North American Network Operators Group

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Re: Abuse response [Was: RE: Yahoo Mail Update]

  • From: Jack Bates
  • Date: Wed Apr 16 14:19:06 2008


Dave Pooser wrote:
Handling the abuse desk well (or poorly) builds (or damages) the brand.

...among people who are educated among such things. Unfortunately, people with clue are orders of magnitude short of a majority, and the rest of the world (ie: potential customers) wouldn't know an abuse desk from a self-abuse desk.

I think that depends on the nature of the abuse desk, how it interfaces with other networks and the customer base. Of course, I get to be the NOC guy and the abuse guy here. It's nice to have less than a million customers. However, I find that how NOC issues and abuse issues are handled are very similar. It is, of course, easier to reach another NOC than it is the senior abuse staff that actually have clue, generally. Both departments need a certain amount of front line protection to keep them from being swamped with issues that can be handled by others. Never the less, when they can interface with customers and with the other departments that spend more time with customers, it does improve the company's service level.


If there is a routing, firewalling, or email delivery issue with a much larger network, the effectiveness of the NOC/Abuse Dept will determine how well the customers will handle the interruption. If the company has built trust with the customer and related to them in a personal way, then the customer will in turn tend to be more understanding of the issues involved, or in some cases at least point their anger at the right company.

-Jack

Learning to mitigate the damage caused by Murphy's law.