[members-discuss] Registry Services Ticket Response Time

Dear Marco,

thank you for the update below. I'd like to ask you to provide a few 
more details and to detail your plans to fix the SLA violation by the 
Registration Services department, please see my questions inline.

On 8/4/21 3:43 AM, Marco Schmidt wrote:
> Dear colleagues,
> 
> We would like to give you an update on the ticket wait times in Registry 
> Services, after discussions at RIPE 82 [1] and on the mailing list [2].
> 
> We have been addressing the issues causing delays. As the number of 
> incoming requests continue to exceed previous years, we have taken on 
> additional staff to help with the workload. We are also automating some 
> of our due diligence processes which are currently time consuming.

You say that you receive more requests than in previous years, can you 
please provide some statistics for the past 10 years showing the number 
of employees vs number of requests/replies received/sent daily?
- please try, if possible, to show us how many of these tickets were 
related to transfers, how many to billing or closures, etc...

Can you provide some stats showing how many replies are necessary for a 
ticket to be resolved? Also, let me know what is being done so that 
requests get evaluated and resolved in one reply.

Also, please let us know how exactly have you addressed the constant SLA 
violations, what part of which process has been automated and whether 
you believe that with the additional staff you will resolve the issues 
swiftly.

As you probably remember, I used to work in the RS department between 
2007 and 2013. Back then, a day when the SLA was not respected was 
almost a tragedy... it seems that now it's the norm and not the 
exception any longer. What happened that your department ended in this 
situation?

> 
> You should start to see improvements in our response times towards the 
> end of this year once our new colleagues are trained and our automation 
> is ready. In the meantime, you may experience slower response times. In 
> other words, we will be slower before we can get up to speed properly, 
> but we think this will be worth it over the long term.

Things are slower and slower. For example, last week I had a ticket 
receive 1 reply after ~24 hours saying that because of time constraints, 
the ticket will be evaluated later. Then Friday, Saturday and Sunday 
passed before I got a reply on Monday.

None of the tickets I or my customers opened last month (August) have 
been replied to within the SLA. NONE! We're talking about more than 10 
tickets in a month, none receiving a reply within the SLA.

You are saying that waiting will be worth it over the long term while 
right now all tickets are being delayed from a day to another and 
sometimes a ticket that should take 10 minutes to evaluate is delayed 
for 4 days or more... This is not acceptable and that is why I'd like to 
ask you for more details to prove to us that the wait will be worth it. 
As things are getting worse and not better, I hope you understand why I 
can't take your word for it :)


When you generate those stats, please let us know if the replies saying 
'Due to a very high workload, we were unable to process your request at 
this time and will process it as soon as possible.' are still counted as 
a violation of the SLA or not.

Also, when you generate the stats I ask for, please also tell us how 
many working days in a month (for the past year or two) the Registration 
Services dept. has violated the SLA.


I've been trying to help the RS department evaluate all the requests 
received from V4Escrow and it's customers quicker. The help I offered 
was refused while the SLA violations got worse and worse.. maybe it is 
time you accept the help when it is offered to you.

I've had several conversation with RS management and higher up, all the 
way up to MD. I talked to several teams to explain the way I wanted to 
help RS and our customers get all the tickets resolved swiftly (at least 
the ones that are for transfers of resources). I proposed the 
introduction of an API for tickets/requests so we can try to automate a 
large part of the transfer ticket, this automation could help RS 
evaluate requests faster, would help customers provide all the required 
information in one go; everyone would be happy. I was told my request 
will be looked at and maybe added to plan no earlier than Q1-2022. 
Please tell me if that is still the plan or whether, in the light of 
these constant SLA violation, you could enable the API faster so we, 
brokers, can help you receive complete and easy to evaluate transfer 
requests.

> We also know from experience that we receive far more requests towards 
> the end of the year which results in a bottleneck. We will shift 
> resources to counter this, but we would also appreciate it if you could 
> get some of these requests in earlier.

Is this a warning that requests will take weeks to process towards the 
end of the year? They already take days...

Please clarify the bottlenecks you have and let's see if there's any way 
we can help you with them. I am sure that automating a lot of steps in 
your overly complicated processes will help but I am looking forward to 
receiving more details from you about this.


Elvis

PS: Note that I wanted to also send an e-mail about the RIPE NCC's 
ticketing system (zendesk) to the members-discuss mailing list and to 
the board members. I will wait for an answer to the e-mail I sent to HPH 
one week ago (which he promised he'll forward to the relevant team for a 
reply).

> 
> Kind regards,
> Marco Schmidt
> Registry Services Assistant Manager
> RIPE NCC
> 
> [1] RIPE NCC Operational Update (slides 4-10):
> https://ripe82.ripe.net/archives/video/584/
> 
> [2] Discussion on Members Discuss mailing list:
> https://www.ripe.net/ripe/mail/archives/members-discuss/2021-May/004353.html 
> 
> 
> 
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-- 
Kind regards,
Elvis Daniel Velea
Chief Executive Officer
V4Escrow LLC
elvis at v4escrow.net
+1-702-970-0921