Follow-Up

So at my place of employment, we have this process called a follow-up. It's relatively new, and has a good underlying principle: maintain contact with a client on a regular basis until the issue is resolved. That's good, right? I mean, you don't want someone to be forgotten and their issue left by the wayside. That's what caused a lot of dissatisfaction in the past, we're trying to move ourselves into a position to have a special certification, and part of that certification is keeping these follow-ups. This is admirable.

However, there is a sort of black lining to this that unfortunately allows clients the potential of feeling blown off even when they are called. I was listening this morning to the noise around me, and I overheard follow-ups being taken care of for someone who is out of the office today. You see, the rule about follow-ups has no exceptions (which is why I make sure and not schedule follow-ups on day when I won't be here), and this means someone else must pick up and work your follow-ups in the event that you don't show. Again, that should translate to a good thing.

But, the follow-ups I heard going on for this Person-Who-Is-Out (PWIO) that went something like this:

"Hi, I'm just following up on a ticket for PWIO, and I just wanted to let you know that this issue is still being researched ... No, I don't have any further information for it ... No, she's out today, and I'm just doing her follow-ups ... Yeah, if you have any questions about this, you can give her a call when she's in ... No, I'm not sure when that is, but you can call her tomorrow .. Okay, thanks."

I'm guessing the person sighed heavily since the call did little more than waste about 2 minutes of their day to tell them absolutely nothing, and said ok, I'll just give her a call tomorrow then. My question is why call someone if you have no information to give them? Typically, these tickets should (yeah, should being the real opertative word here) have some reason for the follow-up or some reason that the ticket is still open and required that future contact. 

How could this be salvaged? Well, first this caller could have looked at the ticket, and tried to either decipher an answer or do whatever is left to be done. But then, that would require work and the person I overheard doesn't do work, so that's out of the question. Second, if there were something in the ticket to give, they could have at least read that info to give them some kibble to much on, but that would require the person who left the ticket open to have noted some kind of update in the ticket, and most people around here don't give play-by-plays in their ticket notes (like I actually do, although I don't do it for other people -- I note my tickets heavily because otherwise I'll forget what I'm supposed to do on it) so that's out too.

So the easiest solution would have been a re-word of the conversation to make it more of an out of office update as opposed to any kind of true follow-up. It would go like this:

"I'm just calling to let you know that PWIO is out sick today, and so they won't be able to get in touch with you today on this issue." 

That would be followed up with some sort of friendliness about when the person could get back to them, and wouldn't sound like "I'm an incompetent twit who is blindly calling this list of crap I don't want to do anyway, and don't you dare ask me anything." 

But that just hearkens me back to a line from Toy Story: "If the boot fits..."