Inside Tech: Mike Arscott

In the first of a series of guest blogs coming to you from the brains of our wickedly talented technical support team, networking knight and all-around office nice guy Mike Arscott shares his top 4 support tips that no Fluidata customer should be leaving the showroom without. So without further ado or unnecessary embellishment (unless you consider this sentence such a thing), let's hand the reigns over to Mike.

Mike and the Techanics

Céline Dion once said that rain and taxes were inevitable and, quite frankly, I think the same can be applied to technical support. Think about it, whether you're just wanting a chat about your services or require a little advice on setting up a cool new application, you're inevitably going to cross paths with a tech wizard.

With that in mind, I wanted to share with you some simple (yet magnifico) tips in order to help you get the best from your (my?) support team.

4. Easy does it

Quite unbelievably, some issues do have simple solutions, I know, crazy right? Upon first entering issue-ville, it is always advisable to complete the following checks no matter what. These checks include power cycling your devices on site, replacing the DSL cable, micro-filter and/or any other cabling and, if you provide your own router, testing with another instead.

By doing these checks and reporting the results to us, you will save a lot of time when the initial troubleshooting begins. We'll also think you're pretty awesome for doing our jobs for us.

3. To call or not to call

Can't decide whether to call or email? Then why not do both at the same time. Seriously, we're available 24/7 by phone or email and both present a quick and reliable way of getting in contact. However, let us share some super-secret information with you that you must not share with anybody else: certain requests are best handled via one or the other - gasp!

We recommend calling when an issue needs immediate attention such as a service outage. However, if you need to request a configuration change or submit a request for an SFI (more on this later), then you should email as we require these in writing for our records.

2. Devils in the detail

We can’t start looking into your problem until we have your details and without the correct information this can take a while to find.

The best reference you can have is your contract number or support reference, which is a 5 or 6 digit number specific to each service. This will be on documents you are given or on a label attached to a device we have sent you. If you don’t have this then we can make use of a phone number for the connection, your customer code or the postcode of the site that the service is installed at. By having this information on hand you ensure an even smoother (if possible) ride.

1. The N Files

When a fault cannot be localised by testing but the local equipment has been ruled out, you'll need to call in an SFI. SFI (or Special Faults Investigation) is networking's version of the FBI and, much like the FBI, there is red-tape to pass through before getting an engineer to your site.

If you do need to arrange an engineer visit, we require the name and phone number of a site contact, the access times of the site itself and the acceptance of potential charges. By emailing these in with the initial fault, significant time can be saved and you can get an engineer on site at the earliest slot possible. Hopefully, these suggestions will help you to better utilise the support you receive from ourselves in order to help us resolve your faults quicker.

That's it from Mike! Now wasn't that helpful? Tune in soon for more pearls of wisdom (seriously) from the technical support team.