Don't Off Shore support.

@spuds

Whats your point? To have good technicians or not to off shore support?

Off shoring has got nothing to with the technical level of an engineer and I am not saying that cause I am from here. Yes, Since English might not be the primary language of the engineer, Some of them might not be as good as you are. But you arent calling in to have chit chat session or to improve your vocabulary, The point is to get the issue resolved and I dont see how that is related to the way you communicate. Be it from America, Eurpore, Asia or any other region. It depends upon the technician, Not where they are from.

hi,
well I agree with both ( Sandeep and Spuds)

@Spuds

I assume the Tech Support team is given training on voice accent and they have good grasp on the foreign accent, may be on bad day you might have come across Tech person who might have faced bad signal while communicating.

A couple of such calls should not considered to make that statement.

Cheers!!

Pete!

Symantec has a contract with Webex(Symantec.webex.com) like lot of other organizations. This should be taken advantage of and let the engineer control your computer. You can record the session to refer to later. Though as a rule they can't make any changes to the environment while taking control but can definately troubleshoot and ask you to make the changes (Like permissions...)if required.

Hi, nice idea, but how to handle this? asking by phone 5 technical questions & route the call depending the numbers of correct answers ? OK I Joke ! But as Symantec provides also support contract for direct highest technicals access, I do not see what Symantec can propose.
We should plan a "cooperative of users" for sharing such a highest technical contract? ;-)
I do not vote this. Do not find a clear "idea" to say Yes or no. Sorry, perhaps can you precise?

When you r calling in for Enterprise Support  that means you are talking to best avaialble in the industry ...people who have worked for support for a long time..who have been talking to people in not just NAM but all over the Globe.So i dont think there is a language barrier everybody talks english..Its just that on a bad day engineer wouldn't have a clue about the issue and then he wont have any answer to your question but thats not Language barrier its something Technical ( Beleive me that where things go wrong)...But do remember it is a Global Enterprise Technical Support..

I am writing these in the US surrounded by Symantec's Phone Technical support. As Symantec is a global company it makes sense for us to have call centers around the world. That way if a phone case that was origionally opened here in the US takes more than a day that caller can get handed off to support somewhere else in the world (from my branch we hand off to Australia). Before working here I assumed all companies (especially tech companies) would offshore all of their support calls to other countries. Not the case for Symantec. This is not saying that every call would get routed here to the US, it just depends on the location/time of your call. As to your second idea: Being a very technical person myself I thought it was a good idea to base the level of service depending on your experience, but I don't see how this would be implemented. Fun idea about the quiz though whoever posted that : )

Cheers
Grant

I only call in on NetBackup and Storage Foundation and have found the engineers everywhere to be quite knowledgeable and most speak English very well and I have no problem, other than accents (which goes both ways, I'm sure!).

I can say that I would like to have the ability to get to a higher level engineer without sticking my request in the critical/system down or major queue. Other than that, I have no problems with the offshore support for the two products I've mentioned.

Sometimes it's a battle of the accents. But most of the time, it's just plain old cluelessness. Whenever I call support, it's usually a very urgent gun-in-my-head issue, and what's their reply... "We'll get back to you on that." Or they'd speak so fast that it sounded foreign and before you know it, you're going in circles.
I also made a call, I think it's to the US because of the accent, she knows her stuff and really helped me out that one time.

I once called and got into an argument with the "level 1" person becuase they were following their script, I assume, and asking me very rudimentary questions...questions about things that I'd already investigated prior to the call and had actually told them. I realize that not all callers do their "due dilegence" beforehand, but  I would think a good tech could determine that on their own...be it onshore or offshore.

Thats true..but when you are working in tech support is not that easy
Whenever somebody calls in engineer asks what all have you done...the patent reply they get is everything.
So we have got no choice but to start from the scratch and sep is such a product that requires all the settings to be in place for it to work so even if you miss one it wont work.

Like for java -1 or Unable to communicate with reporting
You will find atleast 10 document  but even this is true that after first look of the situation the engineer should know which steps to follow he cant just go following all the documents.

I've called in support several times, and YES - the people on other side have accent. But NO - it doesn't a problem to understand, because their English is academicaly right - they have learned it in school/university. So i have. And if i can't understans some word, i say: "repeat please", and they repeat with accent on right pronounsation. Btw it's harder to understand native speakers sometimes.

I agree.

How many of the people here who criticize so called "offshore" support techs can claim that all the fingers on their hands are exactly the same lenght, breadth, height ,weight and all that jazz? No One!

Fact of the matter is, when I was working in Symantec GESS, we used to (and the employees still do) go by the ethos - "One Company, One Team". We never differentiate(d) between a Tech in say the Americas, Europe, Australia and Asia-Pacific regions, and still never do.

Everyone is as aptly trained on troubleshooting and supporting Symantec products as efficiently possible. There might be chances that the person on the end of the line helping YOU, may be in one of the following scenarios -

1. Having a Bad Day (Pretty ridiculous to think, but I have to think of all possibilities) :)
2. Has handled at least 10-15 calls APART frpm the web cases that fill the volume dens due to which he / she may be pretty much tired
3. May be a new engineer from another product team who has moved to support the product that you use, or may be fresh from training
4. Might be working an extended shift for a colleague who may be in an emergency
5. Unknown reasons.....

Anyway we look at it, Symantec support is by far amongst the best I've seen and worked with, and I've worked for Microsoft support as well before working with Symantec support.

Furthermore, I'd like to add that though the "script of questions" may seem rudementary to the admin calling into the support line, it is for the best of all parties concerned. It's the duty of the Support Engineer to verify and document all and any troubleshooting steps that you may have carried out, so he / she can get a fair enough idea of what all has been done and what has not.

Additionally, I personally have seen instances wherein the admin said that "Ohh Yes, I've done this and I've done that and nothing works so gimme a solution or escalate", and I've had to put my foot down, say "sorry, i can't do that until I verify that everything possible has been done since you are calling in for the first time."
To cut a long story short, a very simple step, like say checking blocked posts helps to resolve the issue in under 5 mis or under. This is not to justify long hold times, or question anybody's capabilities, but come on, if those people had actually carried out the recomended steps, this issue would have never come up.

Like one of the forum posters used to say, RTFM and SRTFKB. Well, now since I'm on the other side fo the fence (now being an architect), I do both of those and then only call support, and do not question their capabilities, coz there are different levels of support, with several different talented people working across teams and regions to help us customers.

I'd like to request the Mods to make this thread read-only, since the issue remains no more!

I'm from Great Britain and, personally, I love talking to the support guys in the US and across europe.

Yes, sometimes I have to jump the hoops to clarify the problem I think I have is the problem I actually have. And guess what? Sometimes I mistakes too, and occasionally the simple thing that the first-line support ask me to check is actually route of the problem. Embarraing, but I've learned to live with it ;-)

And the great thing about support is that over the last many months the staff turnover seems to be low. This means for me that when I talk to someone further down the line I generally know them and they know me. This to me is critical, as often they can recall my setup and have a good idea of the technical level where they should be pitching their troubleshooting. This is the way to resolve issues fast, and I think Symantec have pitched their support offering very well.

Kind Regards,
Ian./

I don't bother calling Symantec for tech support on any of their products. If something breaks or is broken, I leave it as is and figure out another way around the issue. I think the true reason the author started this post is the fact that the level 1 queue is probably one of THE MOST frustrating groups of people I have ever dealt with (I've placed calls with IBM, VMware, Microsoft). When I have issues with products like Backup Exec 12.0 (not 12.5 as it's not completely convenient for me to upgrade at this time) and I contact Symantec, the level 1 technician will be completely lost with the details I provide. This could be caused by a communications issue, but my instinct tells me that the technician does not have a full understanding of the interworkings of the application I need support on. The perception the originator of this thread has, is that this is a condition of the support team being "Off Shored" but that just simply isn't the case. On the 3 to 4 calls I've placed with Symantec for Backup Exec the first 45 minutes to an hour is spent going over the exact same troubleshooting steps listed in support articles found not only on Symantec's site but also the internet in general (this is where the user forums become crucial as a one stop shop). After exhausting the level 1 technicians skills at troubleshooting on at least 1 of my calls, all effort to support me was forfieted to the point where "that's just the way the application works" without rhyme or reason. Really? The application works in a broken manner on purpose? On the rare occasion I actually got to speak with a level 2 engineer who demonstrated a far superior understanding of the application, my issue had been resolved (by myself) TWO WEEKS PRIOR. I am completely locked into the product and there is no way for me to get out. I have simply resigned myself from getting any help at all from Symantec on Backup Exec. 

Notes should be taken from VMware's support. Their level 1 technicians are phenominal and I have never needed to be escalated to a second level engineer for a solution. They are off shored for the most part.

Talking about offshore support always tends to be a fairly sensitive subject. (This is pretty obvious by the multiple viewpoints and the way that the votes are going.) And to be honest is not as cost effective anymore with other regions becoming more and more efficient.

As far as Symantec support goes, however, speaking candidly I am impressed with the amount of training, time for research, and internal support given to technicians. Just the level of care given for new hires when it comes to OS level and product specific training is stellar! And continues to be so with training refreshes as the industry grows and the products change.

I agree that language barriers and cultural differences can be difficult, but honestly support has to deal with the same thing coming from customers. Being a "global" support organization has its ups and downs, but overall it has allowed Symantec to grow as a company and offer astounding support.

I fully believe that Symantec will continue to get better. With the level of focus on customer satisfaction and making sure that we have a solid product base, things can only go up from here. You wouldn't believe the amount of attention that has been given to our products and customers lately. It really is something to be proud of. The leadership of this company knows that your happiness with the products and support of them are what is going to keep the company afloat in the current economic situation.

On the flip side I also know that you are not always going to get a technician who can match your level of expertise. With how diverse of an industry this is how could we? Also depending on the products involved there may not be as high of a standard for preceding knowledge. So no matter what, there are going to be issues from support and from customers. We count on your knowledge as much as you count on ours. Support is a collaborative effort and always will be.

All I can say is Don't Give Up! And give as much feedback as possible because it is important. And it does not fall on deaf ears.

Thank you for your continued efforts!

-Tom

@ Khue

You might be interested to know that a lot of Symantec's Backup Exec Level 1 technicians have been recruited by VMWare.

Maybe, because VMWare is easier to use/comprehend compared to Symantec Products :D.
And the first level techs on Symantec would be addressing all of the products supported/made by the company including older versions which varies in features.