Picture the scene.

You’re a top private investigator with one of the best reputations in the industry for hunting down criminals and solving mysteries of all kinds. You solve 99.99% of your cases, and there’s a very long list of people who have hired you for your services and been delighted with the results.

You’re sitting at your office desk catching up on some paperwork, blinds down, dust motes drifting peacefully through the air. Suddenly the phone rings.

It’s the local police, and they need your help investigating a new, very urgent identity theft case. The family involved is highly influential and there’s a lot at stake. You carefully take down all the details and assure them that you’ll begin investigating straight away.

Although you always have several cases on at any one time, you try to give them all equal importance. Having said that, you understand the time-sensitive nature of the situation and how serious this is to the police, and you start working through the key details. You’re confident you can resolve this, but it will take a little time to investigate.

You’ve been hard at work for half an hour and you’ve made great progress so far. But before you can get any further, the phone rings again.

It’s the police officer who called you earlier. “Hey, how’s the case going?”

“It’s going well,” you reply, “I’m still investigating the finer details, but it looks promising so far.”

The police officer isn’t convinced. “I can’t even describe to you how important this is. The family is absolutely distraught. They’re calling us constantly, and they’re angry and frustrated.”

You’re used to this kind of urgency and you’ve learned not to take it personally. After all, it’s important that you stay calm even in the most demanding of situations in order to do the best job possible. You’re still frowning down at your notes and scribbling the odd extra question in the margin as you reply, “Please reassure them that I’m doing the best I can. I know that every minute counts, but I’ve been working on it non-stop as my top priority.”

The police officer still sounds just as agitated, and he’s beginning to lose patience. “But WHEN will it be sorted out? How much time will it take?”

You’re still trying to work through the problem at hand, but you put down your pen at this point. Frowning, you reply confusedly, “I have no idea how long it will take. How long does it take to solve a crime?”

Your question is genuine, but the police officer starts yelling. “Don’t be so flippant! Tell me more about the issue. They want more information. They want to know what’s going on. They want a resolution. They want an ETA!”

“I can’t give an ETA,” you say. “I literally have no idea how long this will take, or even how I could realistically guess how long it will take. It might be a simple, straightforward case or it might have all kinds of twists and turns. It could be resolved shortly, or it might take a while. We both know that.”

“At least give me more information,” the officer says. “There’s nothing I can really say at this point, and even if there were, it would be technical elements that wouldn’t mean anything to them,” you respond patiently. “I just need to get on with the investigation. By the time I’ve explained where I’ve got to so far, I could have done twice as much work on the actual case. The sooner you let me get on with it, the sooner I can get this resolved.”

“So what exactly am I supposed to tell the family? Their fortune and reputation is at stake here! You’re not helping! Just what kind of service are you providing here? I’m going to have to hire another investigator to get on this case. Our reputation is on the line, and you’re not taking this seriously!”

You understand that the family is on his back, but all you can think about is getting on with the case at hand. There’s no way you can do any more than you’re currently doing. And at the end of the day, everyone’s end goal is a resolution, regardless of where they are in the chain. “Please tell the family we’ll update them later, I appreciate that everyone is stressed, but I really need to get on so I can get this resolved as soon as possible,” you reply. Every second counts. The police officer sighs heavily. “I’ll call you in an hour, and you’d better have an ETA by then!” He hangs up.

The above scenario can be applied to many different areas and roles within the web industry. Whether it’s a coding issue, a hardware problem, a system or network behaving strangely, an essential third party supplier having problems, or one of numerous other things, it often leads to the same question from customers: ‘What’s the ETA for a fix?’

It’s a legitimate question, but one which is difficult to answer, and gets more impossible the more complex the problem is. It could be fixed in the next two minutes. Or the next hour. But 99% of the time it’s impossible to say until it’s actually resolved (and by then all anyone cares about is that it’s fixed).

You don’t want to pluck a number out of the air because it’s almost definitely going to be entirely wrong. You don’t want to mislead your customers. You also want to communicate that you’re doing everything within your power – and usually lots of other people’s power, too – to reach a satisfactory resolution quickly. But this is often difficult to get across, particularly when emotions are running high. You don’t want to interrupt the ‘investigators’, because you know it will delay progression and put even more pressure on an already difficult situation, but it’s also challenging and stressful to have unhappy customers.

So what’s the answer? If we knew, we’d probably be trillionaires. But there are ways to mitigate the situation, and to mitigate the situation for customers, and customers’ customers, and so on down the chain, by remembering the following:

1. Keeping calm is the most productive thing you can do right now

Everyone involved in the situation is doing the best they can, and working as hard as they can. It’s already a high pressure situation, and getting angry or upset doesn’t resolve anything any more quickly; in fact, it tends to create more problems. Trust us, we know!

A linked issue here is feeling helpless. Just take a minute away from your screen and your phone to take a deep breath and do something you enjoy or that will distract, for example making a coffee, creating a playlist, or stretching your legs.

2. Everyone’s in the same boat

No one wants anyone to be unhappy, and everyone is wholeheartedly after the same outcome: a fast, practical resolution. Everyone cares just as much as you do, if not more. Issues aren’t fun for anyone anywhere in the chain, and they cost everyone time and money. We hate you being stressed, your customers being stressed, and our teams being stressed. It’s not a situation we ever prolong in any way, and we utilise maximum resources to make sure issues are resolved as quickly as possible. Check out What happens during downtime? for more information.

3. No news is good news

It means that people are busy investigating and resolving an issue. Although everyone’s first instinct is to ask for updates, the best thing we can do to ensure issues are solved as quickly as possible is to let the administrators and engineers get on with it. We struggle to step back from doing that too, because it’s only natural, but we do our best.

Finally, we’d like to reiterate that every member of staff involved is a hundred per cent dedicated to resolving any issues that occur. We’re incredibly lucky to work in a company that has no blame culture, a lot of trust, and where every single person has an incredibly strong work ethic. This allows us to resolve issues as quickly and effectively as they can be resolved, and we’re committed to providing you with the service you and your customers deserve.