1. When We’re on Ticket Duty, What Are We On Duty For?
Most people have probably only ever filed a ticket, never worked one. And people who have worked tickets generally don’t file them lightly.
A ticket is a service bundled free with the product a customer paid for, dedicated to solving every kind of usage problem. It’s very common at cloud infrastructure vendors β IaaS, CDN, Domain, Container and so on. Can’t get it to work, file a ticket; it works but not as expected, file a ticket; it works as expected but you want something new, file a ticket.
You always run into all kinds of problems. The good side: beyond R&D, it’s a scenario where you actually reach customers, which helps you optimize and design the product and also broadens your domain knowledge around it. The bad side: it eats time β if it’s frequent, or only a few people can solve this class of problem, it can cut into R&D. Customers come first, after all: an urgent ticket matters more than R&D.
2. Problems at Different Difficulty Levels
- Known problems
Known problems are the easiest to solve. Whether or not the problem can be fixed outright, there’s always an answer to give.
- Usage problems
Usage problems usually mean the docs weren’t read carefully β or you could say the docs are unclear and the product isn’t friendly; either way, expectations aren’t met. Customers may even suspect a bug in the product, and sometimes they’re right.
- Vaguely described problems
The customer doesn’t understand the domain, and communication may carry gaps in meaning β mostly visible as the customer saying a pile of things that strike you as baffling. At this point you need to lead them along patiently: in what scenario, did what, wanted what, and what finally happened. It takes a series of exchanges to understand the situation, then answer each point one by one.
- Problems where the customer thinks the fault is yours
The hardest are problems the customer has already investigated. Being able to investigate without solving it means the customer has some grounding. And the actual fault is often in a place the customer believes is fine β while they steer clear of it and keep returning to the place they think is broken.
3. How to Handle a Ticket
- The customer is king
Whether or not you can help, stay respectful and polite.
- Learn as much context as you can
First, scope out the problem β that’s the key to solving it. Ask the customer what they did, and get clear on the background.
- Don’t take the customer’s word at face value
If you believe the customer completely, you’ll go wrong too. Solving the problem means helping the customer break out of their fixed assumptions and illuminating the blind spot in their mind.
- Troubleshoot by controlling variables
Controlling variables is the best debugging method in the world.
- Ask others for help
The world is noisy and there are far too many tangled threads. No single person can fully master the complexity of every system. If you’ve spent too much time and energy and still can’t solve it, ask your team for help. Someone else may happen to be good at exactly this, and one sentence can point you the way.
- Buy time with the customer
Come clean, explain the situation to the customer, and ask for more time. Geniuses are rare β and even if one existed, they wouldn’t be working tickets; and if they did, you’d rarely run into them. Being unable to help, or making a mistake, is unavoidable; only sincerity and attentive service can win the customer over.
- Record the problems
A short pencil beats a long memory. Record more and analyze more and you’ll gain a great deal. If others can look up the answer to a problem, they won’t bother you β which also lightens the burden of ticket duty.
