This would have details such as the name of the caller, the issue of the caller, categorization of the issue, resolution provided, etc. As part of the role, we were required to ‘follow-up’ with the caller to verify and confirm that the issue was indeed resolved. If the caller provided confirmation, we could go ahead and close the ticket. If the issue was still unresolved, we would be required to investigate it further and see what more can be done. Easy right? Well, yes if it all went in that flow.
There were times when the callers would never respond to the messages, emails, or calls. Simply because they were done with it and had moved on with their duties. We were stuck with no closure. We began seeing an increase in the count of such open tickets that had no responses from the callers. The leadership team introduced a rule called as ‘3-strike’ rule, inspired from the sport Baseball. As part of this rule, we were to send one email each day, with ‘read-receipt enabled in the email. At first, I was perplexed not knowing what this was. The way it worked was simple. The moment the caller opened the email, I would get a receipt or an acknowledgment to confirm the email was read. It would have time stamp details of when the email was read. We would then copy this and paste it into the ticket. Do this for three days. With three read receipts, and no response from the caller, we would go ahead and close the tickets. That was my first experience of read receipts.
Development in technology brings about some unexpected surprises. If it was just the Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) and Mobile Phone anxiety, today it has, predictably, covered more areas. The human psyche is a very peculiar thing. All humans crave for attention and affection, right from the time they’re born. Craving is good to some extent but overindulgence in craving can definitely cause problems, not just to you but also to those from whom you expect. All human relations are based on emotions that is the bedrock of it. People want emotional responses to their emotional stimuli. It’s a complex game, you see!
The internet, just like the mobile phone, has made matters complicated in certain areas. Earlier we could call someone on the landline and if the person does not respond, we assumed he isn’t home. Now we can see whether he’s checking his phone and when, how many times, when was the last time he checked it, and also if he’s active on social media. That makes it really tough for anyone to avoid receiving a call or worse still, to ignore someone’s if you don’t want to.
Read Receipts has also become one such bone of contention in relationships, of all things! Many messaging apps have this facility whereby when someone sends you a message, the sender sees one grey tick if the receiver hasn’t received the message yet, two grey ticks if he hasn’t read it, and two blue ticks once the message is opened (Now don’t assume that if it’s opened, then it means it’s read).
I have many friends, relatives, and acquaintances who call me to personally check if I have read the message once they see the two blue ticks, merely out of anxiety that I haven’t yet responded. I have to tell them that I did in fact read the message, sometimes cursorily, but haven’t had the time to send an appropriate response or wasn’t in the right frame of mind to respond. At times, I check messages while traveling and I’m unable to type the response, forget dictating it to the phone in a crowd! A person I know barely waits for a few minutes till he starts his barrage of messages reminding me to read the original one. Read more...
