How does CUSTOMTOOLS support work?

Support work is about sharing the customers' problems and finding working solutions for them together with the customer and colleagues. In this article, we introduce the CUSTOMTOOLS support work and working procedures, in general, to clarify what and how we can help you with your questions.

Customers may contact the support team through the following methods:

• Support Portal (No effects by the COVID-19 pandemic)
  • Directly
  • By an email
• By phone (COVID-19 may affect)

ps. you can also download this article as a useful PDF guide for your team here.

Support Portal

Our target is to contact the customer within the next four (4) hours from the time the support request was submitted, considering the possible time differences. In that timeframe, we always do our best to provide you the first solution proposal. If we cannot provide a solution during our first contact, we request further material concerning the issue to have a better view and tools to help you.

Possible Contents of a Request

Due to our current support service desk platform, we can receive support requests with various kinds of attachments. There are no limitations regarding the files we can receive directly by the requests. If you are submitting your request by email, some limitations may be applied by your email service provider. My advice for the customers is to use as good and accurate information and attachments as possible. In other words, the more detailed the issue is in the original request, the better and faster we can provide you a working solution.

Knowledge Base Integration

The support portal platform we currently use has integration to a knowledge base platform. The knowledge base platform requires a login, but you may register your account there for free. Reading the Knowledge Base articles is free of charge as well, so please feel free to take a look at the articles to see whether you can find an answer to your question there. When you submit a support request to the support portal, the integration automatically looks for articles from the knowledge base. Proposed knowledge base articles appear automatically into the request as proposals. Regardless of that, we always investigate the issues reported.

By Phone

Requesting support by a phone call is fast, but it still has its' challenges, however. By phone, it is possible to quickly present the issue, but there is a possibility of misunderstanding things at both ends. For that reason, I literally cannot recommend calling if the problem requires any specific steps to reproduce it.

So when does a phone call work then?

By my experience, you may sort out some minor issues by phone call nicely and quickly. These minor issues could be the release of a license activation, a need for some quick advice, or confirmation for a problem that is already known but just not in mind.

Support Procedure

Procedure how the support works may vary slightly by the cases but the basic procedure goes as follows:

1. We receive a support request
2. We investigate the problem with the material and information we have
3. We provide a solution to the customer

Whom to Contact

Responsibility of the first level support is always on the CUSTOMTOOLS reseller. This means that you should contact your reseller first when any support is needed. In two type of cases, you may contact ATR Soft first:

• A CUSTOMTOOLS License needs to get deactivated
• CUSTOMTOOLS have encountered a crash
  • In this case, the CUSTOMTOOLS products have an error reporting feature to send the error report automatically to the correct place.

So if your case is none of the ones listed above, please contact your CUSTOMTOOLS reseller first. If your reseller's support desk cannot solve the problem, they can consult us for further help.

Bug Reporting

Sometimes the customers are reporting some software bugs too, which is very useful for CUSTOMTOOLS development, and we appreciate that. However, when a bug occurs, it is important to get detailed information about how did the error occur (steps to reproduce). In addition to the steps, some example files are usually useful, especially when the problem relates to something special. If you can provide us a video where you show the problem - that is an even more useful tool for investigating the problem, as we can see precisely what you did before the error occurred. Once we get the problem reproduced in our environment, we report it as an SPR to our developers. You can find all public information about the SPRs from the CUSTOMTOOLS Resource Center. You may look for a specific SPR by its number or by a search term using the Resource Center's search feature. We also add a Web Link pointing to the SPR related to the support request, into the support request's information so you may access the SPR's knowledge base information quickly by the link provided.

Important Note Related to the Bug Reports

Sometimes we receive queries about SPRs' fixing schedule to the support. When these come up, we always consult our product management to check the specific report, but we cannot determine the schedules in support.

COVID-19 Effects to the Support Work

The COVID-19 pandemic does not affect our support work or procedures in general. However, while working remotely, we may encounter some delays in consulting the colleagues due to their other tasks. These delays may show up a bit also on the processing of the support request. Also, at the moment, we have a limited amount of mobile phones in use in the CUSTOMTOOLS Support Team, and due to that, you may only reach specific team members by phone. The phone support still exists regardless of the situation, however. We still do our best to serve you, so do not worry. Everything is still about to get better.

Customer Satisfaction

Since we applied our current support portal platform to use in early February 2019, we have gathered feedback from the customers by their support requests. A person who reported the request can provide feedback to the support once the request is closed. We include the link to give feedback in the closing notification that comes from our support system. The customer can provide feedback as follows:

• Rate the service request processing by 1-5 stars
• Comments as text

Customer satisfaction results

The past year's statistics cover the period from late May 2019 until late May 2020. We received almost 200 reviews from our customers during the past year, with an average rating of 4,7/5,0 stars

Overall, our customer satisfaction in the support has stayed stable, no matter if we look at the past almost 5 months or the whole year. Since the beginning of the year 2020 until late May, when we wrote this article, our average rating from the customer feedbacks provided through the support requests has been 4,7/5,0. The total amount of feedbacks within the range above has been 68.