SSA Help Support = education in how to use it -- BPCS-L

Al comments on Jim's reactions

Part of the education needed is how to deal with SSA when getting at the 
services we think we are paying for.

>  Yeah, I got all day to spend on the phone talking to voicemails of all 
these 
>  various places and services. And God help you if you don't have an 
Incident 
>  number! 

I don't use voice connection with SSA any more to call in a problem.

I figure that SSA's caller-id recognizes that it is me & says "That's one of 
the people who we will give the old run-around to & then while transferring 
him to the next available person, after he has been patiently waiting 1/2 
hour, disconnect him so he can start the process all over again.

You have to have a sense of humor in this business or you will go mad.

We got one of the official SSA forms for reporting problems via fax to the 
Help Line, then I took it to our office word processing person & had it 
altered, to fill in all the technical stuff that end users who understand the 
applications do not know, like what hardware we are on, version of this or 
that.

I now have a bunch of users who are happy with the fax form & I often include 
when I send it in and invitation to send replies back the same way & I often 
get real good useful info that way.

When they tell me a BMR is coming, I ask them - did you read off the part to 
the SSA contact that we need 8 mm tapes for a RISC box?  
invariably the answer is No
I usually ask for a call back to make sure they noticed that because 
invariably SSA sends us tapes with CISC code & sometimes it is not observable 
(will not convert)

> As an example...what is the deal with waiting for 'no more' than 5 
>  days to get a software key? Last time I got one, it took the girl 10 
minutes 
>  to get it to me, once she got around to doing it.

Have you got a software key that did not work?
We have got several of those.

We have learned that when a really important application is planned to be 
installed, it pays to get several software keys, so that if one don't work, 
others can be tried instead.  You see, we try to do upgrades when no one is 
on the system, and we do not want to discover at 1 am on a weekend that we 
need to get through to tech support, because the software key did not work, 
or some other such problem.

Have you got a BMR or other software release tape in which the MEDIA was bad 
& you had to ask for a replacement & it was bad also & you had to ask for 
another replacement - we got a bunch of those also.

Have you noticed that the BMR documentation with the BMR tapes is often out 
of sync with how the data is actually on the tape, so you have to futz around 
with tape dump to figure out how it is there so you can install it?

>  If I were king of SSA Support...I would try to implement something similar 
>  to what hospitals do in mass emergencies. Triage the calls. Of course this 
>  would require someone answering the phone to know how to say 
>  something other than "Your incident number?". Getting a software key 
>  should not take 2 - 5 days!!! 
>  
>  What I tried to do, and I thought I was being helpful to the person 
handling 
>  my incident, was to write out my questions and fax them to the support 
>  person. In this manner the support person isn't under the gun to give an 
>  answer right away. If they don't know the answer, they have the 
opportunity 
>  to research it. Then its the option of the support person to call and 
> vocally  answer the question, or email back the answers. 

Except SSA has this procedure.

We call in with a new incident & it gets entered into their incident document 
& you are told the incident # to be used on all future calls & God help you 
if you guessed wrong on the branch of BPCS to deal with this - CST, PUR, 
Technical, Manufacturing, etc. - so in your first call you are talking to 
some secretarial person who is keying in what they do not comprehend, like 
IBM dispatch, except when we call IBM help we actually get a real technician 
call us back within an hour, even if it is the wee hours.

That is why I like to use THEIR OFFICIAL LOOKING reporting document, with our 
tweaks & let SSA decide what category to put it in when they assign their 
incident number.

>  It worked for a day or two, but I get no response at all now. 
>  
>  I have been to those sites you suggested, and we are a member or OGS.
>  
>  Actually, this forum has been more beneficial than anything! I got input 
> from real users, and got good info so far.
>  
>  Thanks for your dialogue on the subject. 

There are also BPCS user groups that hold meetings around the country every 
few months somewhere in the world there is a BPCS user meeting or a BPCS 
users convention.

There's also some real BPCS users hanging out at the trade publication forums 
- some of the same people both there & here, but I find their archives a bit 
easier to navigate than BPCS_L archives.
http://www.news400.com/communities/rpgprogrammer/index.htm
http://www.midrangecomputing.com/scripts/webboard.dll/mainmenu

There's also some IBM forums for AS/400 users that I have not yet explored
http://wwwyr2k.raleigh.ibm.com

I noticed them when I was noodling around this place where we are supposed to 
be able to key in the IBM model number of a modem or controller or printer or 
whatever & find out about its Y2K compliancy.  One of the few IBM places that 
promise much more than they are able to deliver.

Al Macintyre



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