7x24 telephone support
for Enterprise and Ultra solutions
We believe that good quality support goes hand-in-hand with high
reliability service. This section tells you the support you can expect when
you order this product. This support program lets you telephone us any time
you want for support. The special 7x24 support telephone number will appear
on your administrative setup screen. If you prefer Internet chat to telephone
support, you may use this feature as well, though chat is normally only available
during regular business hours. This program also gives you a priority e-mail
address if you prefer using e-mail for some of your questions.
Behaviours we expect of you
While a lot of what follows is in our services agreement, we
are going to restate it in a different way to be clear:
| 1. |
Please be polite. The law of our country requires
that we protect our employees against any sort of abusive or threatening
language from customers and others. Depending upon the degree and nature
of such abuse, we have a one-strike-and-you-are-out policy that applies
even if you are otherwise a customer in good standing. |
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| 2. |
Please think/read before you call. In the support trade generally,
there is an acronym for the most generally disliked kind of support call.
It is called an RTM call - short for read the manual. The point is that
you will eventually have to read the available documentation at some point
anyway, so it is better to do so before you call. By reviewing documentation
early on, you will find that the total amount of time you need to solve
problems dramatically goes down because important concepts will stick
in the back of your head, even if you need assistance in implementing
them.
If you still do not understand things, or are unsure, or if the question
you have does not seem to be contextually answered by the documentation,
then please call. Tech support people love to assist in such a situation
because they feel they are making a "real" contribution to your
success.
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| 3. |
Please think/read during and after the call. A "support
technician" intrinsically cannot fix your problem for you. Only you
can fix your problem, because only you have access to all the tools. What
a support technician can do is assist you in fixing your own problem. Depending
upon your skill level, this may go so far as dictating individual procedures
to you character by character, while also explaining theory so that you
can apply the solution in other contexts. But the point is that while the
support person may provide detailed assistance, if you are likely to encounter
the same issue again, you need to master the process by learning from what
the technician tells you as well as reading and learning from the documentation
that the support person directs you to. There are some people who will come
back to us 10 or 15 times because they have not tried to read and learn,
and instead want the support people to do their thinking, experimenting,
and learning for them. If you are such an individual then we will invite
you to participate in another (unfortunately much more expensive program)
where we provide site administration services as well as technical support. |
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| 4. |
Please ask for a supervisor if you are dissatisfied.
The purpose of our telephone and chat support is to help you resolve
your problem as quickly as possible. If you are dissatisfied or uncomfortable
with the service provided, please ask to speek with a more senior individual
who can more readilly help you resolve your issues. |
Support is to the environment administrator
Our telephone support is provided only to the system
administrator of an environment. Users of the environment must call their system
administrator if they have a problem, and the system administrator (who is probably
you) will call us if they are unable to resolve the problem.
Operations support included
Support to our customers is of an operational nature.
Thus, if you are having trouble with ftp, using our administrative tools, or
need assistance in setting up or supporting an e-mail user call us.
Application and hardware
support only available on a
time-and-materials basis
While we may be able to provide you with a second
opinion about where problems are occurring, and save you time this way, our
support is focussed on the services we sell. Our employees are thoroughly trained
in support of these services, but are not trained to assist in fixing users'
broken PCs or incorrectly installed software, Similarly, because of the myriad
of software solutions, we cannot realistically teach you how to write web pages,
fix broken web-page-links, or to debug a a Java-script you have not properly
written with such products.
While such service is available, it is outside
of the scope of our standard service, and is available only on a time-and-materials
basis. The hourly rate of such services will vary with the skill of the individual
needed to solve your problem, but will not be less than $150/hour, with a half-hour
billing minimum. We may also, at no cost, be able to point you toward independent
contractors who can provide these services at lower costs, and may have the
added convenience of being near you.
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