Genesys Support - getting better or worse?

[Gulden_NL]

I am curious if my long history as a Genesys customer/consultant/MSP since 1995 has jaded my perception of Genesys support.  Personally I felt that their support service peaked somewhere around 1998-1999.  I've seen a long slide downward since.

Is it just me?  There are days where I curse their organizational structure and the "big company" vibes I get from trying to dance with them.

I am making a big decision soon about moving forward with Genesys or going in another direction.  I've felt the "big company" pains outside of tech support too, but support is what is killing their future with us today.

Am I being too tough on them?

[bcyk]

I pick "Getting worse"

You're not alone; I have the same feeling as yours.
I started using Genesys in 1999 (Genesys 5.1) and 'useful' replies from Support could be around 1999 to 2000.
After that up to now, it depends if you are lucky enough to have your SR (or called trouble-ticket in old days) assigned to experienced Support staff.

Am I being too tough on them?

A good point to think about; it is about relativity
Once one has learned Genesys skills and field experiences, he can be more demanding.
However, for experienced GCE, he will not issue SR unless the issue cannot be resolved by various attempts including Genesys knowledge-base searching, manual reading and testing.
These SRs are usually too tough for new Genesys Support who has no or little field experience.


My personal view point is that unqualified support (and unqualified SI delivery!) may make Genesys loss some businesses in small to medium size sites. In large enterprise sites, Genesys may still survive for a long period of time.

BTW, it seems that Support or Professional Server quality degrading occurs in many systems / areas; thus, not Genesys alone.

[cavagnaro]

I have to say I agree with the getting worse. Every ticket I open about develop or something similar they try to make me hire PS. After I push enough and they ask someone else they answer with good info but if not go to PS, and many times PS is just a guy who doesn't know too much neither...
Until 2 years ago things were different, they were more proactive and tried to really help.
Bad for us, bad for them

[Gulden_NL]

cavagaro,
You bring up a good point and I didn't want to sound like I was beating Genesys to death.  But PS is an absolute NYET! in my company.  I got a very good TAM in 2005 and asked that they not pull him until we went live.  Guess what?  Moved to VAST and even before he was pulled, I could tell that they were taking a lot of time from him spending it with us.  I escalated all the way to Wes Hayden, but to no avail.  We got another guy that was supposed to be a GVP expert, he came over to Genesys from Telera, but we had an employee that was ex-Telera and she said "he's worthless."  Right she was.  I won't go into detail but we didn't receive much value.  So we have placed a ban on Genesys PS for now.

[Adam G.]

NYET, TAM, VAST you've lost me.........

I did appreciate your comment about support peaking in 98-99 

I have a number of thoughts about issues raised in this thread....

• As more products have been added to the Genesys product range then obviously the amount of knowledge required has leapt considerably. Back in 98-99 we only really needed to know about Inbound in real depth plus a little bit about Outbound and Reporting. Support now are expected (obviously) to know dozens of products in detail.
  
• Over time those of us who have to deal with Support have become more and more informed, this means that when we raise our tickets they are getting more and more difficult - I know now that if I raise a ticket it'll have to be answered by 3rd Line or a developer because the problem will be bug related.
• As Genesys have grown in size they have beefed up Support but not by many technical staff but my lots and lots of 'managers' who's job is to deflect questions rather than answer them. In the end, eventually, here in Europe most questions get answered by the same 2 guys in Kiev.
• Never ask a Hyperion question to Genesys as their knowledge is zero\nil\nada\ziltch.

[tony]

My thoughts are exactly - I mean exactly - what Pavel said... weird!

[Gulden_NL]

NYET, TAM, VAST you've lost me.........

• Never ask a Hyperion question to Genesys as their knowledge is zero\nil\nada\ziltch.

Or Nyet!  Sorry, tried to be funny about the Kiev support guys' favorite word in Russian.  Actually it is Nee in Ukrainian, or No in English.

TAM is Technical Account Manager.  You pay a lot for them and you usually have to be doing millions in revenue to get one assigned.

VAST =  Value Added Solutions Team which is a growing group of PS consulting people within Genesys.  Mike McBrien was the first leader back in '05 but he's since been promoted to Senior Vice President, Asia Pacific.  A Detroit boy and a fellow alumnus of Western Michigan University. One of the good guys at Genesys. 

[PFCCWA]

Does Genesys only support partners or end users as well?

I ask this because we have used Genesys since 2002 but are supported by a third party (another question? good or bad??) so if we have a problem, this third partu support opens a ticket with Genesys.

Looking at the Genesyslabs website, in order to open trouble tickets with them, you have to complete a form, which appears to be a 'give us a reason to help you' application!

WA

[cavagnaro]

Support directly to end users will be a endless circle, our job is to eat all those questions and day-to-day problems. Only partners can raise tickets.

[Dave]

Support directly to end users will be a endless circle, our job is to eat all those questions and day-to-day problems. Only partners can raise tickets.

That's not correct.  Who opens tickets depends entirely on the sales and maintenance agreements.  A large number of tickets are opened every day by direct end users (who have direct maintenance agreements).

[cavagnaro]

Hum...we were not allowed to do that when asked to Genesys...maybe only trained customers?

[Manas]

 I have been dealing  with Genesys support for 3 years now. While in many cases they have given excellent support and advise and have been real good help.  It has been my experience that most of the times  you have to call up few big guyz to make  things move faster .Otherwise  even critical tickets stay with tier 3/developers for months without any update. And when response comes ,many cases it's standard support reply without giving details on the specifc case for which SR was raised . Another funny thing is support site does not allow you to create a SR with highest priority (1-Critical). You can only request Genesys to do that .

[Gulden_NL]

Manas,
You mention the procedure about not allowing critical tickets to be opened by the end user.  What Genesys wants to do is have you open an SR with High, then phone them to discuss.  To be fair, if it is truly critical, they want real time communication but opening the SR gets it into Siebel and then they have some written information and hopefully you have uploaded some logs.

I just reviewed their SR process with their Support Mgmt yesterday due to some slow responses.  I mentioned critical and whether we could get real time web conferences going when we do have a critical (last time was 2004) and they said sure, and that was their current preferred way to problem solve.

I agree with you about the length of getting some of the SRs closed.

[victor]

On average, they are doing pretty well, except for the "average" SRs, when answer is something you need in a day or two, but takes a week or two instead. One thing I hate is that after issuing a ticket and waiting for an answer, you finalyl get a reply telling me that: a. it was fixed in a newer version and I need to upgrade or b. they need more information before resolving this.

From a support side, this makes sense, since you receive a ticket, you look into it, you try to resolve it, and then you get back with a follow up. But from client side, it usually infuriates the client, because for one reason or another, CRITICAL means NOW, NORMAL means by tomorrow, and LOW means within a week. It may not apply to all the clients, but on average, LOWs take a few weeks to get back, and by then, you already would either fix it, abandon it, or figure a way to by-pass it.

I guess this sort of mentality divide is something intrinsic to the industry as a whole, thus there is not much you can do other than hiring all Genesys engineers and keeping them in your call center

[Fra]

One thing I hate is that after issuing a ticket and waiting for an answer, you finalyl get a reply telling me that: a. it was fixed in a newer version and I need to upgrade or b. they need more information before resolving this.

What I really can't stand is when:
# I open a SR describing the issue with several details, like ConnIDs, timestamps and so on
# I upload the logs
# They give a generic reply
# I got back to them with "But have you looked at the call I am talking about?"
# They answer "can you provide me with the logs?"
#  ---> Fra's f"£$%^*@~!!!!!!
..
# "Can you extract the db conf and send it to me along with the logs from the Big Bang startup?"

Sure.

Fra