Post #6
Date: 6/19 - 6/26
Activities: More Training Plus Tours
Technical Skills: AVAYA Phones and Chat Website
Reflection: I finally got to do more and learn more about the Chat and Phone systems at the SAS Help Desk instead of the "boring email-like" MIDAS tickets in HDO. Because our own phone systems hadn't been set up yet, we visited other people as they did phone duty. One of the people we visited was Jim. Jim has also been at SAS for a very long time. He gets to work super early, at 5 in the morning, then leaves to go home after lunch everyday. I learned that our help desk was international, so really early morning times for us were really just regular business hours for other places around the globe. Using a special adapter cable, we were able to hook up a second pair of headphones so that I could listen on Jim's conversations but the customer wouldn't know. I saw Jim fix people's passwords and also help someone by remotely logging into someone's computer, which was a super neat concept, which just goes to show, sometimes it's easier to show someone what you mean by doing it. Theoretically, anyone on the help desk team could take over someone's machine on the SAS network any time they wanted to, not that they did that of course. Most people are really nice and rarely get frustrated and yell at us when we're on the phone with them. However, some of them can be tricky cases if they aren't particularly technologically proficient. One woman didn't even know what a browser was...
You know those people who keep getting in trouble at school? They still exist in the workplace. I was first exposed to this when visiting with Debra, a master at controlling conversation but can really get fired up about certain subjects. I learned that there were certain people who would periodically call and chat with the ESD, and there were some regular's who always had the tricky problems or they often messed something up. When I saw Shauna's name light up on Debra's phone and hear her go, "Oh bless her heart," I knew she was one of those people (I would have many future run-ins with Shauna in chat). Speaking of chat, Vicki told me that their Chat site was actually an in-house tool that someone named Saat had created (his name is probably spelled wrong, sorry). Whenever someone typed something into the chat from the user's end (from our Service Desk website), there would be a dinging noise ringing on our end (that sounds eerily like the seatbelt sign on an airplane). The person's name would they appear red, whoever was on chat duty would click it and commence to help the person out, always ending the chat by creating a ticket, whether immediately closing it or sending it away.
My duties haven't really changed throughout the course of the internship. After the two-week training Alex and I, we were put onto the schedule and "thrown to the wolves" according to Vicki. It was exhilarating but stressful at the same time. I realized that I still didn't really have a firm grasp on where tickets went and I found myself constantly asking for help. But I kept at it, and I eventually got the hang of it. In terms of responsibilities, we did get to the point where Vicki trusted us to do phone duty. I politely declined, but Alex was more than happy to give it a shot, and I have to say, that boy is a natural at talking on the phone. Vicki also gave us the task of categorizing more than 1,500 tickets that weren't given a category. Alex and I finished it in less than 7 days. So even though no direct new responsibilities were given to us, I could totally feel Vicki trusting us more and more as the internship went on.
| My workspace (my computer is in chat) |
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