Case Numbers Are (Mostly) Meaningless

If you work in an operations center that receives or routes requests, your life is probably dominated by case numbers. You see them all day, and they likely represent the most granular version of a work task for you. They are invaluable to your job and allow you to quickly look up required information.

Unfortunately, when you contact me (a systems administrator), only giving me a case number is almost worthless, especially when I may be away from my workstation. That made sound hyperbolic, but it's true. Whereas that number represents a completed task to you (transferred to a queue), it doesn't help me do any part of my job or tell me if I can even help the person who put in the case. It's just a random number.

It never ceases to amuse and annoy me when someone from our operations center calls me (especially off hours), tells me they've routed a case to my queue, only gives me the number, then seems prepared to hang up, thinking they've done their job.

Here are a few things to keep in mind if you're the one making that call:

• I don't even know if the case should be going to me. In my experience, operations center personnel don't always have a great technical skill set. In fact, in one phase, my management specifically said they didn't want technical people in ours. As a result of that and some outdated documentation written without consulting the appropriate techs, cases got routed to the wrong teams all the time. If you tell me the title and description of the case, I can tell you if I can work it or you need to transfer it somewhere else. This eliminates what could be a lengthy delay, especially after hours.
   
• I'm probably not in the case queue. At least the places I've worked, the normal progression when someone joins a team is they work the queue to learn the systems/environments. After several months, they start being given projects that exist outside of the standard request-work workflow. I'm the longest-tenured person in my team, so the majority of my tasks are associated with these kinds of projects. Two of my team members are pretty far along that line as well. I pretty much only get into the queue when someone asks about a case or I have some extra time and feel like I should knock out a few.
  
  If I'm on call, I'm not in front of my workstation. In fact, most of the time, I'm not even at home. If you're calling after hours, you should assume I'm away from home. So, maybe without realizing it, you're effectively telling me I need to go home, log onto the appropriate VPN, open whatever queue the case is in, and search for that case number if I even want to see the title.
   
• I'm not going to be able to remember the number. Maybe operations people can flash memorize a 6- or 7-digit number fifteen seconds after being woken up at 5:30am, but I can't.
   
• That number is where my tasks start. Again, for many operations centers, moving the case is the end of their effort with that specific issue. However, it's just the start of mine. What seems like a very important request may, in fact, not even be worthy of the elevated priority assigned to it by a myopic business unit. On the other hand, a two-sentence request can turn into a two-week project once all the dependencies have been thought out. When I'm in the middle of my normal workday or my actual life outside of work, it is extremely helpful to have that information as quickly as possible so I can decide if I need to stop what I'm doing or can get to it when I can.
     
• Logging in to the queue is more annoying than you think. Again, because you're probably in the queue all day every day, it's no big deal to hit the search button and look up case details. As stated before, a lot of us don't have the queues open on a constant basis, and depending on the security requirements of the systems (especially with MFA), logging in several times a day can be a non-trivial time drain.

I don't think I'm asking for anything too crazy if I expect operations personnel to communicate the title and description of the case any time they contact a tech. If you're using email or IM, it's a copy/paste, and if you're calling, it's simply reading the first few sentences of text that is already in front of you. We, as techs, can then immediately determine 1) if the case should be routed elsewhere, 2) our estimate of how urgent the request is, and 3) how long you can tell the requester to expect movement. This helps us react accordingly and ensures our customers get the fastest resolution to their issues.