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Objectives:
To provide quality support to the customers by minimizing their holding time on the phone and waiting time for the response via email or fax. Provide customers with ongoing status updates for problems not resolved on the first call.
How can you reach Technical Support?
Technical support works between 9am - 6pm Monday through Friday. Customers can reach technical support via letters, fax, phone or email. Please provide your SSI ID or serial number when contacting us. As soon as you contact us an incident tracking number will be provided to you for future reference.
For the Americas:
Systat Software Inc.,
Systat Software, Inc.
1735 Technology Drive, Ste 430
San Jose, CA 95110
USA
Phone : 408-452-9010
Fax : 800-797-7406
Support : techsupport@systat.com
For Europe:
Systat Software Inc
4th Floor. Block B, Vista Centre
50, Salisbury Road,
Hounslow, - TW4 6JQ,
London, UK.
Phone : +44-(0)208-538 0128
Fax : + 44-(0)208-538 0273
Support : eurotechsupport@systat.com
For Asia Pacific:
Cranes Software International Ltd.
No. 29, 7th Cross, 14th Main,
Vasanthnagar, Bangalore - 560 052
Karnataka, India
Phone : +91 - 80 - 4151 6400
Support : sigmaplot.support@systat.com
What Does Technical Support Do?
Technical Support provides support for all current SSI products. As a general rule, technical support is helping a customer make the software run as documented. This includes installation, printing and operational problems when things don't work as documented. Technical support includes helping a customer use what is in the documentation to get a specific task done by expanding on what is documented and giving an example of how to do it. This does not include major data restructuring or getting SSI to do something in a complicated way that another module or third party product will do simply.
Technical Support Representatives attempt to resolve all customer problems while the customer is on the phone. Sometimes a Technical Support Representative will need more time to work on a solution for a customer or will encounter a problem beyond the scope of representative’s knowledge. If your problem cannot be resolved during the call, you have to specify your incident tracking number given by us for future reference on the problem or the service request will be opened to a Technical Support Representative more knowledgeable about the particular problem.
In the earlier case we will make every attempt to contact you within 3 working days from the moment incident tracking number is opened. If then you can't be reached, a telephone message will be left, often with pertinent information and usually asking you to return the call. If the call is not returned, the Support Representative will attempt to contact you at least two or more times, either by phone, fax or email. Sometimes the initial contact will be by fax or email, depending on your preference and if the Support Representative has something substantial to fax or email. If you can't be reached directly, Technical Support will leave a detailed message or send a fax or email which directly addresses your problem.
A very small percentage of these problems will be escalated to our Product Development department, who may work directly with customers or who may confer with Support Representatives about steps to take towards resolution. If a problem is escalated to Product Development, it retains its tracking number and remains open in the Technical Support customer database.
Technical Support does not provide installation documentation, encryption codes or replacement media. Customer Service should be contacted for these at info-usa@systat.com.
How long is the software supported?
Technical Support will be provided for software, which is the most current release on its particular platform. In the case of software, which is licensed on an annual basis, Technical Support is provided to those customers whose maintenance is currently valid.
What Technical Support offers?
- Installation Assistance
- Interpretation of Error Messages
- Suspected defects
- General Troubleshooting of Printing and Local Issues
- Abnormal Termination
And also,
- Assist the customer or technical contact in the installation of SYSTAT products.
- Resolve any media or environmental problems that prohibit a successful installation of the software.
- Clarify any system requirements necessary.
- Verify the software is operational.
- In situations in which common trouble shooting techniques have been unsuccessful, "walk through" the installation procedure over the phone with the customer.
- Interpret error messages.
- Suggest corrective action.
- Assess the scope and magnitude of possible defect.
- Can the defect be replicated?
- Report defect to Product Development.
- Determine reasonable workaround for customer if possible.
- Verify abnormal operation.
- Suggest problem-solving techniques.
- Determine workarounds when needed.
- Assess source of abnormal termination of job.
- Suggest problem-solving strategy to customer.
- Suggests ways to avoid problem.
Types of Questions Technical Support can Answer
- Clarify SYSTAT product definitions, assumptions, computational methods and output presentation.
- Identify procedures that will produce particular mathematical or statistical analyses.
- Clarify documentation examples that may not be clear or may be ambiguous. Expand on the example or definitions if necessary to comprehensively define a concept.
- Guidance in constructing syntax to perform a particular analysis.
- Explanation of how the products calculate the required analysis.
- Identification of which procedure performs a specified statistical or mathematical analysis.
- Explanation of a keyword or option which is under documented.
In addition to the above, Technical Support has a fundamental responsibility to the customer to help use what is in the documentation to get a specific task done by expanding on what is documented and giving an example of how to do it. This does not include major data restructuring or getting products to do something in a complicated way that another module or third party product will do simply.
How does the team work?
- Conducting seminars, conferences, and workshops.
- Conducting in-house training.
- Explains insufficiently documented features
- Answers traditional usage questions
- Sample syntax for Frequently Asked Questions
- Syntax for a particular statistical model
- Reading Data
- Data Manipulation
- File Manipulation
- Statistical and mathematical Analysis
Types of Problems Technical Support will not Address
It is not the responsibility of Technical Support to show the customer how to manipulate and analyze their data in SSI or go beyond the standard, documented examples to provide sophisticated programming solutions.
- Writing original syntax for a customer using the customer's data dictionary.
- Debugging customer written macros, scripts or input programs.
- Writing elaborate programs, even if using sample data, that produce results far beyond those available through the standard SSI procedures.
- Making statistical recommendations for the proper analyses.
- Consultation regarding the appropriateness of various statistical procedures.
- Explaining basic statistical concepts to a customer because the customer has no statistical training and has not read the manuals.
- The list of Technical Support responsibilities above is not exhaustive but is meant to represent examples of the services we provide. If you need the kind of help, which goes beyond the boundaries of Technical Support, please call our sales representative for advice on the available options.
What to do before contacting Technical Support?
There are a few things that you can do to help us out, so that we can support you better:
- Read the manual. A large number of the questions we receive can be answered by reading the manual.
- Check the help files. We have added numerous sections that explain frequently asked questions.
- Double check your syntax or where appropriate, your transformation logic. Frequently a misplaced "/" or "." is at the root of the problem and can easily be overlooked.
- Investigate your data. Frequently problems with transformations have to do with missing data. A good investigative technique is to list out a subset of cases along with the variables used in a logical expression and the computed variable. Then you can step through the logic checking your results as you go.
- Carefully read the error message. Most error messages will indicate which command or command lines caused the error. Some will actually point to the offending text.
Note:
Be prepared to engage
in trial
and error
investigative techniques. Often we can
quickly deduce that your problem could
be caused by one of several things, but
we'll need to systematically find the cause.
A Technical Support Representative
may need
to refer
you to a
page in a
manual, so
have available
your product
manuals near the
phone when
you call.
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