ICS Helpdesk forced to train Vegas TSC and than get laid off

OVER_TIME

New Member
I heard that Las Vegas TSC is already sending people to ICS helpdesk for training. ICS techs are being force to train the TSC. Apparently Vegas people have no clue what they doing and there is much more training that they need. UPS does not care about their people, because none of the techs from ICS were offered any helpdesk jobs at Vegas and were told that most likely will get laid off. Is that what UPS does now have someone train their job and than get laid off. Many of the people from ICS have very strong knowledge of the applications and most have more than 10 years of experience in this field. But it all comes to cost. Cost that will cost UPS to loose service?
 

whiskeyagogo

Well-Known Member
Is that what UPS does now have someone train their job and than get laid off. Many of the people from ICS have very strong knowledge of the applications and most have more than 10 years of experience in this field. But it all comes to cost. Cost that will cost UPS to loose service?

Training the person taking your job is normal; ask anyone training someone in India as part of the 'Global Development' effort.

Will there be a dropoff in service from decades of experience to brand new folks? Of course. It is not possible to bring in a new support team with no experience and expect the same service right away. Eventually the service level will be the same as the experience grows.

Will UPS save money? Yes and that's the goal. It isn't about the people, we all need to stop thinking it is.
 

Deeohem

Well-Known Member
Will there be a dropoff in service from decades of experience to brand new folks? Of course. It is not possible to bring in a new support team with no experience and expect the same service right away. Eventually the service level will be the same as the experience grows.

This sounds similar to what happened when the consolidated the Region TSCs into Las Vegas. Perhaps eventually the service level from LV will match what we have in our region TSC. More likely people will forget what we had with the region TSCs and then LV will seem effective. It's all about the changing baselines.
 

Catatonic

Nine Lives
This sounds similar to what happened when the consolidated the Region TSCs into Las Vegas. Perhaps eventually the service level from LV will match what we have in our region TSC. More likely people will forget what we had with the region TSCs and then LV will seem effective. It's all about the changing baselines.
It's all about cost.
 

dedalos

New Member
Techs in LV is under paid, every week they hired new person, how they going to work and perform GSSI calls and PFT? will be impossible. Most ICS Techs have length of service 10 yrs plus.
 

Mithic

Member
Techs in LV is under paid, every week they hired new person, how they going to work and perform GSSI calls and PFT? will be impossible. Most ICS Techs have length of service 10 yrs plus.

Truth about it is that the Las Vegas TSC rarely hires people. Prior the change over to ICS most of the people have been TSC for quite awhile. Tenures range from 10 years experience in the building, to 2-3 years prior to these last classes.

The majority of the people that will going to ICS in LV will probably be people that have been in LV since the start of the TSC take over. There will be some new people, but alot of the people targeted for this have been supporting PFT/PKG/HFA apps for 3 years.

Transitions are always rough, and I sympathize with some of the ICS people, however this was something that was known to be coming since the LV TSC was created. It was the elephant in the room no one spoke of, slowly as the TSC grew in knowledge and ICS was forced to give up more and more of their products it was inevitable it would happen, and then this year for both cost and support reasons they made the final decision to do it. It was determined that there was nothing ICS was doing that a TSC technician wouldn't be able to do with "proper" training.

I wish all the ICS people luck finding other jobs!
 

UPS-going green

New Member
I heard that Las Vegas TSC is already sending people to ICS helpdesk for training. ICS techs are being force to train the TSC. Apparently Vegas people have no clue what they doing and there is much more training that they need. UPS does not care about their people, because none of the techs from ICS were offered any helpdesk jobs at Vegas and were told that most likely will get laid off. Is that what UPS does now have someone train their job and than get laid off. Many of the people from ICS have very strong knowledge of the applications and most have more than 10 years of experience in this field. But it all comes to cost. Cost that will cost UPS to loose service?

Yes, so shortly after ICS trains the TSC, they even want to send sups to Vegas at Three Week shots to train. Then UPS will start this selction placement process and what they did was offer packages to other employees with in the compnay to take some one from ICS with more years to replace them. I feel this whole process is more a less the game of russian roulette, because once they move you they can then fire you and you get NOTHING. UPS is trying to set people up for diseaster.

And to return to you about TSC know nothing is true. they only know how to read scripts. See you give them and error instead of using YOUR HEAD and problem sovling skills required for a technicial job they are giving a 1-10 step process and to this day actually even last week i heard a coach tell the tech ok its been 15 minutes send it to ICS.......LOL ICS IS CLOSING....15 minutes later ??? FIX THE DAM PROBLEM.
 

Mithic

Member
And to return to you about TSC know nothing is true. they only know how to read scripts. See you give them and error instead of using YOUR HEAD and problem sovling skills required for a technicial job they are giving a 1-10 step process and to this day actually even last week i heard a coach tell the tech ok its been 15 minutes send it to ICS.......LOL ICS IS CLOSING....15 minutes later ??? FIX THE DAM PROBLEM.

There is no scripts for troubleshooting. There is support documents, and procedures depending on what the issue is, but nothing like a flow chart for troubleshooting. There is always some bad apples in the bunch, some of the people that don't know the proper steps or full troubleshooting, it happens at every level of a company.

As far as the 15 minutes is concerned, its all procedure handed down from Corporate to TSC. Anything that is critical or a system failure cannot be at the TSC for longer then 15 minutes to avoid causing a sort to fail or a problem with the building. It's been that way since day 1, and was put in place by people that are over both our heads.

The Las Vegas help desk would of loved to provide more troubleshooting on issues, and perform more operations. However for the longest time now they have been stonewalled by ICS with sharing information. ICS would rather gripe or tell them they can't have the rights, then to pass along solutions, ideas and fixes for problems. Part of the reason for the consolidation is for the TSC to handle alot more responsibility that ICS has strong-armed to keep. Now the TSC agents will have far more rights, and the new desk implemented will mainly be handling things that have to interact with 3rd Level or that are too sensitive to let the TSC handle. You might want to complain about the TSC and how terrible it might be, however its done well enough to replace all the region TSCs and Telecoms and perform sufficiently to now replace you.
 

Mithic

Member
I guess they would be replaced. There are few IT unions and none that are very successful or well known.
Quick reply on this, should of included it in the last post, but seemed to deem its own response. Half the people hired into the Las Vegas building were actually required to sign a non-unionizing document. Something along the lines of they would not try to start a union. However its been made pretty plain that if it ever happened, the building could be moved to another location. Las Vegas is a hot bed for call centers, and it's easy to find replacements.
 
You might want to complain about the TSC and how terrible it might be, however its done well enough to replace all the region TSCs and Telecoms and perform sufficiently to now replace you.

This is strictly about money, it saves UPS money moving ICS to LV, not how well LV has performed. In the future, if UPS thinks it could save money moving the TSC to India, you'll be gone too.
 

Deeohem

Well-Known Member
You might want to complain about the TSC and how terrible it might be, however its done well enough to replace all the region TSCs and Telecoms and perform sufficiently to now replace you.

uummm.. NO. It's done cheap enough for UPS corporate to replace all the region TSCs and Telecoms on a cost basis only. The quality of support by the old region TSCs was higher. Less issues were dumped on the local TSGs and when they WERE dumped on the local TSGs, the documentation of what was done and what the TSC though needed doing was much better than what's coming out of the TSCs now.
 

nerrollus

Well-Known Member
Welcome to the club ... TSG is training the users to replace them. ICS is training TSC to replace them. Pretty soon all they'll have is self swap users and half ass TSC techs running the place. Good luck!
 

Mithic

Member
This is strictly about money, it saves UPS money moving ICS to LV, not how well LV has performed. In the future, if UPS thinks it could save money moving the TSC to India, you'll be gone too.

It would of been more cost effective to move ICS down to the TSC at the same time they were rolling off the Region TSCs, it was something that was dicussed then, since so much was being done it could of all been consolidated. However it wasn't done because they didn't believe it'd work out. The original corporate roll out group that was at the LV TSC was already putting into motion that the ICS and other support desks would soon be brought down. However because of the work load, and what ICS did at the time, which was far more then they do now, it was halted.

Recently, The first thing they looked at over a 2 month study of ICS, was if they did anything that was unique or unable to be done by TSC. The answer amounted to no. Everything ICS does lately is able to be done by a tech or lead tech from Las Vegas with further training. Anything that would of been too hard for a TSC, or required years of experience was often getting sent to third level apps groups anyways. I will say there is certain ICS techs that are fantastic to deal with and are great technicians, on the other hand there is also the same amount that are horrible and rarely know what they are doing. The exact same can be said about TSC, and even more so about TSG.

On the note of TSGs getting more work:
When a TSG calls into TSC for anything other then a valid escalation, they are failing at their job. There is no resource or magical buttons that TSC has to fix TSG issues, TSGs have the exact same document access and solution searches we do. However TSGs were used to the Region TSCs doing their work for them. The quality didn't degrade, the workload was just pushed off to the proper place. TSGs we talk to often don't want to do the long fixes and look for ways out, or ways to get someone else to do it for them. The greatest TSGs are the ones that never have to call TSC.

On the note of Self Swap:
Its about convenience and time management. Why should a user need to call TSC, to dispatch a Service order that a TSG might not feel like doing in the middle of the night, we've had tsgs flat out refuse sev 5s and 2s because they were too tired, they were too far way, or they just cancelled it, or even when the tsg does respond promptly they still have more downtime. A preload user/supervisor can easily grab a spare printer,scanner, monitor etc throw it on the workstation and at the most need to call TSC for a quick reinstall. That process is far more efficiency for operations then sending a tsg. Same with replacing simple hardware, mice, keyboard, print toner/ink.
 

TechGrrl

Space Cadet
On the note of Self Swap:
Its about convenience and time management. Why should a user need to call TSC, to dispatch a Service order that a TSG might not feel like doing in the middle of the night, we've had tsgs flat out refuse sev 5s and 2s because they were too tired, they were too far way, or they just cancelled it, or even when the tsg does respond promptly they still have more downtime. A preload user/supervisor can easily grab a spare printer,scanner, monitor etc throw it on the workstation and at the most need to call TSC for a quick reinstall. That process is far more efficiency for operations then sending a tsg. Same with replacing simple hardware, mice, keyboard, print toner/ink.

Back to the future: when we first brought PC's into the business, the users did all the installs and upgrades themselves. Then we needed to add support staff when stuff got too complicated. Now we don't need support staffs because the user can do it themselves? Whoa...my head is spinning.

Sounds like someone is playing accounting games. If the user does it themselves, poorly and taking a lot of lost time from their REAL job, it doesn't show up as a cost. It really IS A COST, it just doesn't show up anywhere. But a real support person shows up on an accounting report as a real cost. Not a hidden cost.

So much for IE and friend&A knowing what the hell they are doing....
 

randomUPSISer

Well-Known Member
Having had a production support issue recently where I needed to call the "NJ ICS" helpdesk to have production servers restarted, I can without a doubt tell you that they new LV helpdesk is worthless. Had to page out the group that supports the servers to do a simple server restart. This is something Ive had the old ICS do many many times without issue.

Yay for outsourcing
 

Mithic

Member
Having
had a production support issue recently where I needed to call the "NJ ICS" helpdesk to have production servers restarted, I can without a doubt tell you that they new LV helpdesk is worthless. Had to page out the group that supports the servers to do a simple server restart. This is something Ive had the old ICS do many many times without issue.

Yay for outsourcing

Couple of problems here.
Lv does not start taking any Ics calls until late April. You were talking to someone in Nj.
Also Las Vegas isn't outsourced the tsc isdirectly controlled by Corporate. It's a Ups owned and operated call center.
Thank you for helping prove my previous points about the current ics and why they are now replacable
 

whiskeyagogo

Well-Known Member
Lv does not start taking any Ics calls until late April. You were talking to someone in Nj.

Las Vegas has been taking certain calls previously handled by NJ for sometime now; certain first level support calls were routed to LV quite some time ago (years?). I have experienced both LV & NJ support for these items and unfortunately have to agree with the previous poster that LV does not measure up. I am sincerely hoping they do better with the massive turnover they are about to receive and hoping history doesn't repeat itself.

Like Random, getting a server restarted or even checked to see if it's online seems to be a challenge to Las Vegas. Maybe it's a blind spot in their training procedures?
 
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