Doing Background Work Before You Begin Troubleshooting


The key to good troubleshooting is being systematic. That means you have to do some preliminary work and get yourself organized before jumping in and making a bunch of random test calls. Read the following instructions for more information about what to do before you begin troubleshooting.

Determining whether the problem is a provisioning issue

Before you start testing calls, begin troubleshooting the issue by asking yourself whether the feature or problem area ever worked. If so, when did it change and why? These are important questions because the process you follow for fixing provisioning issues is different than the process for troubleshooting trouble issues. Your carrier’s order entry (or provisioning) department handles provisioning issues, whereas the trouble repair people work on a service after it’s installed.

 Tip  If you have problems with a service that never worked, it’s worth your while to place a 60-second call to the provisioning team at your carrier to ensure that your order was completed. After you confirm that the order has been completed, you can perform the testing in this chapter and call the customer service department to open a trouble ticket. Alternatively, if you are in doubt and don’t want to waste time, you can have the provisioning department research the issue while you simultaneously report it to the customer service department. Simply leave a message for your provisioner and then call customer service to open a trouble ticket. This way, you don’t lose any time and you cover all of your bases.

Talking to your staff

If your service has been working fine for over a week before you start having problems, you can begin the troubleshooting process. Well, sort of. Before you get started, follow these steps:

  1. Take a quick survey of the people in your office to find out who else experiences the problem.

  2. Note the types of calls that seem to be affected the most.

  3. Seek out individuals whose calls were most affected and ask specific questions:

    • Were they inbound local calls?

    • Outbound long-distance?

    • Inbound toll-free calls?

    • Outbound toll-free calls?

    • Did they happen at certain times of day?

    By comparing the call types (see Chapter 11 for help), you can get a general idea of where the problem resides.

 Remember  If the problem is pretty consistent, you will have an easier time troubleshooting it.




Telecom for Dummies
Telecom For Dummies
ISBN: 047177085X
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 184

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