Do you know about the IBM Support Assistant (ISA) for TBSM? Are you using it? If not, why?
I’m sure that all of you *love* the IBM support process. Your teeth cringe and blood pressure rises when you bite the bullet making the call to the IBM support number. After the initial exchange of information, validation and problem description you wait for the initial call or contact back from IBM’s TBSM support team.
I review every TBSM PMR each week. What happens next is what drives me crazy. It’s the same set of questions each and every time based on how you’ve described the issue. What version, what platform, what architecture, what browser, what JRE. Then you reply and wait. The next contact usually gets a bit deeper now. Send me this logfile, this directory, output from this command. Sometimes this back and forth spans days before we’re actually able to help you move the ball forward towards actionable resolution activity. I understand that our software and platform support is complex and I understand the formalities of the software support business, but this is an area we can and should provide differentiation.
The ISA plugin is your opportunity to change the game here. It’s your opportunity to provide some level of self service support before you contact IBM. The ISA plugin should be the FIRST thing that you do to provide some level of self service support when you suspect TBSM problems. You should use this BEFORE you call IBM Support.
Hey, any inbound support contact center wants to deflect or shorten as many calls as possible. That’s where the costs are. They’d love for you to resolve the problem yourself within the product or manuals, within an online product support portal, within the community, within a call tree, etc. before you talk to a human.
The cool thing about this is that when you use it you can collect all the common logfiles, trace data, output errors, etc. in advance. These can all be neatly packaged up and sent into the IBM support process on the initial PMR submission. Why is this important and valuable? Now our team of talented TBSM Level 2 support engineers have all of the key data they need to provide you with a response that can move the ball forward on their first contact with you! Trust me, I now this can shave off days if not weeks in some of the TBSM PMRs that I’ve seen.
I recommend that you strongly consider incorporating the TBSM ISA into your administrative support process. Think about using it before you call support to verify, isolate and resolve the problem on your own. If you can’t, you’ll be able to collect all the key data to provide the TBSM support teams with the best possible chance of helping you resolve the problem on the first call! (hey, I can be optimistic here can’t I?)
Let me know if you think this is valuable, needs improvement, have concerns on its use, etc.
References:
- Download ISA here.
- ISA v4.0.2 with TBSM v4.2 support review presentation here and here.
- Here’s a recent STE on TBSM v4 and installation of the ISA plugin.