This page maintained by: Janelle Genest
Last modified: April 16, 2008
NTS Coordinators and Tech Admins | Response Time
PSU Telecommunications offers the following guidelines to help PSU departments better understand our service order and repair response standards. Adhering to these standards helps us efficiently and effectively deploy the limited resources we have available while achieving our customer satisfaction objectives.
"Response Time" for a service order is defined as the interval between the time our office receives the correctly completed service order and the date the actual work can begin to complete the service order. This is also referred to as the "order interval" and you may hear us refer to it as "our normal order interval". The order interval begins when we receive the correct and complete paperwork (service order) and can then process that service order. Our processing step includes entering the service order into our work order system, determining the amount of work and assigning the resources required to complete the service order, and assigning the due date, which is the date work will actually begin on the completion of the service order. We normally process service order's on a first-in, first-out basis. While we have a standard order interval which we're able to meet more than 95% of the time, there are factors, such as workload, complexity or scope of the order, or time of year, which can impact our ability to respond to service order's within our desired order interval.
"Normal" service order: The order interval for a normal service order is 5 to 10 working days. Most of the service order's we receive fall into this category. Simple service order's, such as adding or moving up to 5 lines or sets, name changes and commuter voice mailboxes, can often be scheduled closer to a 5-day order interval while others that are a little more complex may have to be pushed out closer to the 10-day interval. What's important to note here are two things: 1) departments must submit complete and accurate requests before we schedule the work, and 2) we make every effort to complete as many service order's as possible within our normal order interval of 5 to 10 working days.
"Complex" service order: These are orders that involve moving or adding 10 lines/sets or more, involve major departmental moves or relocations, may involve work by the PSU Facilities Department, or any other large, complex order that typically requires interdepartmental coordination or more resources than we have available to meet our normal 5-10 day order interval. While we may be able to complete such orders within our normal 5-10 day interval, these more complex service order's can take more than 10 working days to complete. Again, the important points here are: 1) we must have complete and accurate paperwork before we can schedule the job (we can help Telecom Coordinators complete the service order's for these more complex orders), and 2) we may not be able to meet our normal 5 to 10 day interval with more complex orders.
Peak Activity: Our busiest time of the year for service order activity usually occurs between August and October. Though we make every effort to meet our normal 5 to 10-day order interval, our response time tends to run closer to 10 days or more. Telecommunications will try to send out a reminder notice each year prior to the beginning of our peak activity period to give departments a chance to get their orders in and processed in a timely manner.
Repair: Repairs are processed by our office on a first-in, first-out basis.
Priority is given to service outages.
Service Outage: We define service outage as "no dial tone". For a phone that has no dial tone, we dispatch a technician within 4 business hours of report of the trouble.
Normal Repair: For any other type of repair, a technician will be dispatched within 24 hours, Monday through Friday, from the time the trouble is reported to our office. There are times when our workload may allow us to respond sooner but our commitment is the 24-hour response time for normal repair activity. If we receive a repair report on Friday, we have until that same time on Monday to dispatch a repair tech, if we can't fit it into our work schedule on Friday.
Reporting a Trouble: To assist us in properly responding to repair problems, we need the following minimum information in the trouble report: - Name of the person requesting the repair - Contact person at the department location (may be same as above) - Phone number of contact person - Extension of the problem phone - Building and room number where problem exists - Description of problem (no dial tone, can't hear callers, noise on line, etc.)