Do not Forgo, Go for it

Last week, I got 7 calls in a span of 5 minutes asking me to call back immediately as there was a Severity 1 issue raised by one of our customer’s end customer. I was in a middle of another important meeting and couldn’t respond. After my meeting, I called up to enquire what the issue was and I was asked to consider it as the highest priority and help get it resolved. Since I was not able to access my emails, I called up one of my colleagues requesting her to look into the issue and resolve accordingly. The issue had been raised for about 3 hours and nobody had bothered to even read the end customer’s mail to check what the issue was. The favorite corporate attitude ‘pass the buck’ was very evident. Since we have partnered with our customer to serve some of their end customers, they thought it is easier to put it on us and let the end customer know that experts are working on it.

Our L2 colleague hardly took less than 15 mins to identify that it was not even an issue, let alone it was raised as Severity 1 issue! The end customer had seen a screen, assumed certain things and without even getting clarified, had raised a Severity 1 issue.

I’ve seen this growing trend amongst few to run away from the issues even before trying to understand them. Most of them seem to have a feeling that they would be considered below par if the issue does not get resolved by them. I think that since such people keep running away from every such situation, they do not learn and tend to remain below par. They find it more lucrative to identify someone who can take responsibility to resolve the issue. Guess what? That lot of ‘someone who takes the responsibility’ keeps learning and growing and the cycle continues. Here are few tips that I can share based on my experience –

• Acknowledge that there has been an issue and that if someone has reached out to you, that means they have some hope and entrusted you to at least look into the issue.
• Many times, the issue is usually blown up (like the above incident that I explained). Do not tend to take a stance or assume that you may not be able to resolve it even before looking into the issue.
• Most of the times, the issue would’ve already been resolved by someone, somewhere in the world. You may have to find out those steps/solutions in case if your skills are limited.
• There is usually a tendency to start getting into a blame game and assume that you’ve been framed, or the issue has been assigned to you intentionally. Such things seldom help to learn or resolve the issues. Get over such negative thoughts and focus on understanding the issue and identifying the solution/cause. Discuss it with your team members and I’ll not be surprised that you get the solution, almost every time.

I can summarize the above tips into one – Do not forgo, go for it.:-)

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