Imagine working in tech support. You get a ticket about a problem. You figure out what’s wrong. You also figure out how to resolve the problem. No problem, right?

Well, in this story, one tech support worker thought that was the case because the client who reported the ticket didn’t respond to the email explaining the resolution to the problem.

It turns out that no news doesn’t always mean good news, but it helps when the boss is on your side.

Keep reading for all the details.

Freaking out my boss, and the need for a strong personality in the work place.

Me – well it’s me

CM – client manager

CW – coworker and tier 1 tech

Boss – owner of our MSP

Here’s an overview of OP’s job.

Backdrop:

I work at our client office being their on site Sys. Admin and jack of all things plugged in.

I typically leave early afternoon due to my start time, and my MSP teammates take over handling remote tickets till end of day at the client.

One ticket seemed easy enough to resolve.

Monday after I left we got a request about a staff member having trouble logging into his remote access through our remote software vendor portal.

One of our tier one techs took the email, diagnosed the issue correctly based off the details provided, sent back context with screenshots of how to fix this, and offered to speak directly with the staff at that time.

The client manager who submitted the request sort of ignored that context by giving a “Well could this random thing be the issue?” type of reply, which sparked some side conversation for 20ish minutes before fizzling out with a “Ok I will forward the staff member your screenshots and original email.”

Our tech at this point considered the ticket awaiting client reply, and ended up clocking out for the day at his appropriate time with me CC’d on everything to catch up the next day.

Some days can be quite chaotic.

The next day was hell.

I had scanners malfunctioning, managers from multiple depts pulling me for urgent tickets outside of the email queue, and as of that point we had about 120+ from my client in our inbox since Monday morning (but only 4 tickets left open!).

I was able to directly communicate with the staff member the following day to see how they had fared with our advice, considering no response usually is a good thing with my clients.

They hadn’t had time to try things out, but I explained over the phone and took less than 5min to walk them through everything to a resolution. Ship shape, good to go. Until…

It wasn’t over.

email ding

CM: Why did it take three days to resolve this ticket? Also the tech at your HQ ignored my emails and stopped replying for no reason.

Me: Well it looks like he did get it correct in the first reply, with screenshots for context, and an offer to phone the staff directly. I was too busy the following day to follow up on a ticket for remote access knowing that staff member was in the office that day. (I named managers that asked me to do the tickets outside of queue in this communication.) But I did give that (important) staff member my cell phone to avoid delays for this stuff.

CM: Well are you sure you want staff calling you? I guess that’s fine, I just know that they wanted this resolved Monday, and then expected it to be followed up on Tuesday but I understand you were busy. This is a let down, your other tech dropped the ball completely.

OP explained the situation again.

Me: Well I confirmed CW did diagnose the issue correctly, and offered to spend time on the phone with the staff before CW left for the day. I don’t think we got a follow up email after you offered to forward this information to the staff, and typically CW would be awaiting that reply before further work is carried out.

CM: Well this all would have been easier if someone had just been able to call the staff member on the first day. I shouldn’t have to play the in between here, as a manager.

Me: Agreed, that’s why I gave my phone number directly to (important) staff members today in light of this incident. That way at the minimum I can properly play middle man and avoid these situations going forward. I am OK with that.

CM: Well we prefer all ticket requests go through me or my assistant manager so we aren’t in the dark. (Both of these users have accounts with access to the ticketing system)

Let’s see how the boss responded.

At this point I began documenting and CC’ing bosses on this for the old CYA policy we love so much.

I gave the boss a synopsis in our work chat program to which he said he would try to get caught up.

I wasn’t sure how to respond to the last email considering the contradiction it displayed, so I just let it stew a couple hours before my boss messaged me back.

Boss: Please just let that email chain die now, no need to keep responding. I see exactly what happened, I am happy with our ticket response there.

OP summarizes his stance.

Client relations != sucking up to clients

I stood up for my coworker because he did a bang up job in my absence covering my client, and was unfairly shot with feedback by a client staff looking for blood because they were most likely spoken to about it internally.

My boss typically is not the type to get into those types of chats with clients, so that was where “freaking out my boss” comes in.

But hey, sometimes you need to put your foot down on strong personalities and make then hear “No” every now and then.

If the problem was resolved, why was the client upset? If the problem wasn’t actually resolved, why did the client take so long to respond?

Let’s see how Reddit responded.

This person shares their thoughts.

Here’s some good advice.

One person vents about management.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a woman who finds herself in a tough spot when a coworker reports her for the “policy violation” of having her personal water bottle at the register.

Another person shares their experience.

CCing the boss was a good idea. It’s verification that he handled the situation well.

Communication can be frustrating when it’s all through email.