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What is an acceptable amount of time for SW to respond to a ticket?

I opened up a "Medium" priority trouble ticket with SW support more than 48 hours ago and no one has even bothered to look at the ticket. We're a 15-year customer who pays a considerable amount of money every year for support and maintenance fees. Are there any support personnel left at Solarwinds or does this company now consist solely of sales people and support contract renewal bots?

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michael.kent

I would suggest you raise it with your solarwinds account manager. We've always found that helps.

bleearg13

I ended up just closing the ticket and opening up a "System Down" ticket. Got a response in an hour. As someone who runs a support department, I'd fire the manager who let a ticket sit for 48 hours with no initial response.

The problem with contacting my Account Manager is that each communication line I open with them, they want to start up a discussion or "review" of my account so they can up-sell me on more licenses I don't really need. Then the flood of emails start because November is the end of the SWI fiscal year and he can get "never before seen discounts" approved. I just want support on what I have, not a two month long thread of annoying emails about a new product that I don't need.

izzy_g

To answer your original question: you should have some response within the 24 hours of the ticket being submitted. If you opened a "Medium" priority ticket and had 48 hours go by, I'd be calling and "threatening" to cancel my subscription. But that's a tactic that doesn't always work.

I have found greater results using the forums to getting problems brought to the attention of fellow users/administrators in conjunction with a ticket. Each moderator within the product forum can take your open ticket and push it through the corporate red tape. I know I've had that happen to me during my SAM 6.2 upgrade, and ended having my ticket relocated from their Singapore office to HQ in Texas. Otherwise, increase the priority and stand by to stand by.

idrewpage

Acceptable is different for everyone. I have found that if I want a ticket answered in a reasonable amount of time, I have to put it in as either Urgent or System Down. Using anything else will mean at least a 48 hour wait. It comes down to having qualified personnel to answer tickets. They don't seem to have enough people who can do a better job than Thwack.

bleearg13

I did post on Thwack, but it didn't get a response, so rather than keep bumping the post, I opened a ticket.

I guess I'll just open every ticket as a System Down from now on. Kind of defeats the purpose of having priorities when the only way to get a response is by using the absolute highest priority for everything. I'd hate to see what happens if you open a ticket with Low priority. I imagine that level just gets immediately closed and never worked on.

dfairles

There is an SLA for each priority. They have been missing these by a lot the last few months.

And who is this account manager you speak of? We asked for years to have one, then finally got one, and now our response is worse.

Well, Sorry, there used to be an SLA for responding to a ticket:

Identifying Your Support Case

Our Customers may define case priority when creating a Support case. Cases are managed based on their priority. The five priorities are System Down, Urgent, High, Medium and Low. Customers may also directly access Technical Support via the telephone, with all phone calls being treated as Urgent priority. If you feel that an issue is not being resolved quickly, you may request that the case priority be changed.

Please note, SolarWinds does not provide SLAs or a guarantee for resolution, resolutions times, release dates, or provision of bug fixes or feature requests.

Priority
System Down	Product is nonfunctional and/or has unrecoverable service failure. Critical Business Impact.
Urgent	Product is functional but with major issues. Significant business impact.
High	Product is functional but with consistent issues or one product area is nonfunctional. Functionality is degraded. Some business impact.
Medium	Product is functional with minor or intermittent issues. Occasional functionality degradation. Minimal business impact.
Low	Product is functional with no apparent issues. Requests for upgrade documentation, feature requests, technical information, how to questions, product use questions. No business impact.

Increasing Visibility

SolarWinds has formal procedures in place to advance a case quickly and increase the visibility of an issue. You may request case advancement at any point if the case is not progressing to your satisfaction.

To increase visibility, you can:

Reply in the Support Case and reclassify the priority of the case.
Email TechnicalSupportFeedback@solarwinds.com, and a technical support manager will follow up accordingly.
Contact us by telephone.

Customer Portal

Customers can access their information on the Customer Portal.

Signing in to your Customer Portal will allow you to:

Download your licensed products, service packs, hot fixes and additional components.
Report issues and manage your Support cases.
Get your license keys, register your products, renew or co-term your maintenance.

cjfranca

Calm down, I reviewing SolarWinds and use the support as you.I never spent this time to receive care. Alguam thing is not fully complete and so did not meet you.

League in support of the number and explain the situation and ask for a meeting that the staff will adenter you immediately.

mrs.alterego

Hi bleearg13‌

Thank you for bringing this to our attention; we sincerely apologize for the wait on your ticket, and I’m glad we have someone working with you now to get this resolved. This was escalated internally, but in addressing some of the comments made in response to this ticket; my concern is that if we suggest opening tickets at a higher priority in the hopes it will get a response sooner, we risk running into true higher priorities/System Down not getting a fast resolution. I would suggest that if you feel the ticket isn't being responded to in a timely manner, give our support a call so you can actually speak to a person, which will "force" some attention to your ticket. Our phone SLA's tend to be stronger than our ticket SLA's right now. We acknowledge there is a backlog on our ticketing system, and we are working diligently internally to find a good resolution. I know that doesn't help the situation right now, but I would definitely recommend picking up the phone and making someone pick up that ticket. I hope this helps!

Rach

bleearg13

This is completely indecipherable.

bleearg13

Thanks, I was able to speak with someone today regarding the ticket and I am all set, as far as getting eyes on it.

I am not in favor of opening up every ticket as high priority/urgent, as I run a support department and that would get annoying real fast. However, from a customer standpoint, if that's the only way to get any response from a company that we pay thousands of dollars a year to for maintenance and support, then that's what's going to be done. Sometimes it's just not feasible to pick up the phone and call, as that is a time commitment in itself that some people just don't have. It's easier when the problem can be checked by knowledgeable people (SW techs) and if they need more info, to arrange a Webex. What's more frustrating is that I could fill out a form for evaluation on the web and a sales person will be calling me before I even hit 'Submit'.

Thanks all for the responses.

dfairles

Thank you for your response.

It is not a very good business practice to pay for support without any kind of SLA what so ever. This means we are paying for a service, and we have no guarantee that anyone will even ever acknowledge that our ticket was received.

Without any kind of SLA, setting the ticket priority is pointless. This is what causes everyone to bump their tickets to urgent.

izzy_g

I believe cjfranca‌'s native language is Portugueese. which makes some of her English grammatically difficult to decipher. But from what I gather she did not have a difficult time with their support team. Each case is different.

dfairles

True bleearg13‌,

SW has become very heavy handed on Sales. Way to many salespeople, and not enough support.

The constant barrage of sales is making it difficult to work with this product.

cjfranca

Calls the support

izzy_g

mrs.alterego‌,

Thanks for the reasurring post and the recommendations. One of the core issues tends to be that the phone SLA, while it does force the issue, has been a 30 minute wait before a Level 1 technician takes the call and either reviews the ticket or starts from scratch and starts gathering basic info. I've opened 5 tickets since obtaining SolarWinds in April and while I got an initial response within 24 hours each time, I generally had to wait 30 minutes before I got out of the queue and a human on the phone. I've always had better luck using the community's vast knowledge and someone helping push an existing ticket through back channels a bit faster.

stephen.black

Full disclosure, I am a HUGE Solar Winds fan boy.

But over the past year I have seen a significant change in the support offered. Still the best product on the market for the money IMHO but something has changed. Long call wait times are frustrating, especially when its a major outage situation. Opening tickets without a phone call means very long contact times. I still love you guys and gals, but not as passionately as years past. Guess its like a marriage of sort

I will say that when I go through my sales rep I always get amazing service. I feel bad harassing him all the time for issues but its difficult not to when you get such great results. If I were in a decision making position at SW... It would go bankrupt lol, but I would consider assigning a service manager to all customers with support contracts. Rather than having me call a hotline / helpdesk I would call this person. They would quickly determine who can help me best and help me get in touch with them. If its a outage situation they would help establish contact on the fly. If its a general question they arrange the callback for me and follow up in X hours based on the severity. This would avoid so much "Oh I am sorry, I am not very strong in X module, let me get see what I can do and if we need to get someone else I will transfer you". Not to mention it would make the customers feel valued with a sort of white glove service rather than generic helpdesk support. Considering the fees for annual maintenance and the number of calls we place, the per call cost is quite shocking. Updated software seems to be the hook.

rschroeder

I agree with the overall complaints, and have experienced the exact same slow response to a Medium priority request.

Some years ago I was getting same-day response, and calls from folks in Ireland for incidents I'd open.

More recently I've found that Thwack members respond more quickly than paid Support, by two or three days sometimes, and that's not right.

Love the product, wish Support answered my questions when I'm focused on issues.