Help from people who know your setup
An honest service statement is worth more than a promise nobody measures.
Response times, by plan
What we aim to answer in, by plan. The column that matters on a bad day is the first row, and it is the one we report against every quarter.
| What | Starter | Business | Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|
| The system is down | Next working day | 4 working hours | 4 hours, any day |
| Something is wrong but usable | 2 working days | 1 working day | 4 working hours |
| A question | 2 working days | 1 working day | Same day |
| How we answer | Phone and email | Phone, email, a named person | |
| Training | Written guides | Two sessions | On site, as needed |
Working hours are 08:00 to 17:00, Monday to Friday.
Reported every quarter
The figures above are a promise, and a promise with no scoreboard beside it is a sentence. These are the two definitions that decide what the scoreboard counts.
We publish how often we met these. A target nobody reports against is not a target.
The system is unreachable, or a core action cannot be completed. Not a slow page, and not one person's network.
What happens to something you report
Four stages, and you are told at each one. The stage most suppliers leave out is the third, which is the stretch where a customer hears nothing and assumes nothing is happening.
- It is acknowledged by a person
Inside the time your plan states, by somebody who has read it rather than by an automatic receipt with a reference number on it. If it is going to take longer than your plan states, you are told that instead of being left to find out.
- We reproduce it
On our own copy, using what you sent. Most of the back-and-forth in support is this step, which is why the band below is about what to send — a report we can reproduce on the first read is usually fixed the same day.
- You are told what it is, before it is fixed
What has gone wrong, whether there is a way round it today, and when we expect it done. A rough answer now is worth more to somebody with a press standing idle than a precise one this afternoon.
- It is fixed, and you are told what changed
Named, in plain words, so the person who reported it can tell the person who was affected. Where it was something in your own setup rather than ours, you are told that too, with what to change.
A report that turns out to be a misunderstanding rather than a fault gets the same four stages. It is still the fastest way to find out.
What to send, so we can reproduce it
Support is slow when it is a conversation and fast when it is a report. None of these take more than a minute to write down, and together they are usually the difference between an answer today and an answer on Thursday.
- Which organisation, and who was signed in
Your organisation and the person's name. Half of what gets reported as a fault is a rights setting, and that is visible in one screen once we know whose account to look at.
- What you were doing, in the order you did it
The screen, the button, the record. Three lines is plenty. "It does not save" and "it refuses to save a quotation after a line is deleted" are the same sentence to you and two different days of work to us.
- What you expected, and what happened
Both halves. The second one on its own leaves us guessing which of the two is the fault, and we guess wrong about as often as anybody would.
- The time, and roughly how often
When it happened and whether it happens every time. The log is searchable by the minute, so an approximate time turns a hunt into a lookup.
- A photograph of the screen is enough
Taken on a phone, including the error if there is one. It does not need to be a screenshot and it does not need to be cropped.
Four answers you can get without waiting for a reply
Three of these are open at two in the morning and one of them is inside the software you are already looking at. We would rather you found the answer in thirty seconds than waited for our four hours.
Written in the same words the screens use, in four parts: getting started, people and access, money, and running it. It is the first place we look ourselves.
It answers from your own setup rather than from a general description of the product, so it can tell you where a setting is on your screen rather than where it is in principle.
Questions other businesses have already asked, with the answers underneath. The useful ones are usually about how to organise something rather than about where a button is.
Twenty-four of them, captioned, grouped by module. Quicker than a description when what you want to know is whether a thing exists at all.
Where support ends and work begins
Every supplier draws this line somewhere and most of them draw it after you have signed. Here it is beforehand, in the five places it actually comes up.
Something is broken
Support, always, at the times published above. It makes no difference whether it broke because of a change we made or a change you made.
Something works, and you cannot find it
Support. If we have to explain the same thing to three different customers it is usually a fault in the screen rather than in the three of them, and it goes on the list to be fixed.
You want a report that does not exist
Work. Quoted first. Where the same report gets asked for by several businesses it tends to become part of the product instead, and then it is included for everybody.
Your data needs correcting in bulk
Work, usually small. We will tell you when it is something your own administrator can do in ten minutes, because most of the time it is.
Training beyond what your plan includes
Work. The plan's own training is in the grid above; a day on site for a new intake of staff is quoted. The manual and the forum stay free to everybody either way.
Anything billable is quoted and agreed before it starts. A support conversation that turns into a piece of work gets a price first, and you are free to say no and keep the support.
Report something now
Call. The number is answered by somebody who can see your installation.