Chapter 11 - The IT Professional

Chapter 11 - The IT Professional

1. Communication Troubleshooting

   • A technician’s good communication skills are an aid in the troubleshooting process.
     • It takes time and experience to develop good communication skills and troubleshooting skills.
     • As your hardware, software, and OS knowledge increases, your ability to quickly determine a problem and find a solution will improve.

2. Determine

   • Know
     • call your costumer by name.
   • Relate
     • brief communication to create one to one connection which is you and your costumer.
   • Understand
     • knowledge the costumer about the computer to know how to communicate with the costumer.

3. Hold and Tranfer

   • Hold
     • Explain why you putting hold on customer and get permission to hold
     • Allow the cousterm to finish talking
   • Transfer
     • Ask permission to tranfer
     • explain why you transferring the phone
     • Give the name , phone number and extenstion of the person to whom you tranferring the call

4. Types of Difficult customer

   • A talkactive
     • Do
       • Allow the customer to talk for one minute.
       • Ask as many closed-ended questions as you need to once you have regained control of the call.
     • Don't
       • Encourage non-problem related conversation by asking social questions such as "How are you today?".
   • Rude
     • Don't
       • Be rude to the customer, even if they are rude to you
     • Do
       • Listen very carefully, as you do not want to ask the customer to repeat any information.
       • Reiterate that you want to solve their problem as quickly as possible.
   • Knowledgeable
     • Do
       • Give the customer the overall approach to what you are trying to verify.
       • If you are a level one technician, you might try to set up a conference call with a level two technician.
     • Don't
       • Follow a step-by-step process with this customer
       • Ask to check the obvious, such as the power cord or the power switch. As an example, you could suggest a reboot instead.
   • Inexperienced
     • Do
       • Use a simple step-by-step process of instructions
       • Speak in plain terms.
     • Don't
       • Use industry jargon
       • be condescending to your customer or belittle them.
   • Angry
     • Do
       • Sympathize with the customer's problem
       • Apologize for wait time or inconvenience.
     • Don't
       • If at all possible, try not to put this customer on hold or transfer the call.

5. Proper Netiquette

   • As a technician, you should be professional in all communications with customers.
     • Respect other people’s time
     • Share expert knowledge.
     • Respect other people’s privacy.
     • Be forgiving of other people’s mistakes.

6. Workstation ergonomics

   • The ergonomics of your work area can help you do your job or make it more difficult. Because you spend a major portion of your day at your workstation, make sure that the desk layout works well.

7. Service level agreement (SLA)

   • An SLA is typically a legal agreement that contains the responsibilities and liabilities of all parties involved.
     • Response time guarantees (often based on type of call and level of service agreement)
     • Equipment and software that is supported
     • Where service is provided
     • Preventive maintenance
     • Diagnostics and Part availability (equivalent parts)
     • Cost and penalties

8. Business Polices

   • As a technician, you should be aware of all business policies related to customer calls.
     • Customer Call Rules
       • Maximum time on call (example: 15 minutes)
       • Passing calls on to other technicians (example: only when absolutely necessary and not without that technician’s permission)
       • Number of calls per day (example: minimum of 30)
     • Call Center Employee Rules
       • Do not exceed the allowed number and length of breaks.
       • Arrive at your workstation on time and early enough to become prepared, usually about 15 to 20 minutes before the first call.
       • Make sure that another technician is available if you have to leave.

9. Ethics and Legal consideration

   • When you are working with customers and their equipment, there are some general ethical customs and legal rules that you should observe.
   • You should always have respect for your customers, as well as for their property.
     • Computers and monitors are property, but property also includes any information or data that might be accessible, for example:
       • Emails
       • Phone lists
       • Records or data on the computer
       • Hard copies of files, information, or data left on a desk

10. Legal procedures overview

    • Data from computer systems, networks, wireless communications, and storage devices may need to be collected and analyzed in the course of a criminal investigation
    • Two basic types of data are collected when conducting computer forensics procedures: persistent data and volatile data.
      • Persistent data
        • Persistent data is stored on a local drive
      • Volatile data
        • RAM, cache, and registries contain volatile data.

11. Cyber law

    • Cyber law is a term to describe the international, regional, country, and state laws that affect computer security professionals.
    • Cyber laws explain the circumstances under which data (evidence) can be collected from computers, data storage devices, networks, and wireless communications.
    • cyber law has three primary elements
      • Wiretap Act
      • Pen/Trap and Trace Statute
      • Stored Electronic Communication Act

12. Documentation and chain of custody

    • The documentation required by a system administrator and a computer forensics expert is extremely detailed.
    • They gather evidences however they also have to record the tool that they have use to find out the evidences.
    • If you discover illegal activity on a computer or network on which you are working, at a minimum, document the following:
      • nitial reason for accessing the computer or network
      • Time and date
      • Peripherals that are connected to the computer
      • Illegal material that you have found

13. A call center

    • A call center environment is usually very professional and fast-paced. Customers call in to receive help for a specific computer-related problem.

14. Level one and level two technician responsibilities

    • Level one
      • the level one technician’s responsibilities are fairly similar from one call center to the next.
      • The primary responsibility of a level one technician is to gather pertinent information from the customer.
      • Some problems are very simple to resolve, and a level one technician can usually take care of these without escalating the work order to a level two technician.
    • Level Two
      • The level two technician’s responsibilities are generally the same from one call center to the next.
      • The level two technician receives the escalated work order with the description of the problem and then calls the customer back to ask any additional questions and resolve the problem.
      • the customer’s computer to update drivers and software, access the operating system, check the BIOS, and gather other diagnostic information to solve the problem.