Dealing with branch offices

How often do you visit your farthest branch offices? We've got two branch offices, one that's in Rayville (about 25 miles away) and the other is in Baton Rouge (about 160 miles away). The last time I was there was in late 2008, and they're apparently feeling neglected because neither me or my boss have paid them a visit since.

[rant]There's been some lingering issues, and they'd never bothered to send an email to the help desk system but they had no problem bringing it up to their respective managers. So now since they've hit the managers with a huge number of issues, our CEO has decreed that me & my boss need to go there and not come back until they're completely satisfied (never mind that most of this can be fixed remotely, they want us on site to appease them). And my boss is on day 11 of trying to pass a kidney stone.

[/rant]

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Comments

Bl8ckr0uter

We have a branch office that is about 2 hours away (both way). They are having some problems and I have just talked to my boss and I am going to go down there today or tomorrow. I am not sure what advice I can give you but I can tell you that I feel where you are coming from. Maybe you should set up a FAQ for them so they can solve some of their own problems. Also make sure you can leverage technology in the future. Let them know that they need to accept remote support. Times are hard and traveling 2 hours for a 2 minute fix is just plain stupid. Maybe you company should try to work with someone like RHT to get someone to do regular work on their machines so you don't have to travel 160 miles in the future.

arwes

Thanks for the reply. Honestly most of the problems center around one employee, and she always makes sure to mention that she used to work as an IT person at her former insurance job (4 employees versus the 100 something we have here). However she can't understand that she shouldn't open multiple tickets for one issue (just counted up 7 tickets for the same issue).

I tried a few years ago when I first started here to see about getting a local student (plenty of LSU CS or CIS students hungry for IT experience) to work there a few hours during the week. I got shot down because management said they couldn't justify hiring another IT person just to support the 10 or so users there.

Bl8ckr0uter

arwes wrote: »

I tried a few years ago when I first started here to see about getting a local student (plenty of LSU CS or CIS students hungry for IT experience) to work there a few hours during the week. I got shot down because management said they couldn't justify hiring another IT person just to support the 10 or so users there.

[FONT=&quot]Did somebody say [/FONT]Volunteer? I can almost guarantee you, if you go to the local community college or tech school you could find someone. Especially now.

garv221

I've dealt with branch offices before and I was on the other side of the coin as the boss. Regardless of distance or if there is an actual problem, your face needs to be seen on site sometimes. I did however set every desktop, switch and device up for RDP or some kind of remote access through the existing vpn. Once remote access is up, call the user and login. But you still need to make an appearance every now and again, when you do, make it a Friday. Another key to branch office support is making friends with those guys.

CompuTron99

I think that "Face-Time" is key.