This document discusses IBM's Enhanced Technical Support (ETS) offering which provides additional benefits on top of basic IBM software maintenance, hardware maintenance, and supportline offerings. ETS provides 30 minute response times for severity 1 issues, critical situation management, problem management record escalation, regular review calls with an account advocate, and tailored service reports. The document provides contact details for ETS and describes how ETS complements IBM's basic support offerings.
Call come in through various methods if via phone
Goes to service centre need customer number, serial number of machine, severity required and brief description of problem
Get put unto appropriate queue and transferred to Front End specialist. – they have a broad platform knowledge with specific in-depth knowledge.
They perform the initial analysis of the problem, they may ask for some more info or logs trace date etc – if they cannot find a solution send to
Next level – narrower product area – specific in-depth knowledge – further analysis carried out.
If no solution here then sent to L3, developer, either in EMEA or USA – recreation may be required or consultation with 3rd party provider.
At any point on an ETS call, you can contact me if you are un happy with the progress of the call.
IBM Support Portal page : http://www-947.ibm.com/support/entry/portal/
Once the above website is loaded - there is an option for Service Requests (PMRs) on the left hand side. Once you go into this you can select both software and hardware. The hardware will route you to the ESC+ website.
*Please note these are not SLAs
2 hour response target for each severity (30 min for Sev 1 ETS)
Primary Contact : I am your assigned ETS advocate. One of my top priorities is being your main focal point of contact. I become your first point of contact should you have any questions or problems relating to a particular call, or questions relating to your contract. Basically any questions you may have, then I will answer these for you. If I don’t know the answer then I will find someone that does!There are 7 ETS advocates including myself. We are split mainly in 2 locations, North Harbour in Portsmouth and Farnborough. Despite us being at different locations we are a close team and are in daily contact with each other via our sametime messaging, weekly catchup calls, phone. We are self suffiicent, self motivated team. We all come from various technical background, some of us from team leader roles. On average 9 years of technical experience. This has helped and we have a close relationship with the technical teams, aswell as the client/sales teams.
Monthly reports : Every month we produce and send out monthly ETS reports. Aswell as the basic information, such as inventory listing, contact details. This also includes all the open and close calls for the month. Also I will give a status of the latest update on each of the open calls. Any minutes taken from a review call and various preventative maintenance information.Proactive Technical Information : This preventative maintenace information, also comes under this section. We ensure that we add information related to your platform specific. So this is worth reviewing to ensure you are at your latest levels to prevent any issues occuring.
Update Express – downloadable application – this will list the current fixes on your system and compare this to the latest fixes available.Review Calls : Every quarter I would organise a review call with yourselves (mainly with the designated ETS technical contact.) This essentially is an open forum and its an opportunity to highlight any concerns/questions you have . Either relating to a pmr, on how this was handled or questions you may have. Any new equipment, upgrades etc. Any information which you would like to divulge and feel that I should be informed on. This benefits me aswell as yourselves as I can get familiar with your environment and establish what your needs and requirements are.Planned Outage Preparation: This refers to any planned activity you have coming up. Example any upgrades/ powerdowns planned for a weekend or during out of hours. Just send me a note with relevant details, dates of activity, system details, description of work carried out,main contact name and phone details. I will then email the relevant technical teams, including the out of hours support to make them aware of the work and should you need to call in, then they have the background already.Problem Management & Critical Monitoring: This basically means if you have a call which you feel is not progressing, or not happy on how its being handled – then highlight this to me and I can assist by speaking to the technical owner who can feedback and escalate the calls to next level of support. The call doesn’t necessarily need to be a sev1, if it’s a sev2 but its impacting your business, then please shout it out to me and I can assist in progressing this and highlighting this to technical support. Hopefully you will not need to log a complaint relating to a pmr, but should this happen, then I will closely keep an eye on the record and will keep in regular contact with you. There also be an assigned Complaint Resolution owner to ensure this is progressing.30 minutes response to sev1’s: This applies on both Hardware and software calls. This means from when you log a call, either by phone contact or elecronically. A technical specialist will get back to you within 30 minutes, as opposed to 2 hours on a standard contract.
This does not refer to solution time, only the first response time. Should you require regular updates from the technical owner, ensure you advise this as part of the problem determination. In addtion to this myself and the rest of the ETS advocates are alerted to sev1 calls, so should we see an alert, then we will check the details of the call, as we have access to the call management system, and then we would give you a followup call to check you are happy on how the call is progressing and if you require any intervention from me.Rapid PD response : In every circumstance, the technical support team will always assist you as quickly as possible, especially if you log a business critical call. They have various tools they use to assist in pd. Within the system x team they use a tool called DSA (Dynamic System Agent). This can be installed on Windows and it pulls off all the relevant system information – so this speeds up PD. Also as mentioned before – any pmrs which you feel is not being focused on, please alert this to me and I can talk to the technical owner to check the status etc.
Regular Contact : Just reitterating to use me as your main focal point. The ETS Advocacy role’s core hours are 9 to 5pm. We do have a taskid, if you just want to send a non-urgent email. This is continually being monitored. Someone will always respond to you, should you send an email through. Aswell as me, you have access to the rest of the ETS team. If I am out of the office, I tend to put my out of office notification on and I will leave my colleagues’ names and direct numbers should you need to speak to someone. We have a database which holds all our ETS customer information and every correspondence with yourselves (e.g by phone/email) is fully documented, so one of my colleagues can see what work has been carried out by me.Customer Days: We encourage our ETS customers to come in for a Customer Day to meet the Technical Support teams based in the UK. So this is either in Farnborough or Portsmouth.
This gives an overview of the Technical Support teams and how they work. So you can see the life cycle of a pmr, escalation processes and also any specific technical topics you would like covered on the day. The day is totally dedicated to yourselves and several customers have given feedback that they have found it beneficial and an insight on what happens to their call once its logged and also meet some of the technical specialists who work on your calls. We provide lunch, so you just need to fund your travel to the location.
Here are my contact details. We would recommend that when you send an email to me to copy the taskid. Should I be away from the office, my colleagues can view the email and action if required.
How do they log calls? Phone or electronically?
Mention about Service Request and ESC+ if they haven’t used Electronic logging. Require an IBM ID for both.
Advise on the new Support Portal.