TrainBuff
The New Haven Railroad
Premium
join:2003-05-01
Buffalo, NY
clubs:  | reply to Progz
Re: [Cable TV] Western New York Upgrade?
Hob is usually never wrong! |
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BurntCricket
Gotta Do What Ya Gotta Do
Premium
join:2000-09-02
Here
clubs:
 ·RoadRunner Cable
| This is mostly because he doesn't say anything until he "Has his ducks in a row", for months people asked "when is this or that going to happen" and his answer almost always was "I can't say" I took this to mean if he wanted to keep his job, or I am not privy to that information.
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He doesn't have issues, he has a subscription. |
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hobgoblin
Sortof Agoblin
Premium
join:2001-11-25
Orchard Park, NY
clubs:
| said by BurntCricket  :This is mostly because he doesn't say anything until he "Has his ducks in a row", for months people asked "when is this or that going to happen" and his answer almost always was "I can't say" I took this to mean if he wanted to keep his job, or I am not privy to that information. Posting Corporate information in this forum is not recomended ever. I said on many occasions that dates are never set in stone thus coming in here and giving dates that won't happen just destroys my credibility.
If it was revealable I revealed it.
Hob
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"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
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BurntCricket
Gotta Do What Ya Gotta Do
Premium
join:2000-09-02
Here
clubs: | Yeah I should have added, when you DID have public information to disclose you did.
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He doesn't have issues, he has a subscription. |
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Champer
join:2004-04-07
Buffalo, NY
clubs:
| said by BurntCricket :Yeah I should have added, when you DID have public information to disclose you did. No offense to anyone here, but, as you said, IT'S PUBLIC INFORMATION!!!! so therefore, the only thing Hob was doing was making people lazy by not looking the information up themselves. Too each his own I guess, I rather enjoyed the information as well as we NEVER got ANY information in the call center as an AGENT OF THE COMPANY, who is SUPPOSED TO GET THAT INFO BEFORE THE PUBLIC DOES!!!!!!! (I hope your higher ups are reading Hob) and I'm sure that hasn't changed in the last 4 months either. Those agents are like mushrooms, left in the dark and fed $h!t. No sir, I don't miss it. 
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No animals were harmed in the transmission of this post, but the pitbull living next door is living on borrowed time i tell you! |
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hobgoblin
Sortof Agoblin
Premium
join:2001-11-25
Orchard Park, NY
clubs:
| "we NEVER got ANY information in the call center as an AGENT OF THE COMPANY, who is SUPPOSED TO GET THAT INFO BEFORE THE PUBLIC DOES!!!!!!! "
Intesting, the information was there all the time...In most cases you just had to read it. One day you will understand how hard it is to put information in the hands of 800 people at the same time.
Hob
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"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Champer
join:2004-04-07
Buffalo, NY
clubs:
| said by hobgoblin :One day you will understand how hard it is to put information in the hands of 800 people at the same time. Hob Yea, because a simple email, or a posting in SOS would NEVER work would it? C'mon, the information was never there and there was never an attempt to put it out because, as you said "it's too hard to send out a mass email to someone, or make a simple post on an internal website."
Please, Hob, don't try to talk down to me as if I know nothing of what you do. The fact that the information was never posted, never sent in email, never communicated in ANY way to ANY of the agents, so the only thing we could do was go by either rumor in the call center, or drill someone higher up to get the information. Why do you think some of us were on mailing lists that we were never supposed to be on? some day you will figure out that your way of communicating information is ALL wrong. 
Sorry to go off topic like that, but I cannot STAND to be talked down to.
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No animals were harmed in the transmission of this post, but the pitbull living next door is living on borrowed time i tell you! |
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SkellBasher
Yes Sorto, I'll take my Prozac
join:2000-10-22
North Tonawanda, NY
| No disrespect Champer, but I have to side with Hob on this one. I just got done having this same argument with 15 techs in my call center. We posted internally for an entry level position in network ops. This was posted on a board, and emailed out to all departments.
Our tier two tech agents swore on their grave that they didn't know anything about this position, and had never been told. The photo of the posting on the job board in their cafeteria? 'We didn't see it.' The email that went to two separate email aliases that those folks are on? 'We never got it.' Even after being presented with the emails pulled directly from their mailboxes, they accused us of putting them there after the fact.
People see what they want to see, and hear what they want to hear. I won't deny that at times when I was there, things simply weren't passed out, and he had to resort to alternative means to get information we needed. But for the vast majority of things, the info is there.
The information food chain should flow down the chain from upper management, to call center management, down to the team supervisor level. I'd venture to guess that if half of the sups that were there in my day are still there now, you can thank them for not getting things down to the agents. They were always bad at that. |
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BurntCricket
Gotta Do What Ya Gotta Do
Premium
join:2000-09-02
Here
clubs:
·RoadRunner Cable
| reply to Champer
I always thought the information was kept "secret" so it wouldn't get in the "wrong hands" before they were ready, I am 100% sure some did receive information long before the general staff and public so they could prepare, its called "Need to Know", you don't need to, so you don't know.
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He doesn't have issues, he has a subscription. |
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hobgoblin
Sortof Agoblin
Premium
join:2001-11-25
Orchard Park, NY
clubs:
| reply to Champer
The worst thing you can do is overcommunicate and communicate information that can and will change several times. This was seen in the LA Migration. Lots of information was communicated in advance to agents and the customer base and then subsequently it changed several times.
Confusion reigned supreme at that point because people were all on different pages and the result was chaos.
I would much rather communicate information when I am sure its accurate even if that means communicating it at the last possible point.
From an HSI aspect within Adelphia we were supporting systems scattered across the whole of the USA. Changes made in Bumfluff PA had to go through several communication points before they even reached the call center. By the time they did reach us, several changes were following along behind!
The way TW is organized by division level makes communication somewhat easier as there are many less communication points.
I was not talking down to you at all. Most first level support agents feel they can run the business better than those trying to do it.
Hob
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"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
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MacLeech
The one and only
Premium
join:2001-07-14
SoCal
| reply to BurntCricket
A big issue with information dissemination is that most people only remember particular information that DIRECTLY affects their day to day life. They could be given a whole load of information and walk away with only one memorable item.
A constant stream of written or emailed info doesn't always help either.... soon it becomes just another pile of stuff to toss out or ignore because there's too much of it to read.
After awhile only the people DIRECTLY involved with upgrades or upcoming projects know any specific details. Everyone else who got the same info digests it down to "its coming in months" or "its coming tomorrow" and its "some new HSI tiers and HD channels" and tosses the rest of the info out.
Information overload is very real...
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Don't mind me, I'm just trying to help...
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Champer
join:2004-04-07
Buffalo, NY
clubs:
| reply to hobgoblin
said by hobgoblin :I was not talking down to you at all. Most first level support agents feel they can run the business better than those trying to do it. Hob Whoa whoa whoa there Hob, 1. I never said I could run that business any better, although I bet I could have kept it out of bankruptcy with ease. 2. You're doing it again with that simple statement. Apparently you will need to learn to talk to people on a level playing field in order to get respected anywhere, at least, that's the way I look at it.
Never have I talked down to someone, or thought they were beneath me, except for a certain T2 rep from Adelphia, who's name will remain Aaron...err...anonymous, YOU know who you are, you big tub o laughter you.  And you know what, it's gotten me a quite a few friends in high places, and quite a few in low places....where the whiskey drowns, and the beer chases my blues away.....sorry, daydream, anyway, that's the way I look at it.
to your point about the information changing before it gets to a call center.....well, that is hardly the agents fault, and definitely not the customers fault, so why should we take the brunt and basically lie to the customer. We, meaning any team I was on, was always told to do the best you can with the little information you got, which wasn't much, so therefore, we would....do the best we could, and THAT'S why you get people on here posting that tech support is a bunch of idiots and every time they call they get a different answer.
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No animals were harmed in the transmission of this post, but the pitbull living next door is living on borrowed time i tell you! |
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hobgoblin
Sortof Agoblin
Premium
join:2001-11-25
Orchard Park, NY
clubs:
1 edit | Champs,
You totally ignored all the points I made.
When the information is not available or available and subject to change it is DANGEROUS to give it to anyone.
"Why should we take the brunt and basically lie to the customer. We, meaning any team I was on, was always told to do the best you can with the little information you got, which wasn't much, so therefore, we would....do the best we could, and THAT'S why you get people on here posting that tech support is a bunch of idiots and every time they call they get a different answer."
Here is a problem. If there is no information to give the customer thats exactly what should be done, customers should be told there is no information. agents should not lie, and make stuff up because that is how the customer gets a different answer every time they call!
Hob
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"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Champer
join:2004-04-07
Buffalo, NY
clubs:
1 edit |
As for the information not being dealt out....well, you're dealing with rather smart agents, and those agents are your life blood, until the day comes when you take call, after call, after call from customers demanding answers about an outage, or a migration, or some other network issue, it is YOU who will never understand where I, and many others are coming from.
I have said my peace, I think it's time to move on, I'm going to the beach to gawk at half nude college women and get a darker tan, then maybe get into the jacuzzi for a nice soak.
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No animals were harmed in the transmission of this post, but the pitbull living next door is living on borrowed time i tell you! |
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SkellBasher
Yes Sorto, I'll take my Prozac
join:2000-10-22
North Tonawanda, NY
| said by Champer :As for the information not being dealt out....well, you're dealing with rather smart agents, and those agents are your life blood, until the day comes when you take call, after call, after call from customers demanding answers about an outage, or a migration, or some other network issue, it is YOU who will never understand where I, and many others are coming from. You're also dealing with some really dumb agents that have a hard time with basic instructions. I can't tell you how many times I received calls where a customer had been troubleshot for 30 to 45 minutes on a problem by a previous agent, except that when the account was pulled up, there was this LARGE message box that said not to troubleshoot, the modem was disabled by IPET.
For every intelligent agent who can properly process sensitive information, there are 3 no so intelligent agents that can't. I'm not saying they are stupid, but just that can't be given some types of information without messing it up.
And for the record, Hob and I both started at Adelphia ON THE PHONES. We worked back in the day when you had to deal with dial-return setups, non-DOCSIS areas, and VERY limited tools. We worked the phones when there were no TSRs to handle the simple calls, when there was one level of support : us. We didn't have the tools you worked with, but we helped provide the feedback to get some of those tools built. We worked through bi-weekly mail server problems, the Prestige Cable migration, and the original GTE purchase. We were front line support when Adelphia expanded too quickly, and was forced to resort to the DFW/Atlanta ATM cloud debacle.
Did I mention that we figured this all out ourselves? On a personal note, I identified the cause of some major Westminster, MD connectivity problems TWO MONTHS before it was acknowledged by the network operations group because they didn't understand the data I was passing along to them. For a LONG time, network issues were only discovered by the front line phone staff, not due to proactive checks by the people that were responsible.
So, my good sir, you are perfectly entitled to your opinion, but DO NOT accuse Hob of not having any ideas about the job that you did. He did it LONG before you did.
You chose to leave to pursue other endeavors. I respect that; so did I. Hob chose to stay, and frankly he has a better perspective on how things are then most of the people in that segment of the company right now, because he's been there, and done it at every level.
Enjoy the weather down there, and do share some spring break pics!! |
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Habermill
join:2006-05-25
Buffalo, NY
| I guess I created a fire storm by asking two simple questions. Unfortunately, I have to agree with Hob on this one also. You can get five different answers from five different workers at the call center. Either they don't read the directives or just plain forget.
I bet though Time Warner has to re-train many at the call centers to do it the Time Warner way rather than the old Adelphia type of responses. There is nothing worse than confusing the customer. A good case in point is the Time Warner pricing compared to the packaged Adelphia pricing. It would actually cost me more to switch from my current Adelphia package with Cable and High Speed to the current Time Warner pricing. To me, that is very confusing to the customer. |
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Realtech23
Premium
join:2006-03-27
Olean, NY
·RoadRunner Cable
1 edit | reply to Champer
Alright. With Adelphia Communication was EASY because everything was ONE standard. Email, Speeds, Billing. With Time Warner and being a Former Coudy Tech now that was confusing for Most. Different information for every area, no one knew where chains of command went for issues with customers. Maybe that has changed since the good old days of Coudersport closing but that is what i mean when i said i agree with Champer. I also agree with the information being there for us BUT only when your talking about it being ADELPHIA not Time Warner "power of the share holders" not of you.
Also on the last post you are right. Time Warner did have to retrain all techs to do it the Time Warner way because there is no set standard across the board. Every area gets different everything. Although when we exited they were trying to use Adelphia's platform to "standardize" email. Good Luck to all in your futures. I don't envy the job in front of a lot of you. How ever i do hope techs are reaping the benefits of having a person like Hob in that place.
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I am the Coyote |
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