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World desk2 min

Our Tickets Closed Themselves Before the Night Shift Came Back

A three-working-day no-reply timer did not fit depot workers on a four-on/four-off rota. Serguey Shinder describes the change to shift-aware timing and reporting.
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A service desk rule that closed tickets after three working days without a requester reply was too short for some depot workers on a four-on/four-off rota. In Serguey Shinder’s account, a night-shift supervisor returned to work five days after reporting a scanner fault and found the ticket already closed. The episode shows why a timer must reflect when requesters can respond—not just how many working days have passed.

Why the three-day timer failed

Shinder describes an automated rule that closed a request after three working days without a reply. That interval could expire while a shift worker was away from work. In the example, a night-shift supervisor reported a scanner fault at the end of her shift, then returned five days later to discover the ticket had closed.

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The system treated the absence of a reply as a reason to close the request. But the requester had not necessarily seen the follow-up or had an opportunity to answer. For a worker on a four-on/four-off schedule, calendar time away can exceed a short response window even when the worker is following their normal rota.

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How often were shift workers affected?

Shinder reports that 43% of tickets raised by shift workers in the prior year had been timer-closed, compared with 9% for office staff. The article describes the period only as “last year”; its search-result publication date is September 29, but the year is not independently established. These are figures reported by Shinder, not independently audited results.

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What the team changed

Shinder says the team changed its process in three ways:

  • Count time against the requester’s shifts. The timer was adjusted to account for when the requester was scheduled to work, rather than treating ordinary elapsed working days as an adequate response window.
  • Review cases without rota data. Depot tickets lacking schedule information were routed for supervisor review rather than being left to the standard timer.
  • Separate closure from resolution in reports. Timer-driven closures were distinguished from tickets recorded as resolved, so the two outcomes were not conflated.

After these changes, Shinder reports that timer closures for shift workers fell to about one in eight. The article does not specify when that figure was measured, so it should be read as the author’s reported outcome rather than a dated or independently verified result.

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What this means for service-desk policies

A no-response timer is an administrative rule, not proof that a user’s problem has gone away. When setting one, a service desk needs to consider whether the requester had a realistic chance to respond, how work schedules affect that chance, and what the reporting system means by “closed.”

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  • Use the requester’s work pattern where reliable rota information is available.
  • Provide a review path for tickets where schedule data is missing.
  • Keep timer closure distinct from confirmed resolution in operational reporting.

As Shinder puts the point: “Silence from somebody on a day off is not an answer.”

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