What Does it Take to Get a Case Escalated Now?
MacGyver
Newbie ✭
In the original days of Sonicwall, the procedure was to open a case, get the case number, and then call the Channel Account Rep and get that case escalated to Level 3 in Arizona. Then Dell came along, etc. Now there is no Arizona, and no one seems to be able to escalate the case.
In one one case effecting all walls across our WAN, the case has been open for over two weeks with one token response. We have now started posting daily requesting a reply, but getting any response is like trying her herd cats.
Is there a way to get the case escalated? Thanks in advance.
Category: Entry Level Firewalls
0
Answers
Well, interestingly enough, within an hour of posting this in the open forum, after two weeks of nothing, the case magically got escalated. Thanks to Anthony who after two weeks of absolutely nothing, took ownership of the case and confirmed the issues within an hour. Unfortunately, this a hole in the firmware and there is no resolution. Thanks to Anthony for his great work, nonetheless.
If anyone knows of a more formal way to get a case escalated, I would still be grateful to hear it.
I have similar experiences but usually I get cases escalated or otherwise moved forward after strongly demanding so. Cases seem to always start with at least two hours on a remote session with a tech where nothing really happens.
Even if I provide logs and traces of a clear bug, they say that it requires "active troubleshooting" which is two hours browsing around in the UI doing pretty much nothing related to the actual issue and then saying to monitor it.
Sadly that's what it took here. After two weeks of sitting back and playing nice, I actually had to become someone I don't like to be to get it escalated. I hate that you have to be that way today to get things done at times. It sounds like you've been dealing with it too. The sad thing is that once it got escalated, we had resolution within the hour after two weeks of stonewalling.
Thanks for the feedback.
Very similar to what I had to do the last time. I also used some strong language in the case update and here in the forum and I almost immediately got a hotfix firmware as it was after all a known issue. Looks like this is now standard flow a cases.
Literally what I just ran into! Only when we pushed hard was a hotfix firmware magically made available.
Thanks for posting, everyone. Now I know what I have to do: be the guy nobody wants to be. Sigh
I get it. It stinks that you have to be, "that person," but if you want the support you paid for, then that seems to be what it takes. I should also add that in both of my tickets over the past year or two, I told them I would start pasting a demand in the ticket every single day until it was escalated. The problem being that over two weeks, I had gotten one token response. Once I started pasting a demand in the ticket daily, his queue was filling up with updates to which he hadn't responded so it got updated. If you just wait on a reply to your last response, it will sit there for weeks.
@MacGyver I really appreciate the tips!
My limited experience seems to suggest that " it depends on who you get ". I used to work product support at Linksys many years ago, and we had more than one agent who understood how to " game the system " by slyly getting the customer to go away without becoming aware that they were being shoo'd out the door. Since the call center only tracked rate of closure and time spent on an active call, they were utterly ignorant ( maybe willfully so ) of whether the customer was effectively helped or not. Hurry up and close the call, was the mantra, and so long as you did that without starting a fight you were gold. I went home with many headaches trying to meet the numbers and still help people to a final answer. I learned a lot in the process, but it definitely took its toll. I can see why some would seek to stress less.
Granted, that was 1-800 support. We pay for this treatment, and there's likely a bit more tracking and the agents should be compensated better than we were at Linky. I doubt it's much more, though.
At any rate, I am of the opinion that some agents are just a waste of your time, but don't want to admit that and will run you ragged. I don't know how to get past such people effectively. I'm all ears for polite tactics. Occasionally, though, you get a gem who " gets it " and they go the extra mile to try and actually help or ask the right person, or kick it over but stay in touch behind the scenes so they can learn.
So far, seems like about 75% fail rate with the Sonicwall agents, though admittedly I'm only just getting into the need to open more cases because we're only recently getting more granular with our configuration and requirements. I've dealt with maybe 4 or 5 of them in the past year, and basically none before that.
OMG! That makes so much sense! In both of my most recent experiences, I had to become extremely hostile and demand that the CSR quit marking the case, Pending Closed. I hadn't heard from him in two weeks, he sends a token response, and marks the case that way. I went off on them both times and they quit doing that. The first time I had to go off on him numerous times before he quit doing it. Bart, that explains a lot. Keep pushing them away, don't reply, maybe they'll get an answer on Spiceworks, make it closed, let it expire, and push them out the door. I think we always suspected it. You just confirmed it. The closed ticket count is what matters.
The closed ticket count is what matters.
Without a question of any doubt.
All of these support cases are tracked in SalesForce (despite the awful interface we see on MySonicWall), and managers have access to the stats and details.
I can't imagine the pressure on the CSRs to close a case without any further complication. Pending Close to Closed in 5 days? In a time when someone could be not only out of the office because of the pandemic, but because they are also sick and/or quarantined is absurd behavior - but it certainly looks good...
One I just finished was crap code/bad firmware. It didn't work in version 6, and they didn't fix it in version 7. I sent all the TSR files, exports, screenshots, etc. They didn't even need to load any of them. Any wall would replicate the error, but does he ever even try? Nope. "This will be requiring real time troubleshooting. Please to call the 800 number for assistance." That gets it off his plate. Guess, what, I refused to play the game. That's when it got escalated to Anthony who cleaned it up and had things resolved in an hour or so.
Ultimately, though, a system which doesn't seek feedback from customers suggests a management structure that is ignorant ( cluelessly or willingly ) of why customer opinion matters. Some organizations don't operate this way, and you can tell by how much more often you get an agent that is willing to think and help, and above whom a manager is easy to find and complain to. That said, it seems to becoming more and more the exception these days.
Also, sadly....most of the calls that we took at Linky were from some serious dingbats. AND we were the escalation call center. Those poor dingbats had to slug it out with India for a couple of hours first before hitting us. Then again, their communication skills were often not good, so in a sense I guess we were cultural escalation moreso than product knowledge escalation. I say all that to share that I can also appreciate the conundrum of putting your best people on the phone and paying them decently, only to melt their brains with one well-meaning dumdum after another. I've been that support agent in another environment before, and personally I hated it.
Add to that that, despite all my experience, when I call in I regularly discover that I've " missed something " when I thought the product was to blame. oops. wasted time on their side.
HOWEVER it's also been my experience that when two people who have a solid base foundation of common language and knowledge meet, they can often quickly arrive at a definitive conclusion, even if some oversights and mistakes were made along the way. Rapid-fire empiricism, gentlemen. It's a thing of beautiy. I wish there was a rating system or something where my technical history allowed me quick access to upper level people IF I was specifically requesting it, and maybe dinged me if the time spent was due to my mistake and took excessively long, too. And of course extra brownie points for my batting average being higher. Quick, somebody re-vamp tech support around this concept. We'll sweep the market!
@BartMan but you know, after listening to that awful music for 20 to 40 minutes before the CSR answers the call. Well, let's just say I'm already triggered to be antagonistic when some poor soul picks up.
Asked Micah a very long time ago to put the Sales Sprints on instead so at least people could listen 'n' learn. Hasn't happened yet....
Hi
thank you for the information, this is what I needed to know 😊