Q&A: How do you handle systems outages?
by Galo
(Toronto)
Hello, I am researching for scripts relating to what to say to customers when they call our contact center and the CSR can't do anything due to technical issues with the company's systems. I have been unable to find much on the subject and was wondering if I could get your input.
I believe any script should have three points, at least:
1. Apologise
2. Tell them the truth (that the systems are down, not lies like they are updating the system, etc.)
3. Give them some expectation on the duration of the outage.
Any help is appreciated.
Thanks!
Answer:
Date: August 28, 2008.
Hi Galo,
I think you are on your way already!
Points 1 and 2 are no-brainers. Always apologize, even if it's not your company's fault. Apologizing is not an admission of guilt, just a genuine 'feeling sorry' that the customer is having issues because of the system outage.
Not telling lies: yes. Lies have the tendency to become apparant at one time or another. Damaging the trusting relation with your customer is not worth telling lies (that's why I don't understand the popularity of lies...).
As for point 3, managing expectations... if you CAN, that's always a good thing. However, oftentimes when the cause hasn't been found, you may not be able to give a good predicition. In that case, refer to point 2.
Sidebar
I've worked on an IT Help desk, and one issue (coded T.16, I still remember that after 10+ years!) took 2,5 years(!) to be resolved.
Occasionally the database stopped working and records were corrupted, and somehow we could never lay a finger on the cause. Until, one day, I set out to kill it once and for all, comparing databases byte for byte, all day long.
And then I found it!
It turned out that when a record had an odd number of bytes, it would sometimes add TWO bytes at the end, even though there was only ONE byte available! That 2nd byte would then overwerite the pointer of the NEXT record, corrupting it!
(BTW, it wasn't Oracle or MySQL or SQL server)
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So, in this case, I would add a point 4. Asking for contact info, so the customer can be called back when the issue is resolved. This isn't always practical, but if you can manage the callbacks, it makes all the difference to the customer.
At your service,
Erwin.
