Support Solutions
The First Customer
After leaving their jobs at Nortel in 2002 to found PSS, Todd, Archie, and Keith hit the road to meet with prospective customers who could help their startup company get off the ground. They managed to wrangle a meeting with America West Airlines. The response was a simple "Thank you. We'll keep you in mind," so the PSS crew left thinking they made little progress.
About a week later (over the Thanksgiving holiday) PSS received a call on their newly minted support line. The call came from America West, who had a problem with their IVR system and was getting push-back from Nortel support because they were signed up for 9-5 M-F support and this was a holiday. Todd triaged the first call and immediately mobilized Archie to start troubleshooting. Archie determined that there was a memory problem with a system in Reno, NV.
Based near San Francisco at the time, Keith was the closest PSS employee. He drove to Reno, fixed the system, and got AWA back up and completely functioning during the busy holiday travel weekend. The following Monday the whole PSS team was involved in negotiations that led to their first contract.
No Finger Pointing
One customer whose premise-based IVR systems were supported by PSS also had some other IVR applications that were hosted and supported by Tellme. They called PSS after hours for help with some problems the Tellme application was experiencing. Instead of sending the customer back to Tellme to get support, PSS called Tellme directly and started troubleshooting together. It took most of the night to diagnose what turned out to be a network problem, but the problem was soon corrected and the customer's application was again functioning normally.
Because PSS took responsibility for finding a solution to the problem, the customer didn't have to worry about whether it was a PSS problem, a Tellme problem, or a carrier problem.
Monitor Procurement
A large financial institution whose IVR systems are maintained by PSS had an emergency need for some monitors as part of a new system deployment. Because of their internal procurement processes, it was going to take a week or more to get them through normal channels. They contacted PSS hoping to find a way to purchase them under their existing maintenance agreement. In the interests of time, a PSS field service engineer purchased the monitors locally and had them installed that day so the customer could meet their deployment deadline.
"No NT" Mandate
PSS supports and maintains the IVR and CTI systems for a regional utility in the Southeast. The utility's parent company issued an internal mandate that no more applications could be run on Microsoft NT. Their legacy Nortel CTI system was running on NT at the time, so the customer called PSS for help.
Nortel no longer supported this customer's legacy CTI system, and an upgrade from NT to Windows was not available. A new CTI system was not an option because the customer had no budget to fund an upgrade, but they were still unable to get relief from the "No NT" mandate. Within a month PSS was able to successfully port their applications to Windows, enabling them to keep the old system alive for a few more years until funding could be approved for an upgrade.
Nortel PBX
A regional bank counts on PSS to support and maintain its legacy Nortel IVR systems. One Saturday they had a critical issue with their Nortel PBX and they were unable to get help from the reseller who had sold them their Nortel switch. They tried to get help from Nortel, but were referred back to the reseller who held the maintenance contract. Frustrated, the customer called PSS support and asked for any help we could offer.
Though this was clearly outside our existing support agreement with the bank, the first priority at PSS is always to help a customer. While the PSS executive in charge of partnerships began calling our high level contacts at Nortel to make sure they were aware of the customer's problem, PSS support was able to find a work-around that addressed their issue and got them back up and running.
Case of the Missing API
While a PSS field service engineer was on site at a major utility performing preventative maintenance on the customer's Nortel IVR system, the customer told him that another project was in jeopardy. This project required an API for their Avaya switch, but the utility customer had been unable to find it after searching backup tapes for over 48 hours. If they couldn't find it soon, they would not only impact the project timeline but also would go way over budget. With no proof they had rights to the missing API, they would have to pay Avaya over $100,000 for a new copy.
Though this was unrelated to the maintenance and support contract in place between PSS and this customer, the PSS field service engineer was happy to help. He pitched in and stayed up most of the night checking the customer's backup tapes for the missing API (at no charge to the customer.) Through his diligence, the PSS field service engineer found the API before morning, saving the customer over $100,000 and allowing them to get the project back on track.