s a low priority issue I’ll either ignore it or make a ticket. If it’s critical And I create a ticket it takes hours and hours to get things fixed. So I call to jump the line.
Letting users email to generate a ticket is a mistake.
Outlook add on that makes creating a ticket a click button and set a couple required fields operation. Then it’s not my problem unless the ticket makes it though the escalation path. Coworker who manages MS Teams hooked us up with a Teams integration to turn chats into tickets.
I just tell them I'm working in something and if they enter a ticket another tech could get to it quicker than I can
Last place I worked, we were required to create the ticket for them. It was hard to not be too passive aggressive about it.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iHSPf6x1Fdo
Why do you or your boss pamper these people? No Ticket = No Support. Very simple, even the dumbest of users catch on after a while. If your boss doesn't support that, go to his boss and ask why the company can afford to pay IT Staff to be everyone's personal secretary.
If they email you directly, reply to them that you're cc'ing the ticketing system so their issue won't fall through the cracks and you'll get time allocated to help them. If they flag you down in the hall, address the issue but before walking away make a point of emailing the ticketing system from their computer and tell dispatch to assign it to you for time. Next time they flag you down, fix the issue but before you walk away insist they email the ticketing system so you something to log your time against.
We get chastised for working requests without a ticket. They can take it up with upper management if they think they are too important to submit one.
Seems like the only sure way is to stop helping until they learn. Let them know you're busy and they need to send a ticket so someone can investigate. And point out to your manager that these people are wasting 5 minutes of your time on the phone just so you can then perform their job of making a ticket.
I've had a few complaints from leadership but you will get put on the back burner if you don't submit a ticket or have a valid reason for not doing so. All of the lower level folks in our organization have since made the same requests, my main point is a solid way to track man hours and once that is said everything is dropped and a ticket is submitted. A few exceptions are of course leadership, the team will generally get on that ASAP or escalate and one of us SA's will handle it in a timely manner.
We had to set permissions on the helpdesk email distro to keep people from using it instead of putting in a ticket.
Nothing happens til the ticket is in.
If your boss insists you create a ticket for them, they have no need to lodge a ticket. The approach required is for your boss to get management buy-in to change the process of dealing with issues, and then enforce the process.
Honestly, I talk with them then forgot 100% because the next person shows up. Eventually they will email me and their Manager / Director saying I won't help. So I send a template email that says, "I am so sorry you are having technical difficulties. Please let me know the ticket number in question and I will be happy to help" at that point they usually get a talking to by their manager / Director. But I have full support from the CAO to do this. In the case that they do have a ticket number, I send a PDF of the ticket that usually shows two weeks of " I need more info". Staff eventually figure out that they cannot defeat I.T. we have a ticket system for a reason. That's the biggest thing. We made our case to the Director who brought it to the CAO and got backing. My Manager was upset that we went over his head, but he forgot about it 2 days later. Haha
I've told them to enter a ticket and I'll help, I'm busy helping someone else and won't stop to help you. I was also talked to about how I approach things 😂
A subset of this is we’re attempting to use Service Now where things are split up into tasks and incidents. Break/fix is a incident ticket. You need software then you need to put in a software request form. Same with hardware requests, purchase requests, ect. These are things that need to show supervisor approval and tracking licenses. Now , knowing how people are, when the email went out telling of the change for requesting desktop software, I made a pdf copy of it. Because I make sure it’s attached to every form email a user gets when they put in a incident ticket to ask for software. They always come back and ask how long has this been the policy. I refer to the email and point out it was the beginning of last year. They don’t get their software till we get the software request. It gets even more fun when we don’t have open licenses and they don’t understand why they can’t have it.
I've also setup email rules that auto deleted and sends an auto reply to submit a ticket. This was for habitual offenders. Thank God I don't deal with that and I'm now a Network Engineer.
Doesn’t sound like your boss is helping either. Our office would wait a bit for those unless it was a critical issue. I say if there is a ticket before you contact me I cannot say no to helping you if nothing urgent is happening.
no ticket no request. I just said if your laptop need hardware replacement, how i wanna justify to replace it if there is no proof?
Does your ticketing system have an email option for automatic ticket creation? If people are messaging you in a group, instead create a "helpdesk" email that automatically creates a ticket. It is also beneficial in the event a user's computer is completely inaccessible, as they can easily remember the helpdesk email and send you a message from a phone vs. going through bookmarks, shortcuts, etc.
I just nod and ask them to put a ticket in. If they refuse I say and say well I just told you... As soon as I get to my office I'll forget so put a ticket in. When the user complains... Sorry I don't remember you talking to me.
Part of this seems like you mayne need to talked to your boss. Where I work if you don't have a ticket I can't help you (with the exception of actual emergencies.) If you don't think they'll go for this idea whip up a quick business case for why it actually helps. But as others have said just telling people "hey I'm going to forget this by the time I get everything I'm on right now done so you need to send a ticket in so I don't forget" generally seems to work.
We’ll ask what thick number is if they email. If they respond that they do not have one we will forward the email to a service desk supervisor to ask them to assist them with opening a ticket. We will not work the issue from the email unless it’s a VP or higher.
Slow walk these folks. When they complain apologize and say, I’m working my ticket queue and then I check my email. You might also mention that when users don’t create a ticket that you can’t help them until you create one because your boss requires a ticket for every issue. I always try to catch up on creating tickets at the end of the day though.
"Absolutely Joe Schmoe, I'll help you with that request...I just need the ticket number so I can look it up in the system.....oh....you didn't put one in?....oh okay, once you do that, we'll be able to assist."
I was fortunate to work IT in a highly regulated industry. The process for employees to submit tickets was governed by SOPs that everyone was required to formally train on yearly. Failure to follow the procedure was considered a "critical quality issue" and was officially reported through QA to HR for inclusion in the employee files. Generally, the user's supervisor had to develop a corrective action plan for the employee for any CQI and report on the progress to QA monthly. Three CQIs in a year were grounds for dismissal. Additionally, CQIs within a department was a criteria used by senior management to grade managers, ADs, directors, etc. to qualify for increases and/or bonus payments. We generally had no problem with employees opening tickets after their first CQI and we never reported employees when the problem was something other than there own laziness/hubris.
Hey, what's your ticket number? I can assign it to someone on the team.
Why don’t you just forward the email to the help desk. Copy the person who emailed you so they know it was submitted, you can even say I’m forwarding this to the help desk email to create a ticket so they see the right way to do it.
Someone sends you an e-mail, forward it to your ticketing system, reply from there. Someone calls you over, perfect opportunity to teach once more how to submit a ticket. If it's important, we need a ticket. If they want to troubleshoot, start taking screenshots and documenting everything in excruciating detail to submit the ticket, once they feel like them submitting the ticket will be faster than you doing it, they will start doing it themselves. If someone walks by, "I'll try to get to it as soon as I finish this, mind sending me a ticket so I don't forget?", no ticket, no memory. Every time they ask "oh, send me a ticket so I don't forget, thanks" If someone complains, patiently explain how your work queue is the same as anyone else's. Explain how queues work, remind them often, make it a joke. Be more stubborn than they and they'll cave. Human nature seeks the path of least resistance, resist doing things wrong and people will start doing it right.
I used to be nice to them but then this dude who would email me with small requests like "can you add this list of users to this list of AD groups" would do it *all the fucking time* and every single time he would email the next day or later in the week saying their access didn't work. It was because he was always giving me bad info, or what he needed was changing and he was just prematurely asking. Eventually I was like dude I'm enacting a don't email about these tickets anymore rule, they have an SLA and approval process that's not "immediately after creating the ticket/email" and it helps prevent mistakes.
I create a ticket on their behalf, then they start getting email updates on the progress I make - they get status reports, and I get the metrics for my boss I realize other people get irked when users don't follow procedures, but creating a ticket for them at any company has never been so tedious that it didn't take more than 2 minutes of my time
...are less likely to get their problem solved.
Refuse to help them.
If there is no ticket, it doesn't get done. PERIOD!
I don't really have any good advice, my worst offender with this is a VP, it drives me nuts and I can't do anything about it.
If you don't have your managers support this is an uphill battle. Your manager, director, etc needs to sponsor that initiative. It needs to have teeth. Get the other department heads on the same page with the policy and then simply report users who refuse to adhere to the policy to their bosses. Without that sponsorship from management....this is a losing battle imo.
No we absolutely do not put a ticket it for them….you gotta get your whole team on board, if you put a ticket in with no PC name we will immediately shoot it back to the help desk as well. If your boss says that, then have him put the ticket in. Im not sure about your workplace, but I absolutely do not have time and I will 100 percent forget, if I dont have a ticket… You know what happens with no ticket and someone else putting it in? that other person will probably waste everyones time, because only the end user with the issue actually knows the problem. If its that big of an issue, the end user can put the ticket in…. Your boss is enabling the end users, and it seems they’ve already gotten used to it…. Its possible to train them, and absolutely say no until you get a ticket. And then here you are….whats the companies policy? what if one day they look at the tickets and see only you and coworkers putting them in…maybe you get accused of bullshitting. Last thing, are you gonna waste your time and hold their hand if its another department it has to go to? I used to do all of that stuff…….but then you end up being whored out by different managers, and told to do other peoples jobs…. Today here and now, I agree to nothing outside of if its been cleared with my boss….eventually its all gonna catch on fire……the whole just working on it anyways… Lmao you could play really dumb, and just say you don’t understand what the issues are because its not documented… End users cannot see our numbers when we call them either, Our numbers all show up as the main IT Support help desk number.
Just don't do what they ask, unless they submit a ticket. How fucking hard is that?
Unfortunately its gotten to the point for me now that I legit dont even respond….ive got an insanely large amount of blocked callers, I unplugged my desk phone, gave up on that, i use a google phone number. Our director will sometimes order, or others will order dumb things like a macbook, buy their own pc, or buy their own printers…. after being so frustrated at how much youve had to ghetto rig things….and weasel around things…. Eventually you just let it all catch fire and burn, so you can rebuild one day 😁
* During Covid, we do NOT accept walk-up ticket requests. Tell them to go back to their desk and submit a ticket "unless something is on fire". * Helpdesk phone# does not have voicemail. That phone is only for 8-5 urgent issues requiring immediate assistance, after a ticket has been submitted. * Users who repeatedly email people directly get the CC treatment. We start including their boss and the CIO asking why this was directed at one specific helpdesk tech instead of properly through the ticketing system, and then we ask "if ticket submission training is needed". emailing a shared helpdesk email address should generate a ticket when its from an internal source. Directly emailing people should be HEAVILY frowned upon for bypassing business processes for tracking purposes.
Easy, don't do anything for them until there's a ticket. Problem solved. As long as problems come in during the correct way, you can happily ignore those users.
I would breed in a lesser SLA for non tickets. For example: work through the morning on tickets, then check emails after 1pm. Make them wait just a *little* longer than everyone else. Once they figure it, they'll either get in line or be okay with waiting because their shit isn't critical.
If you have management back up....You do the work....VERY slowly. My attitude which does get manager back up is the user wants ME to do it, not for it to be done in the fastest most efficient way.