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Customer: You don't seem very comfortable with this; maybe you could pass it on to another engineer..?

Situation:
I'm a System Management team engineer. Customer is asking about licensing (which is a different team) and has that very rude habit of asking a question, doing a small pause in which I start answering, and then speaking again and cutting me off; thus causing me to seem very splutter-y. Since I couldn't give a definitive answer to his licensing question he doubts everything and thinks I can't do crap. And he's the one who wants me to sit on an upgrade with him because he's too afraid to follow documentation.

His words to me: "Have you ever done this upgrade before; I mean are you familiar with it?"

Me: "Nope since it's not policy to sit on upgrades as we are a break-fix center but I've directed other customers to do it through the documentation I've given you and they got on fine."

Seriously doubt the capacity of some of these guys to do an upgrade where there's step-by-step videos and very legit documentation (never mind this upgrade uses the tool which has the best record for not breaking)

Comments
  • 1
    You need to communicate the following things to your customer:
    1. If he cuts you while you are taking, make it absolutely clear that either one of you is speaking, not both. Cutting in is rude and an counterproductive when collaborating.
    2. Tell them what your job includes abd what does not.
    3. Tell him that you are capable of doing certain things, but it DOES eat your time that you might have as well already planned out.
  • 0
    @kp15 Nope, there are stages of support as well and this is like the middle as in unlimited tickets for x amount a year relating to production impacts
  • 0
    @R5on11c Mhm, absolutely. I still find the first point difficult but that is just improving my communication and interacting with customers.
    The funny thing though is that as soon as I found out it was an upgrade/migration query (kinda a 2 in 1 process) I gave the lil speech about how the center is break-fix and we can't sit on upgrades unless its a fix etc and he was like "okie okie" and ignored it further into the call.
  • 0
    @kp15 Oh my bad; I messed up in my previous reply. Yes; it isn't free.
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