I would like your thoughts and feedback on the following:

A bit about me first...
I started with Ma Bell in '79. Did 4 and 8 party eliminations, CO work, I&M, etc. Laid off in '83 due to divestiture. I worked for another interconnect for a couple of years and moved back home and operated an interconnect for 14 years. For the past 10 years I've been the telecom manager for a retail company with about 815 locations at this time.

My managers are not telecom people...it's just that plain and simple. As a result they have no idea of what can go wrong, various repair times, etc... To my knowledge there is no information out there they can use for reference published by research companies such as Gartner, etc...

So when there are x number of trouble tickets open they have no idea whether to think it's a good average ticket number or the number of tickets is high or low. (In other words, how is my job performance.)

Here are the specs for each location which is for the most part, "cookie cutter".

4 POTS lines at each location. 3 are on a Partner ACS w/hunting from the LEC, the other line is for the fax.

6 Partner tel sets at each location. (1 ea. 18D, 5 ea. 6btn)
2 analog residential cordless phone sets.

Support/repair network data cabling (Cat5e) to five locations in the building with redundant drops to each location.

Support the PA system w/background music. Generally 7 speakers inside the building and 2 or 3 speakers outsided the building. This is a mix of 70v technology or self amplified and some locations with a mix.

I see approximate totals of 3260 LEC lines spread across 30 LECs, 4890 desk sets, 1630 cordless, 8150 PA speakers, 815 Partner ACS units, 815 PA amps/power supplies, etc...etc...

You are in the business...what would you think is an average rolling number of trouble tickets that you would expect to be open at any given time (number wise or percentage)...considering all possibilities.

All tickets are handled in house. We correct what we can over the phone, depot and swap out phone problems which is easy. All programming is the same at all locations...a square system, nothing fancy. We test as much as possible before dispatching the LEC and test as much as possible before dispatching an inside tech. Tickets are generally kept open until we know the problem is resolved then it is closed.

I appreciate and welcome your input.

Thanks,
DT98

With the Partner systems then tend to have a static issue once they start aging. Paging should be a none issue.

My thoughts are: 5 locations with at least 1 dead/noisy line a month.

1 dead amp per 6 months

2 dead/damaged phones per week

basic user "How To"(plugged in wrong jack, turn up ringing, how to turn on the Amplifier,ect) - about 2 or 3 a day.

Data could be a bit more time consuming and generate more issues.

So all in all I would say you could have anywhere from 5 - 15 tickets a day with most being able to be rectified over the phone.

I would expect a much higher count if you only had 8 sights with as 100 phones each , since there would be many more AMC (make this phone ring this department, add this button to this phone, ect)but since each sight is a small independant you never hear from them until something doesn't work the way they expected.

Do youmind sharing if this number reflects what you are seeing? I am trying to think of our customer base with <10 users and although they are less likely to call because of a charge, I don't think they do a whole lot of moving around and breaking.

"You are in the business...what would you think is an average rolling number of trouble tickets that you would expect to be open at any given time (number wise or percentage)...considering all possibilities."

Are you the only person working on these tickets? If not how many people are in the department working on them?

You give no information as to age of the equipment and who actually is dispatched to maintain it. These are simple systems. If the telephone and paging equipment were new and the caliber of the techs that installed it were equal to "qualified" then the trouble tickets should approach zero, at least for the equipment. Unfortunately what I see is that in your situation even new locations are furnished with used or refurb equipment (consumer grade cordlesses??) that is installed and maintained by low paid abused techs. So you have to expect high failure rates.

As far as the IT stuff, that's going to be magnitudes higher because that's just the nature of it. It's never designed for 100% uptime and reliability.

-Hal

Bill,
I'm seeing probably 5 to 15 tickets per day but the mix is different. Paging is an issue which I feel is due to a drop in speaker quality from a manufacturer (I don't want to mention...20 years ago they were rock solid but I feel their quality is not there anymore...) We get 3 to 10 phone set change outs per week. Lately due to what I see as hookswitch issues...

6string, yes for the most part I'm the only one working the tickets. I have one person who does not come from a telecom background that can trouble shoot a phone set problem and have a replacement sent to the location and the defective set shipped back to the depot/repair facility. In addition, this person can make a test call for a line problem and if the particular LEC will test a line, they can have the line test run to see if the problem can be determined to be inside or out. I forgot to add to the mix that a couple of phone lines are shared with the alarm system via RJ31X jacks. The alarm company which is national but I will not mention is another source of plentyful problems.

At this time there are probably 60 tickets open. Depending on the problem, a ticket may be open for a week or more. If a problem is dispatched out, the tech may not have it on their schedule for 2 to 5 days and by the time I can follow up and confirm the repair it may be 2 weeks.

LEC repair...well that is another story depending on the LEC. Anyway, if there are any other thoughts out there, I'd like to hear them.

Thanks again,
DT98

I take it your channeling the tickets to a local vender to do the repairs? To me 60 seems like a lot of tickets/hassel. I think I would review who is installing this equipment. That alone might be half the solution. If it's very old equipment, you may consider budgeting for upgrades starting with the high problem locations. Just my two cents.

We have roughly 500 active accounts and of that we have, on average, roughly 35 open tickets at any one time. Our open tickets include ALL service, AMC and new installation work, plus all telco work and issues.

Sorry, within the framework of our active accounts, there is a station count of approximately 4,000 stations.

I maintain a plant of 3500 lines. We run about 4-5 troubles a day on equipment that is, for the most part about 10 years old. Work orders vary. Some days we've got 3 dozen stations to work on, some days, none. We eliminate a lot of potential troubles with preventive maintenance.

Sam

Note - I only handle voice troubles, not data troubles, though we do installs on data cables.

I am curious as to what problems you are having, 99% of all telco problems with the alarm is that the lines where never hooked up correctly.

Having that many tickets seems to be rather high.
Yo said you are opening between 5 - 15 a week, how many are you closing?
Is this your only task or is this a secondary job assigned to you? If you were a company depending on the revenue of these tickets, I garanty that you would have them closed within a week and your open tickets would drop to 10-20 on any given day (including the just opened ones).
It sounds as though you need to develope a plan on staying on top of the issues and the vendors you choose. I start to have things fall through the cracks if I personnally have more than 4-5 tickets open for a while, and I'm just a tech, I have a whole office of dispatch and managers to keep me from dropping any tickets. 60 tickets just is too much IMHO

Hal,
You bring up a good point I forgot to mention; the age of the equipment.
The oldest system was installed in 2000 and all equipment is new when installed. Over the past five years we average around 100 new locations per year. We did a mass swap out of older non-Avaya systems in '06, about 225 systems.
Some of the other posts hit the nail on the head too...get better installs. For whatever reason, the installs are handled by bean counters with no telecom experience whatsoever. I've told them time and again that the number of trouble tickets is directly proportional to the quality of the installation.
Installs got so bad that I started requiring pictures of all the installs. That was a small win for me...
Nothing aggravates me more than to have several maintenance requests before an install is 4 months old.

I think (hopefully) that the bean counters are starting to realize that a few more beans now will save beans later. Remember the FRAM commercials...

Now as for the LECs, I've seen a decline since working for Ma Bell...that's a soap box for another day.

Year to date I've handled 1330 trouble tickets so that is less than two per location. Maybe not so bad after all...maybe I should ask on average how many tickets should one location have per year?

I'll pass some of this info on to the bean counter managers and see what happens...

Thanks, DT98

You need to track your tickets and break them down by equipment and type of call along with the remedy and duration. For equipment failures, track possible cause of failure… coffee spill, poor installation, power… and costs. A ticket for a bad speaker pales in comparison to a blown power supply in a switch. If you are having problems with one speaker manufacturer, switch to another.

Also if you are growing by 100 offices a year, you need to have a detailed specification for the installation and testing.

Thanks JimmyV,
I've got all that but I can't get the higher ups to implement due to dollars. They do not seem to understand that a higher quality install means less maintenance calls on the back end...
Installations are detailed and specified but I don't think the installers they get want to read.

A ticket for a bad speaker...

As much as I like Valcom no way would I use or recommend powered speakers. Each has an amp and requires power and those are frequent failure points.

You should have zero maintenance on speakers when it's done correctly! The tried and true method is a constant voltage 70.7 volt system which is completely passive AND it's less money. Unless somebody cuts a wire or shoots a bullet through a speaker they will work forever with no attention.

-Hal