Handshake Customer Support Handbook

Transcription

1 Handbook Handshake Customer Support Handbook Document History Prepared By 8/1/2014 Handshake Software Version : 5.0 Caroline McManus +1 (850) cmcmanus@handshakesoftware.com Abstract: This Handbook provides an overview of the Policies and Procedures of the Handshake Software Customer Support Group.

2 Table of Contents Technical Support... 1 How to Obtain Support... 1 Primary Contact... 2 Case Management Process... 3 Response Goals... 5 Priority Determination... 6 Escalation Procedure... 6 Expediting Support Service Requests... 7 Describe the Problem... 7 Provide Background Information... 7 What We Support... 8 Handshake Software Team Contact Information Handshake Software, Inc. This document is a confidential communication between Handshake Software, Inc., and the party or parties mentioned herein. This document or its contents may not be reproduced, distributed or disseminated, by electronic or physical means, without express consent of Handshake Software, Inc. P a g e ii

3 Technical Support Once your product has been successfully implemented in your production environment, the Handshake Team members involved will update our internal systems with all the details of the deployment, allowing other Handshake staff to better understand your deployment. If you have any questions, require assistance in understanding some aspect of the product, or need technical Support our Customer Support Group is ready to assist you. We continue to enhance the skills of our staff through ongoing investments in formal training courses, industry certifications, training on partner products, and peer knowledge transfers. Understanding how customers use our products and the types of questions they have ensures that we consider the customer experience in all aspects of product design and implementation. HOW TO OBTAIN SUPPORT Customers requiring assistance with our products should contact us at , or by sending to the address. When you contact our Customer Support Group, a ticket will be opened to track your individual request and any communications related to it. The Customer Support Technician will provide the ticket number to you for reference purposes when calling in. For more information on how your case will be managed, please see the Case Management Process section in this document. Standard Support We provide telephone and support from 09:00 to 17:30 Eastern Standard Time (Standard Support Hours), Monday through Friday, to all customers with current Maintenance and Support Contracts. Our Standard Support Hours do not include public and statutory holidays in the United States, although Support is available on these days as chargeable After Hours Support. For more information about After Hour Support, see After Hours Support. After Hours Support Assistance is available outside of Standard Support Hours (After Hours Support) on a billable time basis of $300 per hour, with a minimum of one (1) hour per call. Customers requiring After Hours Support should contact us, in advance when possible, by calling After standard business hours recorded instructions are provided on the phone menu and assistance can be obtained. Extended Support Options Enterprise customers who anticipate requiring access to our Support Group 24x7 can select an Enterprise Support Agreement. During Standard Support Hours, their call will receive priority handling, and will be routed to Support staff outside these hours. 1 1 The Support Group is only able to respond to support issues as defined in this document. If assistance is required from our Consulting Group, then arrangements must be made in advance for after hours services. P a g e 1

4 PRIMARY CONTACT When you transition from the pre-implementation stages to production implementation, the Handshake Software team will ask you to provide a Primary Technical Contact for your Support contract. This person is responsible for: Submitting changes and updates to contact information. Managing all other contacts within your organization. Working with the Customer Support group on requests for assistance. Additional Contacts In addition to the Primary Technical Contact, additional support contacts for your company can be added. In order for additional contacts to work with our Customer Support Group, the Primary Contact must send a request to support@handshakesoftware.com. If you are the Primary Contact for your company, when requesting to add additional contacts please include the following information for the individual to be added: Name Title Address Primary Contact Number Secondary Contact Number (if applicable) Address Any special instructions (For example, this individual is our Database Administrator and should work with your Customer Support Group on any SQL related issues.) NOTE: The Handshake Customer Support group requires that all individuals listed as Support Contacts have the necessary permissions, privileges, and authority within your organization to assist with technical troubleshooting related to Handshake Software. While we are happy to answer and assist with end user related questions and issues, end user requests must be channeled through a technical liaison from your company. P a g e 2

5 Case Management Process In order to provide you with a quality and consistent Customer Support experience, our Handshake Software Group follows the process below for handling your Customer Support requests: Step One When you contact Handshake Software Customer Support, we assign a unique ticket number to your request for assistance. All tickets are assigned a priority level based the priority determination criteria outlined in the Response Goals section of this document. Your ticket is then placed in a queue. This ticket number enables you to get a status update of your ticket from any Customer Support Technician when calling Handshake Software Customer support, allows us to easily transfer knowledge about your specific request to other Support Technicians if you need to work with multiple people within our organization, and allows Customer Support to prioritize and track all tickets through to resolution. Step Two A Customer Support Technician is assigned to the ticket to work with you to ensure that all of the basic information outlined in the Expediting Support Section of this document has been provided. The Support Technician will contact you to gather any additional information needed and will investigate to determine the proper course of action. Step Three When the initial Support Technician has all of the necessary information, if they are able to assist you with your request, they will do so. If your request would be better served by another Support Technician, your ticket will be reassigned, and the new Support Technician will work with you until your request is complete. This may require the Support Technician to re-create the issue you have reported in our test environment, work with our Handshake Software Development Team, or work with you on your configuration of the software. In some cases, we may ask you to reproduce the issue in your environment, to collect log files and other diagnostic information, or to provide us access to your system. Step Four In many circumstances, our Customer Support Technicians will be able to assist you with your request through generalized troubleshooting and software configuration changes or adjustments. In some circumstances though, the issue may require a code change to the product or assistance from our Consulting Group. Service Packs and Hotfixes When a code defect is discovered, if an existing Service Pack or Hotfix is available to resolve the issue the Customer Support Technician will provide you with the necessary files and assist you with upgrading your system as outlined in the What We Support Upgrades section in this document. If a current Service Pack or Hotfix is not available for your issue, a Change Request for the Handshake Software product may be created. Change Requests are generally incorporated into subsequent product P a g e 3

6 releases and the Customer Support Technician will notify you when your issue is resolved in a future release. When an issue is identified as having a critical business impact, Handshake Software may decide to create a Hotfix to address that specific code correction. The decision to create a Hotfix for an issue depends on many variables, including the impact of the issue on an organization, the technical feasibility of making the change in the current product version, the current product release schedule, and other criteria used by Handshake Software. If the code correction can be delivered as a Hotfix, the Customer Support Technician will notify you when your issue is resolved and assist you with updating your system as outlined in the What We Support - Upgrades section in this document. IMPORTANT: Handshake software highly recommends that before applying Service Packs or Hotfixes in your production environment, that you first test these changes in a development or test environment. Enhancement Requests You may have a request for a feature or functionality that does not currently exist in our products. Handshake Software is always looking to receive customer input on product features and functions. Customers may enter Enhancement Requests through the Support Group at any time. All Enhancement Requests will be used as input in the development of requirements for future Handshake Software product releases. Consulting Requests Some requests may be outside the scope of Customer Support. Handshake Software Consulting stands ready to assist our customers by providing services in these areas. For more information on what the Handshake Software Customer Support Group supports, see What We Support - Upgrades. If your request falls outside of the scope of Customer Support, and you would like to work with our Consulting Group on your request, the Customer Support Technician will notify our Consulting Group and work with you until you have established communications with our Consulting Group. P a g e 4

7 Response Goals Handshake Software Support makes every effort to ensure that we commence investigation of all customer requests within four (4) business hours during normal business hours. For requests where a production server or service is unavailable, we will make every effort to commence within one (1) business hour. The following table defines the priority levels and some examples used by the Customer Support Group to determine our response goal: Priority Impact Examples Response Goal 1 Critical business impact/system Down: A business critical production server or service is unavailable or a critical interface has failed in a production environment. 2 Significant business impact: A business critical product server, service, or interface is severely restricted. 3 Some business impact: A less significant feature (not critical to business operation) is unavailable or not working as expected. 4 Minimum business impact: A non-critical software component is malfunctioning, a non-technical request is made, or assistance is required with a test or development environment. Handshake Server cannot be started An individual workstation is seeing intermittent failures Charts are not rendering properly on a Portal Page without a refresh. Documentation is incorrect or additional documentation is requested. Within 1 business hour Within 2 business hour Within 4 business hour Within 8 business hour P a g e 5

8 PRIORITY DETERMINATION If all of our Customer Support Technicians are working on other customer requests and a new request is received for a production server or service that is currently unavailable, we will give that new request higher priority over the previous requests relating to a test environment, or where production service has not been significantly impacted. If we have not been able to start investigating a customer request for assistance after 8 hours, we will transfer the Support request to other technical staff within the company. This may include Consulting, Training and Development staff depending upon the nature of the reported problem and the specific expertise of the individual staff member. When communicating with the Customer Support Group about a Customer Support ticket, if any of the following situations apply, let the Customer Support Group know to ensure that it is properly prioritized: Limited availability - Key personnel required to resolve the issue or access to the system is only available during a specific time frame. Specific business deadlines apply. Other Customer Support tickets with Handshake Software exist regarding this request. ESCALATION PROCEDURE The Handshake Software Customer Support Group is dedicated to providing quality and timely customer support. If at any time during a request for assistance you feel we are not meeting our commitments (as outlined in this document), you may escalate your service request by asking to speak to, or by ing, the Customer Support Manager. The Customer Support Manager will review your ticket with the Customer Support Technician to ensure that your request is being handled appropriately. The Customer Support Manager will then contact you to let you know what actions are being taken to expedite your support request. P a g e 6

9 Expediting Support Service Requests When a customer experiences a problem with our software, we want to help resolve it as quickly as possible. Whenever possible, please provide the following information when contacting Customer Support to help us assist you in the most expedient way possible. Please note that incoming s are limited to 10MB. If you have large attachments over 10MB to accompany a support issue, kindly upload them to our FTP site at ftp.handshakesoftware.com and let us know in the support . DESCRIBE THE PROBLEM The following information is necessary to help us resolve your software problem: Indicate if assistance is needed in a production or testing environment. Include screen captures of any errors. Specify the application being used if an error occurred. Describe the operation or task being performed when the issue occurred, detailing as many steps as possible. Test in your environment and indicate if the problem is reproducible or not. PROVIDE BACKGROUND INFORMATION The more relevant information that you can provide about your request, the faster we can help: Provide the date and time that the issue occurred. Tell us if the issue has occurred before. Include details of any changes made to the system recently. P a g e 7

10 What We Support Handshake Software provides support to customers with valid Maintenance & Support agreements for all licensed shipping products. Details on what we support are as follows. Versions In general, Handshake Software supports the current major version, plus the previous major version of our software. For example, if the current shipping release of a product is 3.1, the major version is defined as the numeric value to the right of the decimal point (1). In this example we would provide assistance for all 3.0 and V3.1 releases. Customers still deploying 2.x releases must upgrade to 3.0 to obtain assistance from the Customer Support Group. Installation For non-customer installable products or software components, Handshake Software will assist customers in one installation onto a test server and one installation onto a production server as part of our initial negotiated services. For customers who anticipate deleting and rebuilding their test servers periodically, we strongly recommend they attend our Training Courses to ensure they can install the product themselves. Customers requiring assistance in subsequent installations of these products or components will be referred to our Consulting Group and can engage them on a chargeable basis to deliver this service. For customer-installable products all installations and deployments are the responsibility of the customer. Customers requiring assistance with the installation of these products will be referred to our Consulting Group and can engage them on a chargeable basis for this service. Usage Questions Handshake Software will assist customers with general questions related to the usage of the licensed product(s). Configuration Handshake Software will provide the initial configuration of the licensed product(s) after installation has occurred, based upon the product licensed, the initial sales agreement, and Statement of Work. Customer staff that have completed the Handshake Training programs can add other Line of Business (LOB) applications, or our Consulting Group can work with your team to assist in the configuration. Diagnosis Handshake Software will provide assistance to customers who believe the licensed product(s) are not functioning correctly within their environment. Our Support Group uses a range of techniques to verify the appropriate behavior of our products, some of which may involve stopping one or more production services. Every effort will be made to ensure the customer is aware of any anticipated service disruptions, and these can be scheduled for specific times in advance whenever possible. P a g e 8

11 Upgrades Handshake Software continues to enhance our products, along with fixing product issues that may impact functionality. Customers with current Maintenance & Support agreements can request that our Customer Support Group upgrade their non-customer installable Handshake Software products/systems to the latest release of any currently licensed product. These upgrades must be scheduled in advance for normal business hours. For customer-installable products (for example, OneView products and DM Director Client software), all upgrades and deployments are the responsibility of the customer. Customers requiring assistance with the upgrade of these products will be referred to our Consulting Group and can engage them on a chargeable basis for this service. Customers who require that upgrades are performed outside normal business hours can schedule this time through Support in the normal manner, but will be charged our normal After Hours Support rate of $300 per hour for all work performed outside normal business hours. P a g e 9

12 Handshake Software Team Since our goal is your complete satisfaction with all Handshake purchases, we encourage our customers to let us know if they are not 100% satisfied with our products and services. In the event that your issue or concerns remain unresolved to your satisfaction, please contact Caroline McManus, Customer Support Manager CONTACT INFORMATION Company Information Company Name Address: Support Title Handshake Software, Inc McGinnis Village Place Suite 205 Alpharetta, GA Caroline McManus Customer Support Manager Telephone: +1 (850) P a g e 10