Users expecting IT to do their job

Off Topic
, ,
1

Please tell me I am not the only person who has things like this happen:

There was an IT Trouble Ticket opened the other day that read as follows:

Great question. I am adding IT as I’m not sure if you guys can or not.

[E-Mail Sender #1]
Director Level Title

The main content of the ticket was an email chain between multiple Customer Service Reps and Inside Sales Reps. Those conversations went as follows (keep in mind, these are in reverse order):

Who takes care of changing address in Epicor?

[E-Mail Sender #2]
Customer Service Repesentative
Inside Sales Representative

That was in response to the following:

Hello other Employee within our company,

I am not sure who can update this in Epicor but see below & attached.

Thank you

[E-Mail Sender #3]
Customer Service Representative
Inside Sales Representative

The “Below & Attached” content was an email from a customer of ours saying that they have a new address for sending all shipments to and we should update our records accordingly. A simple request in a simple email.

So, in short, a customer emails us with a heads up that their ship-to address has changed. A customer service rep gets this email and does not know what to do. So she forwards it to her boss…who does not know what to do…so he forwards it to the director, who does not know what to do…so they loop in IT to change the address.

I refuse to do other people’s jobs for them if it is something as basic as this. My job is to ensure they they are able to do their jobs. It is not to do their job. So, I simply responded with “Changing the Ship To Addresses for a customer is something that is handed by the CSR/ISR or KAM (Key Account Manager) for that account.” and then I promptly closed the ticket. This took place at 9AM.

EDIT: I should note that all users with a title of CSR, ISR, or KAM have access in the system to update customer information, including Ship To addresses. They are all aware of this because they are the ones that enter the customers to begin with.

The next day at 1PM, an email is sent out to the same people that were part of the initial email chain, as well as myself…this one was sent by the initial CSR/ISR that received the email from the customer: “I reached out to [INSERT NAME OF EXTERNAL EPICOR CONSULTANT THAT CHARGES $250/HR] and she changed the address for [customer name].”

I can’t be the only person in that deals with this kind of stuff…now I know it would have taken me all of 2 seconds to change the address for the customer and then this could have been over with, but that is not going to do anything but enable the staff to be lazy thinking that everyone else will do their job(s) for them.

I’m curious as to how the rest of y’all handle things like this…or perhaps I am the only one…heh

2

first time GIF

3

This is the 3rd place I’ve worked at that uses Epicor, but the 1st place I’ve worked at where this type of situation has been a thing. It is not laziness on their part, per-se, because some of these people seriously do not understand that they can do some of these tasks…like changing a ShipTo address.

4

Sounds like they need a training refresher if they don’t know they can do a task themselves. Who does that depends on how training is handled in the company.

In past lives, I’ve taken various approaches - direct them to the training materials / work instructions, or direct them to the training manager, or sometimes I would walk them through it together. Main point was to avoid making it easier to ask IT to do it; make it quicker for them to do it themselves.

2 Likes
5

You definitely aren’t the only one. I would frame it as poorly-trained users not knowing who to go to for help vs. expecting IT to do their job. I would probably pick up the phone and call the CS manager and see if they knew they could make these changes, needed some refresher training, or if there was some other issue/confusion that needed to be solved.

2 Likes
6

Another reason to improve training here is that there have been wholesale food theft by scammers placing orders and using fake addresses to steal goods. Blindly changing addresses could cost money, so our collogues need to be vigilant. It’s why we can’t have nice things…

Scammers steal huge shipments from US food suppliers, American agencies warn

1 Like
7

Yep, I train them to never trust email. Call your known or verified contacts to verify.

8

You hit the nail on the head with “poorly-trained users”, but unfortunately reaching out to the CS manager (or any manager for that matter) would do little good, as they have had just as little training (if not less) than their staff had.

I think it is 'bout time for me to throw together & records some “Epicor 101 - Basic Usage” sessions and put them on the company intranet.

9

They will for sure watch them!

10

So…end users can just hit up a consultant like that? While I rarely need it, IT controls contact with our consultant like any other vendor and requests outside approved channels are invalid. Which would become immediately clear to all parties when the vendor sends an invoice and we (who have to approve all IT-related bills) deny payment. At least, deny it up front until we have a frank discussion about rules with said vendor.

Also, the consultant can just remote in like that? That’s allowed?

I’ve got a lot of questions about this, and none of them are about users not wanting to do their data entry.

11

This sounds like an issue way beyond training. It sounds like they do not even know their roles and responsibilities. I would hazard a guess that no one at that company ever gets fired.

1 Like
12

I just came onboard with this company the week of Insights, and am still learning the ins-and-outs of how things are done here. In this case, I learned that yes, the staff can just reach out to one of our consultants and nobody will bat and eye.

In this situation, yes. The consultant has been on contract with our company for many years and has gained a certain level of ‘trust’ from the powers-that-be.

You and me both! :slight_smile:

There are many things that I have noticed which will be changing as my time with this company progresses. I have the buy-in from the Director/C-Level teams for many of these changes as well, which should help me push some of this through. (like not calling the consultant for something that can be done internally).

3 Likes