In our continuing journey towards service excellence, Epicor Support is excited to introduce new support offerings for your Epicor ERP solution. Responding to growing customer feedback for greater transparency and responsiveness, and more advanced and extended coverage services, we are introducing Epicor Essential and Pro Support. These new offerings will replace our current Epicor Standard Support offering.
With these new offerings, we are confident you will see elevated service levels through better expectation setting, better defined processes, greater responsiveness for your most critical issues, improved self-service content and tools, and an opportunity to sign up for more advanced services through Epicor Pro Support.
Your Impact: In June 2019, we will be migrating your Standard Support plan to Epicor Essential Support. Please click on the EpicCare knowledge base article to learn more about how this transition to Essential Support affects you, key dates, and pricing.
Fair warning this will not turn into a gripe-fest. My guess is it means nothing really changes for you there were already processes in place internally just was not as transparent as it could have been (as they addressed in the email). They didn’t just decide to do this today.
Agreed, I think the Support as it is today, will probably remain the same, just be renamed. Where if someone has 3 shifts and requires 24/7 support, thats where Pro, would be beneficial.
I know during Go-Live’s we request better Support on a pay-as-you-need basis. I assume that may still be around to be requested.
I wonder if you can move between the two as needed? For example if you have a night shift that isn’t permanent, or you have a go-live going on. Then when things cool back down go back to essential.
I wonder, if you report bugs and Essentials Support only has Level 1 Technical Support covering you, if it will be harder to get them to redirect your Bug with Replication Steps Provided to a Level 2, 3.
Where as it currently Stands when I submit a more complex problem a Level 2, 3 picks it up from the get go, since my Support Level didn’t indicate who I get, will Sr. Support Techs be able to make Exceptions based on the complexity of the case, or will they have to wait until we beat around the bush with Level 1 before they are allowed to intervene ( 7 days later ).
It’s tempting based on this alone, but it’s all going to come down to home much more they charge for Pro.
As it stands, the support model today is sufficient for our needs.
How much sooner is Pro Priority Queueing? With the 3 priority levels (see page 7), What is the service agreement for a real* response to the default Priority 3 case (for both Essential or Pro)? A vague “sooner” is tough to sell to our management to get an ROI on the PRO upgrade.
*A real response in my mind is an attempt at a solution (if possible)… The time-to-respond metric shouldn’t stop counting with a response of “We’re looking into it”… or asking for more information that’s been provided in the original case…
It’ll be interesting to see what sort of a premium Pro costs. If the premium is based on # of seats, we’ll be priced out If this skips the line, gets us a senior analyst that can provide a quick answer instead of a week’s back and forth (culminating with a 4 day process to upload and install a copy of our database), It may be worth it.
I’m curious to see how it works out for those that upgrade (and cynical me says the early adopters will have phenomenal service which may drop as more companies sign on).
The first 7 or 8 lines of comparison are reasonable you can see the difference in SLA/what you pay for. I appreciate that this is a new service so probably kind of hard to put expected service levels around it as uptake and demand is unknown but the enhanced bits are kind of abstract - particularly in the not unlikely scenario you are trying to answer a director who asks how sooner pro support cases are addressed to justify signing up - be good if Epicor are transparent with “typical” response times once folks sign up to this and it has been in operation for a while make the decision between the two more objective.
Is access to support in local language an enhancement to what is currently offered or moving from current standard to new premium? Could this mean an offshore support desk in a low cost country speaking only English for initial triage? Not a gripe it is a genuine question?
Epicor has been taking about standardizing the support group for a long time. I think this is just a way of bringing all the support into a single standard so that they can start better tracking metrics etc.
Remember that Epicor has over 70 products they support, it would be nice for all of us if there was a single cohesive support system and standard across the board.
Let’s give them a chance this will be a good thing for all of us in the long run.
James - this is an important detail for us. We talked with epicor about it a few years ago and the price to bump up our support level in order to get access to support in EMEA (and specifically the UK CSG group) was very prohibitive.
I agree with all of you - this sounds like a renaming of current offerings with a bit more clarity/openness to all of us. We talked to support years ago because we operate in the NL and UK, and have had CSG customization for both countries since 9.05. The issue is that the CSF’s are all handled by support in either EMEA (Istanbul I think) or UK.
And I cannot speak to any of them directly because my site ID is registered in the US.
Epicor made it extremely difficult for international companies to get support for licensed modules that they sell around the world. I had a sit down with the CEO(idiot) and VP of global support (Ian Ashby) a few years back in Nashville at Insights and things got changed. I’d like to think it was because of that conversation, but at least I think I helped push things along.
Today, if you own a module that is supported in EMEA or elsewhere, you can have your EpicCare ticket routed to that group and get the proper support. Additionally, those folks can talk to my folks in Dutch if need be - and in their timezone - so that is a bonus.
I’m just putting this all out there because a lot of folks do not realize that Epicor has pushed development and support of many of the lesser known/used modules to international sites - AND - a site license in one country does not allow you to get support from other countries/time zones unless you own a locally supported module OR pay the higher priced support.
So if you operate internationally and are considering additional ‘localized’ modules (VAT/IC Taxes, etc. for example) you should be aware of these problems and your options.
So … Has the “Essential support” really dropped this far?
I entered a ticket for ERP Anayalzer at 12:41 yesterday. I immediately received an automated email saying, “Someone will assist you soon.”
Almost 24 hours went by, and I heard nothing and the epiccare case showed no updates. So I escalated the case. 3-1/2 hours since escalation, and I’ve not heard any thing.
What version are you on? I have submitted a number of ticket related to 10.2.400 and most of the time they have been at least assigned to someone within a day or less.
@kfierce - I’m on 10.1.400, but my issue is about updating 10.2.300. And I’ve always had past issues assigned to someone within an hour or two.
@askulte - tried to contact my CAM, but he out of the office until Monday.
Maybe I’ll create a new thread for my issue here. I usually go here first. But when it comes to upgrades, im often told to go through support. So i went that way first
Edit
Going on 36 hours and I’ve not hear from support. Over 10 hours since escalating it…
It does state that the Essential Support availability is only during their Local Business Hours… So I assume weekends are off now and its 8am - 5pm usually Local Business Hours. Basically catching them on Friday at 2pm, is probably not going to yield anything until Monday 11am.
24/7 if you get Premium Support. I assume that helps them staff properly and give their Helpdesk better Work/Life Balance.
That info in your original post shows the response times and support hours has a qualifier of “P1” - for Priority 1 cases.
What makes a case P1?
I try to be realistic when selecting a priority, and would never select the highest unless our system was totally down. I wonder if I’m shooting myself in the foot by picking a realistic priority…
And I agree that problems found on Friday afternoon, better not need addressing before Monday…
It shows P1 only for Pro and it shows Essential Cloud gets P1, are you cloud or on-prem? Good questions by the way, im with you, just trying to understand the chart - I guess Essential only gets P1 during Local Business Hours.
Case priority is determined by how the application or technical problem is affecting a business process, using the
information submitted from the customer. The following criteria are used to establish case priority:
Priority 1
The product is unable to function in a production environment—system is completely down—and all business processes cannot continue. For SaaS/hosting it means the inability to access the SaaS or hosted environment. You experience a complete loss of service and impacts all users. Reasonable efforts will be made to respond to Priority 1 cases within one hour. Note: return to service model only (Epicor is unable to perform development and/or bug-fix related services outside of standard business hours).
Priority 2
You experience a severe loss of service. Important features are unavailable with no acceptable workaround; however, operations can continue in a restricted fashion. Priority 2 issues include situations such as the following:
Situations impacting production for multiple users, however, system is not down
Errors while running business critical reports or processes
Processes are frozen or standard defaults are missing
Form printing issues e.g. checks or invoices
For SaaS/hosting it is the inability to access one or more material functions of the SaaS or hosted environment
Priority 3
The customer is able to complete processing in a production environment. They require assistance with the functionality or a question of an application. For example:
Issue for which there is a workaround
General information requests, such as usage
Cosmetic issues
Question about the functionality of the software
All problems occur on one workstation or user only
From one of your other posts you were seeing a lawyer in a building that also had an Epicor office in it. For fun you should have gone upstairs with the lawyer and a copy of your service contract to see if that got you what you needed.
If this skips the line, gets us a senior analyst that can provide a quick answer instead of a week’s back and forth (culminating with a 4 day process to upload and install a copy of our database), It may be worth it.
