The Vague Slowness Complaint

The ticket from Harbourview Clinic said, in full: everything is slow. The technician who picked it up had been doing this long enough to know that everything is never slow. One thing is slow and it has coloured the whole morning. The only way to find the thing was to ask. It took four questions. The thing was the patient records system, between nine and ten, on the two machines nearest the reception desk. It had been happening since the week the new scanner was installed. It took about forty seconds to open a record that used to take five. None of that was in the ticket. All of it was in the person, waiting to be asked.

This series is about the questions. It covers turning it's slow into a measurement, with the four questions and a stopwatch. It covers expectation or defect: the honest sorting of the slow that is normal from the slow that is broken. It covers the slow computer and what it usually is, in a five-minute check. Then comes the slow application and whose problem it is, you, us or them, with the evidence an application owner will accept. It covers closing the perception gap. That sometimes means showing a user a number and sometimes means saying this is normal with a straight face and kindness. The series covers tracking slowness tickets as a signal. A rising count of vague complaints is one of the earliest warnings a desk ever gets.

Articles in This Series

• Turning 'It's Slow' Into a Measurement You Can Act On
  What is slow, when, how long, compared with what; the stopwatch; the before-and-after; the ticket that says only slow and how to reply; and the slowness intake questions.
• Expectation or Defect: Deciding Which One It Is
  The application that is slow for everyone by design, the laptop that is old, the user from a faster job, the task that grew. Covers the conversation when it is an expectation, and the sheet.
• The Slow Computer: What It Usually Is and the Five-Minute Check
  Start-up items, the full disk, too little memory, the browser with ninety tabs, the security agent's scan, the age. Covers the five-minute check in order, when it is hardware, and the card.
• The Slow Application: Is It You, Us or Them?
  The vendor-hosted application, the server, the network, the data that grew for years, the report that was always slow; evidence the application owner will accept; and the evidence sheet.
• Closing the Perception Gap: When Faster Does Not Feel Faster
  Showing the user the measurement, the honest this-is-normal, the improvement that cannot be felt, the status page idea, the user who will never be satisfied, and the reply.
• Tracking Slowness Tickets as a Signal, Not a Nuisance
  The category, the trend, the hotspot it reveals, the refresh case it supports, the honest report line, and the slowness report line.

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This series is part of the QuerySolv helpdesk topic library. It covers the foundations, processes, communication, knowledge, tooling, metrics, classic ticket domains, people and strategy behind a support desk that works. The library pairs well with the software we build: QuerySolv. It is a self-hosted help desk that runs as one Windows service on your own network. It is licensed once per installation, not per agent per month.