As Support Manager, what is your day to day role? How do you help customers with their support?
My main role day to day is centred around organising support for our customers whether it be scheduling in licence upgrades, arranging for our engineers to provide on-site support or helping customers access immediate technical support when needed.
A more strategic part of my role is to ensure customers are receiving the support that best fits their needs on the shop floor. I regularly analyse what support customers are using to identify if they are utilising it in the most effective way or if a different support package would better suit their needs on a day to day basis.
As our products evolve, so does the support needed and part of my role is to also evaluate the support options to ensure they reflect any product updates and continue to meet customer requirements.
I enjoy working so closely with our customers and getting to know about them and their processes in-depth. It feels great knowing I can help them get the most out of our products.
How have the Support options changed for 2021? How will this benefit customers?
Support has changed dramatically for 2021. As I mention above, I regularly analyse and get feedback about support and I was finding customers wanted a more flexible approach when it came to their support packages. They wanted to pay for only what they needed so we’ve changed the way support works to reflect that.
Now, customers can build a bespoke package and only choose the support options they need. Support is now also product driven so there are packages for each product, rather than an overall one covering all products.
For example, NC-Checker now has two support packages: NC-Checker Plus and NC-Checker Premium which give access to varying amounts of benchmark report investigations and on-site engineering days.
As well as these product support packages, we’ve also opened up support so customers can order ad-hoc services from us when they need it, including CAD integration help or part process development support.
This flexibility means the customer is in charge of their support and can order as little or as much as they need – whenever they like.
What changes have been made within the new support site to accommodate for these new options?
To account for these changes to the support packages, the support site has had a major refresh which makes it simple for our customers to track their products and support.
The site is a great place for customers to get real time access to their MSP account information.
Now, not only can customers view the machines they have with MSP, they can specifically see which MSP products are on each machine and what version each of these products are on. It also shows what support a customer has purchased against these products. It shows real time data about what support has been used, when the support was taken and when the support expires.
This builds on the previous site’s functionality which includes our file share system – a safe and encrypted way for customers to share big data files with MSP.
Why is it important for customers to take out Support?
Support is paramount for customers to get the most out of their products.
Not only does it give customers day to day support with Benchmark report analysis or technical difficulties, it also gives them access to a wealth of knowledge held by our team of Application Engineers who are available to support the development of part processes or alignment strategies, create probing programs or help keep machines in production.
I hope this new structure for support will encourage more customers to explore what’s on offer as the benefits are truly worthwhile.
What’s next for the Support section?
Our plan is to keep building on this great platform and adding more functionality for our customers. In particular, we are hoping to add a database of support queries so our customers can quickly locate the answers to their problems without having to contact one of our engineers.
We are also looking at adding the ability for customers to see vital data about their machine, such as every NC-Checker Benchmark that has been run on it. In cases where a failed (red) Benchmark occurred, the database will document why the Benchmark failed and what was done to resolve the issue. This will help solve issues on their machine quicker than ever before. This will also be of great advantage to our international customers who need support at any time, day or night.
To access the Support site, do customers need to buy certain products?
Customers need to have purchased at least one of our products; either AutoClock, NC-Checker or NC-PartLocator or one of our accompanying NC-Inspect plugins.
Can any support be accessed outside of the account section?
We have a range of support on our website which doesn’t require logging in. Head to the homepage on www.mspltd.com and navigate to the support section. This area has ‘how to’ videos and a Benchmark investigation tool which helps customers identify why their Benchmark report has failed. There is also information and videos about our latest software releases on the website too. Any videos can also be found on our YouTube channel.