Conference 7.286::digital

    
    We've forgotten about sales & service.  We think we're a PC company,
    that oh-by-the-way still makes our money selling high margin servers.
    
    When I started (some 17 years ago), we had one directive to follow in
    the field:  Do the Right Thing.  If this call came in, we'd have done
    what it took to try and make it right.  And it paid off.  People bought
    DEC not just for the products, but for how we stood by them, and
    serviced them.
    
    Yeah, we were never really customer friendly on the sales end, but once
    you had our hardware and software, we would do "whatever it takes".
    
    The stories I hear of from non-DECies are frightening.  Banks with
    crashing systems, and an unresponsive DEC.  Heck, IBM probably has more
    DEC trained support specialists than DEC has.  We laid them off, they
    hired them for more money, and then got the support contract for the
    account.
    
    Sigh.
    

    We now have IBM servicing a major DEC customer in our area ... customer
    has a pair of Gigaswitches for their VMS disaster tolerant cluster. Our
    MCS guys had trouble sourcing spare parts.  Now IBM has a complete
    spare switch available for these guys.  We will likely NEVER again
    provide service for this DEC shop except for warranty service.  Wonder
    how long they'll be a customer of ours as they migrate from VMS to NT. 
    Our strategic partner Oracle has recently told them that Alpha NT is
    NOT a primary port for their applications, so go Intel if you want to
    run Oracle apps.
    
    Sigh....

ARGGH!!!!!!!!!!


Sorry, but I've spent many hours (late at night) helping customers resolve
problems with hardware and software, worked late with them on weekends doing
software installs of layered products that were broken and cost them (the
customer) much wasted effort and expense (all because engineering didn't do a 
good job of testing their next version of the software). SO DON'T TELL ME THAT
SALES ISN'T FRIENDLY. I KNOW THE VALUE OF A CUSTOMER AND HOW IMPORTANT IT IS TO
BE THERE WHEN THEY NEED ME (AND DIGITAL), IT TRANSLATES DIRECTLY INTO LOYALTY
AND BUSINESS FOR DIGITAL. Those were only a few of the things that I did to get
this company business, these I can control and consider it as part of my job,
unfortunately I can't control the decisions and policies that are put in place
at Corporate. Right now, decisions, organizational changes, lack of "real 
concern" over fixing/addressing the issues (as outlined in this customers 
note) are killing us in the field. This customer's experience and frustration
with Digital is nothing new, it's been going on for the last 3-4 years. My 
customers have experienced it several times and yes, we've complained, to the
various organizations in charge, only to have it fall on deaf ears. I really 
don't have a clue where managements head is at these days. Customers are the
life blood of any company, to ignore these issues (and others) is mind boggling
to me. Is it because the "business model" calls for them to ignore these issues,
or is it that they are "incompetent" and really don't know how to "work the
problem" to a potential solution, or that "they really don't
care/understand/have a clue about the impact it has on current/future business? 
It's not just the mom and pop customers that get treated this way, it's also our
large Corporate account customers. This customers letter doesn't really
shock/surprise me, everytime I hear about something like this happening to a
customer it saddens me very much. If this letter shocks any else, where have you
been? 

RC

(Just a peon from the field, saying "can you hear me")?

    We placed the first TruCluster based AlphaServer platform at our
    customer this Winter.  I told the account manager: "Now you've done it. 
    Drop everything else, getting DIGITAL to fulfill the commitments we've
    made will be a full time job for the next three months, possibly more."
    
    Now she understands :-(.
    
    As noted elsewhere, although I'm supposed to be "pre-sales" support, I
    always have to give the customer my pager, home-phone number, etc.  I
    try to hold the customer's hand through the process of calling the CSC
    (no record of the system, etc!), and getting immediate help in
    addtition if they can't wait for the CSC.
    
    But the direct sales organisation, in my opinion, still very much
    believes in "DO THE RIGHT THING".  Sometimes it is hard to determine
    all that goes into meeting this goal.  We need to solve not only the
    customer's immediate problem, but try to understand how they got into
    their particular bind and try and fix that little bit of DIGITAL that
    led them there.
    

    re: .2
    
    We had a similar experience, losing on-site consulting to Amdahl.
    
    They underbid "us" (we bid as a subcontractor for the DEC component of
    a site-wide support services contract), won the deal and then hired
    away all the people we had on-site to fulfill their bid!
    
    I still can't quite figure out how they can pay more AND underbid us!

    
    Martin,
    
    >>>
    Our strategic partner Oracle has recently told them that Alpha NT is
    NOT a primary port for their applications, so go Intel if you want to
    run Oracle apps.
    >>>
    
    Oracle is looking big time at NT5 and VLM capabilities of Alpha. They
    view it as a way of beating MS at their own NT game because they
    already have 64bit experience with Alpha, while MS is just beginning to 
    understand what 64bit is all about ..
    
    NT/Alpha is indeed very important to Oracle - reference:
    http://www.oracle.com:81/NT/news/html/digital.html
    
    Regards,
    
    / Kerry

    
Re .0:

  I'm going to try and address .0.  I was the engineer in the support
center who attempted to help the customer.  Yes, it took me 45 minutes
to log the call.  Yes, we didn't provide him a phone fix.  And I expect
that we did bill him.

  Now our side:  The customer had a choice of purchasing installation
with the equipment.  He elected to save the cost and do it himself.  He
was never denied service.  He wanted free service.  At first we answered
some questions and helped him without charge (our mistake because he
then expected us to do it all for free).  When it got down to serious
hours, I explained to him that we would send out Field Service and that
installations were billable, then he preceded to curse me.  I immediately
got a manager involved, who stood by the decision that we would provide
service if he was willing to pay for it.  The customer was P.O.'ed to
put it nicely.  He wanted free support from the CSC.

  We don't provide HARDWARE installation support for customers at the
CSC... We are working on a procedure to provide percall support, but
it isn't implemented yet.  Keep in mind we are responsible if the customer
gets killed installing hardware under our direction, so our assistance
is limited.  Anyway I offered to support him from the center on a per
call basis.  Since the procedure hasn't been implemented, it was a pain
to both customer and to me to get the call logged.  What I really should
have done was send it to the Field Service office and let them deal with
it, instead of trying to help him.

  As for not fixing the problem in the CSC.  We don't guarantee a
a resolution but effort.  If we can't fix it remotely we send it to the
local office, or have it escalated to a local support group, or to
engineering.  We met our agreement.  We worked the call for 2 hours,
and only billed him for 1 hour.

Jim Morton

re.2:

>    Our strategic partner Oracle has recently told them that Alpha NT is
>    NOT a primary port for their applications, so go Intel if you want to
>    run Oracle apps.

Or Sun. 

Dave.

    re.7
    
    I've been on the recieving end of these kind of situations. 
    They've got themselves in over their heads and because it has
    DEC's name on it we should do everything to help them (the 
    OEM) not look awful. 
    
    These relationships are very painful for
    us(in field service) to try to figure out as the VAR's charge
    customers for DEC field service to install things then do it
    themselves pocketing k$'s for their trouble. This is wonderful when
    the options are simple and valuable say a addon cpu to any dec
    system. Adding a pci or eisa raid controller are painful even when 
    they work correctly. I do not blame the VAR person for being steamed
    and I can comfortably say ... welcome to field service! 
    
    Regarding calling csc for help... I had to chuckle once when I was
    working on a crashing system, the results proved that the crashes were
    being caused by a ramteck driver. The engineer I was talking to said
    that in order to give any further help they would need a po. Well this
    is a significant system so the customer had a meeting and decided to 
    pay. I called back and said the customer was willing to pay for help 
    fixing the driver and was told by the MOD there was no expertise to 
    fix it. Ohhh boy I looked good! The customer asked what CSC was going
    to charge them for??? 
    
    Fred 

    Re: .7
    
    Now that we have heard both sides of the story, it seems to me
    that either defending ourselves in the same public forum or winning 
    him over and hopefully he will do it for us is the way DIGITAL can 
    benefit in the long run.
    
    Dan

    The TECHNICAL issues involved in getting the SWXCR controllers to work
    are very painful, not least because the documentation advises extremely
    long procedures that are not, in fact, always needed; but the
    documentation does not explain clearly why when and how they really are
    needed.
    
    So let's not blame the customer on this one nor the support center. 
    Let's do a better job of engineering excellent products with excellent
    documentation.
    
    	/an engineer

    Re last few:
    
      Agreed!  It's too late to defuse a bomb that has already exploded.
    Lets try and defuse the next one before it goes off...
    
    Jim Morton

    
    If everything could be solved by documentation then life would be so
    good! Regretably, it does not work that way, nothing replaces 
    experience when it comes to a RAID controller. There are too many
    things that could impact the functions of the device to cover in a
    manual and most of them are not caste in concrete.  This is also
    not a digital device, but rather a buyout from Mylex.  If no one has
    ever seen the device, or actually 'played' with it, then the only
    support you can ever hope for is 'theoretical' support. And that
    doesn't cut it in customer's eyes. 
    
    Chet
    

    I sit in the CSC in the UK. And sometimes you will get Mr Angry on the
    phone and there is nothing you are going to do that is going to make
    this guy happy.
    It is at times like this we have to just say, "yes sir, three bags full
    sir", hang up and go for a cigarette. You have to realize that you
    can't please everyone. Only on monday did I have a customer who was
    mis-informed call me up and leave a message on my answer machine
    telling me to pull a finger out. I called the guy back to try and
    understand what he was pissed off about, and I got his answer machine.
    I left a message, saying that I did not appreciatte being told to pull
    a finger out, and perhaps he would like to call me to discuss any
    issues he has with the level of service he was getting.
    He responded, with another voicemail message saying that I was rude,
    and I should not forget that he was the customer, and customers are
    always right, and he will be reporting me to his account manager.
    
    Now how do you respond to customers like that? Likle I said sometimes
    you just have to turn the other cheek and take the good with the bad.
    
    Steven
    
    PS The guy who called was not even the contact on the service request.
    He had read a DSN mail I had directed to the onsite DEC engineer. The
    mail was requesting further clarification of a problem, before ordering
    a new part. 

Re: Steven

>>    He responded, with another voicemail message saying that I was rude,
>>    and I should not forget that he was the customer, and customers are
>>    always right, and he will be reporting me to his account manager.

I have a cartoon hanging on my wall. If you would like, I will send you a 
copy.

It shows an "Adjustments" counter with a man and woman in front of it, and two 
men behind it. Over the counter is a sign reading:

	The Customer Is Always Right

One adjuster is pointing toward the sign and says, "Find the guy that put this 
up! I want him to hear this!"

    
    
    re: 7
    
    As a salesman I would like to be informed about anything of this kind
    happening with my customer. I think you did much more than you had to,
    and that's great. But why didn't you also contact the sales rep so he
    could go pay a visit to the customer and EXPLAIN what the problem was
    and how to solve it ? 
    If the answer is that the salesman doesn't have time, or has more
    important things to do, then THAT is the real problem this customer has. 
    Solve it internally. A sales rep should be aware of (and deal with)
    everything happening at his customer's site. I don't know any better way of
    developing a long-lasting and trustful relationship with a customer.
    
    Michel.
    

    If I remember .0 correctly, there was no sales rep.  The person
    generating the calls was some sort of consultant who's a** was on the
    line.  He had purchased the equipment in question from a distributer.

    re .16:
      Frank was correct in .17.  As far as I know he didn't have a sales
    person.  I also don't have a problem with contacting the sales person.
    The best thing for me to do was get a manager involved.
    
    Jim Morton

    
    
    Sorry, I probably overlooked the part saying there  was no direct sales
    rep. However, I imagine there is someone selling to the distributor or
    the VAR. In my mind (I'm probably drunk !) someone in sales in Digital
    should be responsible in the end (i.e. through the distributor) for 
    dealing with any situation like this one, but I gather this probably
    isn't true.....