Re: Beyond funny

Floyd Wellershaus wrote: > so IBM doesn't support product new product evaluation ? > Yup, that's a good way to lose new sales for sure,and, as you say, worse > is that they will lose current customers. > It's not so funny as it is sad. > > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > Subject: Re: Beyond funny > Date: Thu, March 13, 2008 21:22 > From: "Paul Watson (Oninit)" <paul@oninit.com> > Fernando Nunes wrote: >>> Paul Watson (Oninit) wrote: >>>> Got a customer with a valid PA support contract who are trying to >>>> evaluate an additional product from IBM so they can take their old but >>>> supported system forward. This evaluation product has an issue but >>>> IBM will not allow me to raise a support call cos they haven't bought >>>> the product, and the customer obviously doesn't want to buy a 'faulty' >>>> product. >>>> >>>> Stalemate ? No the customer says bye bye to IBM and walks :-) >>>> >>>> Cheers >>>> Paul >>>> >>>> Paul Watson >>>> Tel: +1 913-400-2620 >>>> Mob: +1 913-387-7529 >>>> Web: www.oninit.com >>>> >>>> Failure is not as frightening as regret. >>>> If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid. >>>> >>> Is the problem a known bug? >>> >> No way of knowing - IBM won't discuss it with me This is fixable. I (hope I)'ve hooked you up. Please ping me if things don't take a turn for the better. Cheers Serge -- Serge Rielau DB2 Solutions Development IBM Toronto Lab

Serge Rielau wrote: >>> No way of knowing - IBM won't discuss it with me > This is fixable. I (hope I)'ve hooked you up. > Please ping me if things don't take a turn for the better. > > Cheers > Serge In my honest and *personal* opinion, this goes a lot deeper... It has to do on how IT companies face the support function... The fact is, support personnel is lead to "close cases" and not to do "CRM"... I keep hearing and seeing situations when the first interaction is: "get the latest version and call us if the problem persists"... Unfortunately the support staff is not taken to be a great source of customer satisfaction... I mean... every book says they are, but every company puts them in another situation... Once again, a disclaimer... this is not a criticism to the people who do support... I keep getting very good ones and a few I'd prefer not to meet ever... Interestingly, some support teams are well aware of this... But it seems difficult to change things... Possibly it has to come from higher sources... Regards. -- Fernando Nunes Portugal http://informix-technology.blogspot.com My email works... but I don't check it frequently...

Fernando Nunes wrote: > Serge Rielau wrote: > >>>> No way of knowing - IBM won't discuss it with me >> This is fixable. I (hope I)'ve hooked you up. >> Please ping me if things don't take a turn for the better. >> >> Cheers >> Serge > > In my honest and *personal* opinion, this goes a lot deeper... > It has to do on how IT companies face the support function... > > The fact is, support personnel is lead to "close cases" and not to do > "CRM"... > I keep hearing and seeing situations when the first interaction is: "get > the latest version and call us if the problem persists"... > > Unfortunately the support staff is not taken to be a great source of > customer satisfaction... I mean... every book says they are, but every > company puts them in another situation... > > Once again, a disclaimer... this is not a criticism to the people who do > support... I keep getting very good ones and a few I'd prefer not to > meet ever... > > Interestingly, some support teams are well aware of this... But it seems > difficult to change things... Possibly it has to come from higher > sources... Oh.. could I tell stories.... Hey I sound like Gumby ... ! ;-) Someday, sufficiently intoxicated by cranberry juice, ... -- Serge Rielau DB2 Solutions Development IBM Toronto Lab

> From: srielau@ca.ibm.com> Oh.. could I tell stories....> Hey I sound like Gumby ... ! ;-)> > Someday, sufficiently intoxicated by cranberry juice, ...> > -- > Serge Rielau LOL... Unfortunately Serge your business card says IBM. Mine doesn't. ;-) And it hasn't for a long enough time for me to say some things. ;-) Now if you add a little vodka to the cranberry juice... very nice. -G _________________________________________________________________ Connect and share in new ways with Windows Live. http://www.windowslive.com/share.html?ocid=TXT_TAGHM_Wave2_sharelife_012008

Fernando is spot on. Unless you're talking about premiere or premium support services, support is a cost center and not a profit center. So the idea is to answer as many support questions as quickly and "efficiently" as possible. Sometimes, if you hit a "known" defect, you call in to support and they'll tell you to upgrade to a newer version. But back to the basic business economics of support. What metrics are used on guaging the effectiveness of your support team? Number of calls? Tme to resolution? Reduction in number of crit sits or priority 1 calls? How do you bonus/incent your support team? I don't know of a good model, other than have the calls recorded and periodically reviewed and graded by management. But that's a subjective and not an objective method. Do you (meaning anyone) have any ideas? -G PS. I realize that the bulk of the posters/readers are line DBAs and this is a management issue. In TQM, its the guy on the front line who has probably the best input and you should be able to voice an opinion.> From: spam@onlinedomus.net> Subject: Re: Beyond funny> Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2008 23:07:05 +0000> To: informix-list@iiug.org> > Serge Rielau wrote:> > >>> No way of knowing - IBM won't discuss it with me> > This is fixable. I (hope I)'ve hooked you up.> > Please ping me if things don't take a turn for the better.> > > > Cheers> > Serge> > In my honest and *personal* opinion, this goes a lot deeper...> It has to do on how IT companies face the support function...> > The fact is, support personnel is lead to "close cases" and not to do "CRM"...> I keep hearing and seeing situations when the first interaction is: "get the > latest version and call us if the problem persists"...> > Unfortunately the support staff is not taken to be a great source of customer > satisfaction... I mean... every book says they are, but every company puts them > in another situation...> > Once again, a disclaimer... this is not a criticism to the people who do > support... I keep getting very good ones and a few I'd prefer not to meet ever...> > Interestingly, some support teams are well aware of this... But it seems > difficult to change things... Possibly it has to come from higher sources...> > Regards.> > -- > Fernando Nunes> Portugal> > http://informix-technology.blogspot.com>; My email works... but I don't check it frequently...> _______________________________________________> Informix-list mailing list> Informix-list@iiug.org> http://www.iiug.org/mailman/listinfo/informix-list _________________________________________________________________ Shed those extra pounds with MSN and The Biggest Loser! http://biggestloser.msn.com/

Ian Michael Gumby wrote: > > Fernando is spot on. > > Unless you're talking about premiere or premium support services, > support is a cost center and not a profit center. > > So the idea is to answer as many support questions as quickly and > "efficiently" as possible. Sometimes, if you hit a "known" defect, you > call in to support and they'll tell you to upgrade to a newer version. > > But back to the basic business economics of support. What metrics are > used on guaging the effectiveness of your support team? Number of calls? > Tme to resolution? Reduction in number of crit sits or priority 1 > calls? How do you bonus/incent your support team? > > I don't know of a good model, other than have the calls recorded and > periodically reviewed and graded by management. But that's a subjective > and not an objective method. > > Do you (meaning anyone) have any ideas? > > -G > PS. I realize that the bulk of the posters/readers are line DBAs and > this is a management issue. In TQM, its the guy on the front line who > has probably the best input and you should be able to voice an opinion. I can have "ideas", but they are not revolutionary and they've been put in practice...: * Customer feedback, but many of the surveys are probably ignored if the customer is satisfied... I mean... If you didn't like the support you'll probably say it out loud..., but if you did like, then you have better things to do... * Another option would be to review the support calls as a team... Learn from the mistakes and take a bit of the subjectivity from the process (I believe this is being done) * Give incentives for opps and leads generated by the support personal... I don't know if this is done, but it should. * Rewrite the scripts... remove the "upgrade first, come back later" from the top of the script ;) * Get support more involved with R&D. AFAIK this is being done... * Avoid letting people do a career in tech support. To be a good support engineer you should know how customers look at the problems and issues. As many of us know or imagine, for every problem, we try to have a workaround... This is what the name implies... It's not a solution, but a *temporary hack* to avoid the issue, or minimize the consequences. This should be feasible to do... and I've seen some workarounds that make me want to cry... Things like "if this happens (HDR breaks) than you can do a restore of the secondary *as a workaround*" This *is not* a workaround... this is what you *must do*, _after_ the thing happens... A real workaround would be a way to avoid the break down, or eventually to let it break but in a way a restart would solve it... * Education, education... Make people in support understand that they can be much more important then many of us think... Sometimes they're the only person to whom a customer talks in years... CRM is not only big flashy applications... Someone once told me he used to do CRM... How? With post-it papers... Of course it was not usable by the company, but he did know his customers, because he took notes in each interaction with them... This is more a funny story than anything else, but points out that every customer interaction is precious... It's a clich' none by everybody: It takes much more effort to win a customer than to keep one * Whenever it makes sense, and in a global world many times it doesn't, give customers the opportunity to meet support staff. I've seen several customers very interested in meeting my support colleague... They "know" each others for many years of phone conversations... It's nice to meet people in events etc. bla, bla, bla... This is probably somewhere in the books... I'm not saying anything new... It's just a question of how companies face support. And from what I know, I don't agree on how they do it... And once again, this post has nothing to do with (just) IBM or Informix... I spend most of my time in customer(s), and I see a lot of support interactions... Regards, Regards, > > From: spam@onlinedomus.net > > Subject: Re: Beyond funny > > Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2008 23:07:05 +0000 > > To: informix-list@iiug.org > > > > Serge Rielau wrote: > > > > >>> No way of knowing - IBM won't discuss it with me > > > This is fixable. I (hope I)'ve hooked you up. > > > Please ping me if things don't take a turn for the better. > > > > > > Cheers > > > Serge > > > > In my honest and *personal* opinion, this goes a lot deeper... > > It has to do on how IT companies face the support function... > > > > The fact is, support personnel is lead to "close cases" and not to do > "CRM"... > > I keep hearing and seeing situations when the first interaction is: > "get the > > latest version and call us if the problem persists"... > > > > Unfortunately the support staff is not taken to be a great source of > customer > > satisfaction... I mean... every book says they are, but every company > puts them > > in another situation... > > > > Once again, a disclaimer... this is not a criticism to the people who do > > support... I keep getting very good ones and a few I'd prefer not to > meet ever... > > > > Interestingly, some support teams are well aware of this... But it seems > > difficult to change things... Possibly it has to come from higher > sources... > > > > Regards. > > > > -- > > Fernando Nunes > > Portugal > > > > http://informix-technology.blogspot.com > > My email works... but I don't check it frequently... > > _______________________________________________ > > Informix-list mailing list > > Informix-list@iiug.org > > http://www.iiug.org/mailman/listinfo/informix-list > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Shed those extra pounds with MSN and The Biggest Loser! Learn more. > <http://biggestloser.msn.com/>; -- Fernando Nunes Portugal http://informix-technology.blogspot.com My email works... but I don't check it frequently...

Just to follow up... This is already being done. There used to be a swat team to handle the really hard crit sits. (Not sure if they were disbanded because of costs.) Level 2 is lab support Level 3 is a lab engineer. I don't know if *all* the credit should go to Cindy White, but Informix had the support thing covered. They would record the calls and even coach support staff. But that was Informix. Now you're dealing with IBM and its support model. Paul's problem was within the first level of support, and those people are usually drones who only understand entitlement and ask the basic questions like "Are you sure the pc is powered up?" Not to be critical of Paul, something doesn't add up. In any event, if you request a page out to a duty manager, you usually can get things taken care of in a calm rational way. > Subject: Re: Beyond funny > From: spam@onlinedomus.net > Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2008 23:14:50 +0000 > To: informix-list@iiug.org > > Ian Michael Gumby wrote: > > > > Fernando is spot on. > > > > Unless you're talking about premiere or premium support services, > > support is a cost center and not a profit center. > > > > So the idea is to answer as many support questions as quickly and > > "efficiently" as possible. Sometimes, if you hit a "known" defect, you > > call in to support and they'll tell you to upgrade to a newer version. > > > > But back to the basic business economics of support. What metrics are > > used on guaging the effectiveness of your support team? Number of calls? > > Tme to resolution? Reduction in number of crit sits or priority 1 > > calls? How do you bonus/incent your support team? > > > > I don't know of a good model, other than have the calls recorded and > > periodically reviewed and graded by management. But that's a subjective > > and not an objective method. > > > > Do you (meaning anyone) have any ideas? > > > > -G > > PS. I realize that the bulk of the posters/readers are line DBAs and > > this is a management issue. In TQM, its the guy on the front line who > > has probably the best input and you should be able to voice an opinion. > > > I can have "ideas", but they are not revolutionary and they've been put in > practice...: > > * Customer feedback, but many of the surveys are probably ignored if the > customer is satisfied... I mean... If you didn't like the support you'll > probably say it out loud..., but if you did like, then you have better things > to do... > > * Another option would be to review the support calls as a team... Learn from > the mistakes and take a bit of the subjectivity from the process (I believe > this is being done) > > * Give incentives for opps and leads generated by the support personal... I > don't know if this is done, but it should. > > * Rewrite the scripts... remove the "upgrade first, come back later" from the > top of the script ;) > > * Get support more involved with R&D. AFAIK this is being done... > > * Avoid letting people do a career in tech support. To be a good support > engineer you should know how customers look at the problems and issues. As many > of us know or imagine, for every problem, we try to have a workaround... This > is what the name implies... It's not a solution, but a *temporary hack* to > avoid the issue, or minimize the consequences. This should be feasible to do... > and I've seen some workarounds that make me want to cry... Things like "if this > happens (HDR breaks) than you can do a restore of the secondary *as a workaround*" > This *is not* a workaround... this is what you *must do*, _after_ the thing > happens... A real workaround would be a way to avoid the break down, or > eventually to let it break but in a way a restart would solve it... > > * Education, education... Make people in support understand that they can be > much more important then many of us think... Sometimes they're the only person > to whom a customer talks in years... CRM is not only big flashy applications... > Someone once told me he used to do CRM... How? With post-it papers... Of course > it was not usable by the company, but he did know his customers, because he > took notes in each interaction with them... This is more a funny story than > anything else, but points out that every customer interaction is precious... > It's a cliché none by everybody: It takes much more effort to win a customer > than to keep one > > * Whenever it makes sense, and in a global world many times it doesn't, give > customers the opportunity to meet support staff. I've seen several customers > very interested in meeting my support colleague... They "know" each others for > many years of phone conversations... It's nice to meet people in events etc. > > > bla, bla, bla... This is probably somewhere in the books... I'm not saying > anything new... It's just a question of how companies face support. And from > what I know, I don't agree on how they do it... And once again, this post has > nothing to do with (just) IBM or Informix... I spend most of my time in > customer(s), and I see a lot of support interactions... > > Regards, > > Regards, > > > > > From: spam@onlinedomus.net > > > Subject: Re: Beyond funny > > > Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2008 23:07:05 +0000 > > > To: informix-list@iiug.org > > > > > > Serge Rielau wrote: > > > > > > >>> No way of knowing - IBM won't discuss it with me > > > > This is fixable. I (hope I)'ve hooked you up. > > > > Please ping me if things don't take a turn for the better. > > > > > > > > Cheers > > > > Serge > > > > > > In my honest and *personal* opinion, this goes a lot deeper... > > > It has to do on how IT companies face the support function... > > > > > > The fact is, support personnel is lead to "close cases" and not to do > > "CRM"... > > > I keep hearing and seeing situations when the first interaction is: > > "get the > > > latest version and call us if the problem persists"... > > > > > > Unfortunately the support staff is not taken to be a great source of > > customer > > > satisfaction... I mean... every book says they are, but every company > > puts them > > > in another situation... > > > > > > Once again, a disclaimer... this is not a criticism to the people who do > > > support... I keep getting very good ones and a few I'd prefer not to > > meet ever... > > > > > > Interestingly, some support teams are well aware of this... But it seems > > > difficult to change things... Possibly it has to come from higher > > sources... > > > > > > Regards. > > > > > > -- > > > Fernando Nunes > > > Portugal > > > > > > http://informix-technology.blogspot.com > > > My email works... but I don't check it frequently... > > > _______________________________________________ > > > Informix-list mailing list > > > Informix-list@iiug.org > > > http://www.iiug.org/mailman/listinfo/informix-list > > > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > Shed those extra pounds with MSN and The Biggest Loser! L