A (disbelieving) question regarding the OSS

[CarstenKasper]

Hi all,

I know we all have had our quarrels with SAP and by no means I am going to bash them. The OSS is a good support platform!

Today I recieved an "answer" to an OSS message I had opened in the beginning of july. Awaiting a suggestion for my priority HIGH problem I looked into it and if I had not been sitting already it would have knocked me off my feet. The person dares to ask me if I could lower the priority of the message, because they want to try something, but all developers are on vacation.

I experienced somethings things already maintaining OSS messages:

People telling me they go dancing in the evening; They know that there is a better solution, but they would have to talk with another section and that means extra effort; Someone even described an issue as "The error message from hell"

This being said I have a simple question:

Am I the only to whom this has happend? Do those support people have such a huge load of work that the go a bit out of line?

As I never had the pleasure to experience Support life or even Walldorf by now, it really gets me curious.

Cheers Carsten

[Former Member]

At a client where I have to get messages recorded by one of the permanent employees, I attached the following to the end of the email asking for the message to be raised.

"I also suggest we do a temporary repair to this function module to fix the issue while we wait for SAP to analyse the problem and ask to log into our system to verify the issue and ask what support pack we are on and ask lots of other irrelevant questions and work out that it really is their error and write a fix OSS note."

Overall I am happy that SAP support provides good answers to a majority of requests passed to them, but there does seem to be difficulty getting through first level support so that the question gets read by someone that understands what you are asking.

In this case, I had included details of the FM that had the error, and what lines of code were needed to fix the problem.

The first response was:

"Sincere thanks for your contacting SAP support.
In order to analyze your case better,could you please kindly provide
a detailed screenshot of your scenario step by step to help us reproducethis issue.
Your kind cooperation would be highly appreciated,thanks!"

Our response then was a detailed set of instructions on how to use SQL Trace ST05 to analyse the function in question and get to see the issue. This was not an online transaction so no screenshots were possible, and this had been obvious in the original message.

It seems that messages go to functional specialists initially to answer, but they are often not able to evaluate the technical content of the message well enough to be able to see that the poster of the message has done full detailed analysis. You then get caught in a question - response loop until you have made them understand what you said in the first place, or until you have confused them enough that they pass it up the line for assistance.

Andrew

[Former Member]

Hi,

>but there does seem to be difficulty getting through first level support so that the question gets read >by someone that understands what you are asking.

This is the modern illness. It is the same in all companies including SAP and my own company.

Support is seen by cost killers as an unproductive cost center so it is "industrialized" with low paid first level hot liners.

The worse are the general public hotlines especially for Internet Providers. They are human robots executing a script anf have no clue about the subject.

Regarding SAP, after passing first level, you sometimes get excellent support !

Regards,

Olivier

[CarstenKasper]

Then if we got a case that is an known issue, that also is solved by configuration or by system tunning (based in a several previous cases with same symptom and solutions or in our experience), we send the answer that is consulting, however if we're not sure about, we contact an internal special support unit called NEXUS to confirm with experts if is a bug or not.... now you probably ask your self: "if this is a well structured procedure why you make mistakes ?" (i hope you have this question)

The question that arises for me is more: Why do you first reply it is consulting and then ask some one to research it?

I do understand that most of the time you are going to be right and you lack the time to chase every "error" a customer claims he has seen. In my opinion having an answer that says it is not our bug it is consulting does not help me as a customer. I just know that I have to handle it myself somehow.

But (yes this had to come ) if some weeks later SAP comes around telling me that what I reported was, at second sight, a bug I will be really upset. The customer spent time and money on this, maybe realized a have baked work around that takes as long to deimplement.

I really am impressed how serious you say SAP is taking this and I am thankful for the insights the other people share in here.

cheers Carsten

[CarstenKasper]

Yes, I know of the feedback questionare. Believe me, concerning the messages I am talking about I would be sure to put some bad marks in there. Luckily for the colleague I have changed projects meanwhile. So the new person responsible will probably not notice that the messages have been opened in june.

Even when I asked to put the message back to us, so we can put a new contact person in there, it took long (if any response at all).

Though I have to admit, the initial response time was good:

italics

Dear Mr Kasper,

your message has been forwarded to the next level of support for

further investigation. My colleagues will contact you as soon as

possible.

Best regards

Some Employee

italics

This is the only response we got dating back 5th. august. Priority is medium.

Maybe this is just a single message, but I noticed the pattern in quite a few.

I have also experienced the other side of support that I was really glad to have recieved. Big props go to Yuri Z. of global support on solving all the issues regarding the ITS on CRM 5.1

So I suppose it really depends. I have been waiting in "Dear customer, your call is important to us. Please hold the line." loops often. Some companies may be worse others better. I am just interesed in the opinions of others and I am really astound that SAP takes this so seriously.

How about some other people tell their tale? Good or bad?

cheers Carsten

[former_member191062]

Dear Community Members,

As the Marilynu2019s topic has been clarified we consider that we have to contribute with the original topic again.

SAP is not only a Software Company, itu2019s also a business partner of our customers and the Support Services is considered by SAP as an essential part of the business continuity for our customers, however we are humans and sometimes make mistakes during the processing of one incidence, however some years ago we also offer to our customers and partners a feedback channel in the SAP Service Marketplace, there you can complain regarding the quality of an answer or regarding any other operational topic. We in Active Global Support take so serious this complain management and take all the measures to fix those situations.

Regarding the country of support, let me unveil something to you, we have Support Centers in Austria, China, India, Israel, Malaysia, Hungary, Spain, Ireland, Canada , Bulgaria, Brazil, United States and of course Germany, we offer 3rd level of Support in several places not only in Germany and we have SAP Labs providing new developments and support in a some of the mentioned locations.

Our offer is what we call u201Cfollow the sunu201D means when a team in Europe go home a new team in Americas take over the support and then a team in Asia Pacific take over the support u2026 and so onu2026

I want to remark that the location for us is not an issue, we spend several resources in training for our colleagues that are located outside the SAP Labs, it means if a product is developed in Israel, our Developers will perform high level training to the colleagues in India, Brazil, Palo Alto, Montreal, or any other location where we need to establish a Support Center, for this reason we are proud to provide worldwide support in very different time zones.

So please, in the future if you get a bad experience with SAP Support, please contact us, go to the SAP Service Marketplace and let us know why do you get a wrong support.

By the wayu2026 the CSS (is not longer OSS) is reserved for bugs or malfunctions in the software, if you have to configure the system to make it works.. that is for sure consultingu2026

Kind Regards,

Dezso

[Former Member]

Hello,

>By the wayu2026 the CSS (is not longer OSS) is reserved for bugs or malfunctions in the software, if >you have to configure the system to make it works.. that is for sure consultingu2026

As long as the correct system configuration is documented which is very often NOT the case...

Regards,

Olivier

[matt]

There's been a few times when I've been told it's consulting, and I've disagreed, got the evidence and had the problem accepted as not consulting. Admittedly, this was a phase a few years ago the OSS seemed to go through when anything complicated was responded to in this way, and things have improved since then.

[pokrakam]

>

> There's been a few times when I've been told it's consulting, and I've disagreed, got the evidence and had the problem accepted as not consulting.  Admittedly, this was a phase a few years ago the OSS seemed to go through when anything complicated was responded to in this way, and things have improved since then.

Nope, just went through a 6 month tour around this loop last year. A [glaringly obvious problem|; took some months of arguing and quoting the online help and even the English dictionary to get them to admit it's a bug.

Some further months later they told us to go away because it's too much trouble to fix. The whole thing took over half a year (see dates on thread) and cost us several man-days to come up with a non-result. This was in the dreaded MM area.

[markus_doehr2]

By the wayu2026 the CSS (is not longer OSS) is reserved for bugs or malfunctions in the software, if you have to configure the system to make it works.. that is for sure consultingu2026

That is the "official" statement - yes. But no matter which event you attend, no matter which presentation you visit or if you have presales on-site, everyone tells you to "open an OSS call if you have a question".

If the first reply to an OSS (pardon, CSS) call is "this is consulting", then it´s for me the power-on-button for an immediate escalation through all available channels. I insist of talking to the person who wrote that, I start annoying the CIC until they pass me through.

For me, that argumentation per se ("this is consulting") is either component overload, laziness or pure play of time. It does really upset me, if someone sitting at the other side of the world is judging "consulting" without even having talked to me. We, the customers, pay money for that and I think, that at least a phone call should be included in that annual 17 (soon 22) % maintenance if a support person thinks, that a problem is not really a problem but a misconfiguration.

Markus

[Former Member]

>For me, that argumentation per se ("this is consulting") is either component overload, laziness or pure >play of time. It does really upset me, if someone sitting at the other side of the world is >judging "consulting" without even having talked to me. We, the customers, pay money for that and I >think, that at least a phone call should be included in that annual 17 (soon 22) % maintenance if a >support person thinks, that a problem is not really a problem but a misconfiguration.

I so much agree with your statement, Markus !

Olivier

[lanzlf]

Hi Guys,

As there are several answers to Dezso's reply i want to go by topics:

FEEDBACK AND COMPLAINT:

We have a feeback channel different to the survey or questionary, if you have a complain about the quality of Support you have to contact the Support hotlineand report it, please check the following link: http://service.sap.com/supportcenters for details and numbers in a location close to you.

For SAP, it's very important the quality of our Support services, so we don't ignore any complaint at all.

CONSULTING ISSUES:

This topic deserve a new thread... what is consulting and what is support ?, there exist a SAP Note (83020) that clarify it from SAP point of view.

Based on my experience, more than 95% of the CSS cases that we answer as "Consulting" are for sure consulting topics (Lack of experience, misconfiguration, etc) and there were solved by an experienced consultant on-site.

The other 5% (this is, of course, an estimation) normaly seems to be consulting due to the problem description, but the root cause is a bug or malfunction.

The topic is that SAP must separate this channel ONLY for bug or malfunction, any other topic like questions, official statements about certain functionalities, "Know How" issues, etc. Must be solved by other channels... why ?? is so easy, if you're having a real problem with your business system, don't you like to have access to a technical support channel instead to a marketing experts ?

i.e: If someone from SAP ask you to "open an OSS call if you have a question", please refer them to this thread.. this is not a right channel for this, the PreSales specialist or Solution Architects must be able to answer your question directly or per email ( i was working in PreSales and we did that directly with our customers), otherwise you will get a "Consulting" answer

My recommendation is to be very specific in the message description and provide us with all the information to SAP in order to give us the idea about the expected behaviour and the real behaviour, spending few more minutes in the description will save a lot of time to you.

DOCUMENTATION:

Unfortunately with ERP world not all is white and black, depending on the business needs of each customer the configuration can be changed and we cannot document all the usage cases, we usually document the Best Practices and the standard functionality but if this is not sufficient we recommend to hire a consultant with experience in the product, he/she will know how to adapt it to your desired functionality.. unfortunately this is out of the scope of Support, but we have several others departments and units that will be able to help you in this case.

However if you think that there are a missing documentation, we have CSS component for this purpose. i.e:you can report it on BC-DOC (NetWeaver) or EP-DOC (NW Portals)

RESPONSE TIME:

What the "forwarding to next support level" means ? it means the case has been evaluated by a consultant and he decide to reach an expert/developer in one of our SAP Labs in order to give you a fix for this issue directly, so at first impresion it look like you have no attention, but what is happening behind the scene is that we consider your time important to lose it asking for more logs or giving to you a wrong answer, so we notify you that this will be answered directly by the creator with a fix.

Maybe we need to change the way how to trasmit to you the right meaning of our reply

As Summary:

SAP offer you a very complete and efficient Support infrastructure, we have several channels and we want to educate our customer and partners to use it in the right way, this will help to get the righ answer and in the right time.

I hope this clarify some topics about this discussion.

Kind Regards,

Luis

[markus_doehr2]

> FEEDBACK AND COMPLAINT:

>

> We have a feeback channel different to the survey or questionary, if you have a complain about the quality of Support you have to contact the Support hotlineand report it, please check the following link: http://service.sap.com/supportcenters for details and numbers in a location close to you.

>

> For SAP, it's very important the quality of our Support services, so we don't ignore any complaint at all.

No - you don't ignore it.

But: those kind of "complaints" are only on a specific call, they never cover the "full picture". There is (in my opinion) some serious issue in communication: CIC is not "permitted" to contact developers, CIC is not "permitted" to give statements about the message load of a component if you call for the third or fourth time asking why a message is not taken into process and various other things. All that process has for sure its reason but if I write mails or need to call more than one time and only get a "I need to contact another party internally to escalate" or "I will set the clicker to speed up" then it's nothing but a waste of time, yours and ours.

And secondly that "business impact" thing. My face is turning regularly into red color when I'm asked either on phone or via mail about a "non-technical description about the problem". Keep in mind: We pay (a lot of money) to get maintenance and I'm totally not disposed to take the "Way to Canossa" and "sit up and beg" to please please process the call.

We (SAP + customer) have a contract, we pay for software and maintenance and we have the right to get an answer, why a call is not processed, instead of telling the CIC why it should be processed despite of others. In my understand you have to be defensive and give the customers a reasony why you don't react, not give the ball back to the customer and ask for "even more information".

Of course, internally that is (maybe?) necessary to distinguish between "a bit higher than high" priority but at the customers site this arrives as "please tell us first why you opened that call and then we will act."

> My recommendation is to be very specific in the message description and provide us with all the information to SAP in order to give us the idea about the expected behaviour and the real behaviour, spending few more minutes in the description will save a lot of time to you.

If the first level (or however you call it) would actually read the descriptions that are posted, a lot of ping-poing'ing could be certainly avoided. I need to add: This is component dependent, there are many components doing that and doing a good job, others (unfortunately) still don't.

> Maybe we need to change the way how to trasmit to you the right meaning of our reply

Oh yes! I couldn't agree more.

> As Summary:

>

> SAP offer you a very complete and efficient Support infrastructure, we have several channels and we want to educate our customer and partners to use it in the right way, this will help to get the righ answer and in the right time.

You're now working in Marketing?

Markus

[CarstenKasper]

We (SAP + customer) have a contract, we pay for software and maintenance and we have the right to get an answer, why a call is not processed, instead of telling the CIC why it should be processed despite of others.

I fully acknowledge this one!

Why do I have to rectify that we really need that medium call solved. A few weeks before it was not that big an issue (from a technical view point) but if you have a "Go Live" only two days away and the department say they can not live with it.

Starting last week call process times have sped up considerably. Maybe holiday season is over

[pokrakam]

Hi Louis,

Please don't take this personally as I very much appreciate you taking the time to answer, but I feel a rant coming on.

<rant>

Your response has exactly the tone of CSS and thus echoes exactly the type of thing we are complaining about! (hence don't take it personally)

> Based on my experience, more than 95% of the CSS cases that we answer as "Consulting" are for sure consulting topics (Lack of experience, misconfiguration, etc) and there were solved by an experienced consultant on-site.

>

> The other 5% (this is, of course, an estimation) normaly seems to be consulting due to the problem description, but the root cause is a bug or malfunction.

95% 5% equals 100% you are thus refusing to even *acknowledge+ the +possibility+* that maybe... just maybe CSS might get it wrong! MY experience as a CUSTOMER happens to be quite different.

It is exactly this kind of attitude that incenses me when I hear it from them, and that is exactly the heart of the matter. When one has to resort to an English dictionary to prove an obvious point (see mty earlier example) that something is a bug, it simply unacceptable. We are the customer, SAP Is providing a service. What happened to the old adage of the customer is always right? As others have ready stated, OSS are only too trigger-happy when it comes to the "this is a consulting query" response, often it's not even mentioned, but the note is attached (which also annoys me no end). SAP should explain in as great detail why something is a consulting query as the detail they expect from us in a problem description. "Please be aware that this is a consulting query" just doesn't cut it.

> The topic is that SAP must separate this channel ONLY for bug or malfunction, any other topic like questions, official statements about certain functionalities, "Know How" issues, etc. Must be solved by other channels... why ?? is so easy, if you're having a real problem with your business system, don't you like to have access to a technical support channel instead to a marketing experts ?

>

> i.e: If someone from SAP ask you to "open an OSS call if you have a question", please refer them to this thread.. this is not a right channel for this, the PreSales specialist or Solution Architects must be able to answer your question directly or per email ( i was working in PreSales and we did that directly with our customers), otherwise you will get a "Consulting" answer

Now this one really gets my goat!

So you're telling me to ask sales people a technical question? If new feature is introduced by SAP without any trace of documentation, am I not allowed to ask support what it does? Or what if I do not know whether something is a bug or just illogical design? In the past I used to ask OSS, now you're telling me this is not the right channel?

Rubbish!

I ask questions here on SCN when I believe that I may get the answer. There are often cases where I have a slim hope of any useful response, In these cases I ask OSS. I am happy to provide an example and conduct an experiment if you're intersted.

> However if you think that there are a missing documentation, we have CSS component for this purpose. i.e:you can report it on BC-DOC (NetWeaver) or EP-DOC (NW Portals)

And wait how many months for the documentation to be updated and finally receive an answer to my question?

Oh, and don't even get me started on CSS acknowledging something is broken and refusing to fix it. And yes I do complain, and I have gotten 'that phone call' in response to my complaint on numerous occasions, but receiving a phone call is completely meaningless when there is no followup of any sorts and it doesn't appear to make an iota of a difference.

</rant>

Anyway, as I said nothing personal, your response is appreciated and it explains a lot. I also understand CSS probably gets thousands of nonsense questions but that's no reason to drop the standards and knee-jerk "customer is wrong" back at every question that first-line support doesn't understand.

Cheers,

Mike

[lanzlf]

Hi Mike,

Don't worry i'll not take this personally i just want to have a nice chat about all the point of views and understand your worries and somehow let you know the reasons for some behaviours.

BTW: Seniors Management for SAP Support are already aware of this thread and follow up yours comments and recommendations.

I'm working in SAP Support (answer to Markus too) not in Marketing, however i know by my previous role that the SAP Sales Forces have a very good technical staff (PreSales) into their teams that are able to answer any technical query, so the idea is to ask them for a normal question instead to report a bug by CSS.

About the percentages used by my last reply, that was estimations, and i accept, that for sure, sometimes i make mistakes when we reply that is consulting, but based on my experience the mistakes are around 5% of the cases or less... but, please give me the chance to explain to you my reasons for this.

We got several cases all the days (7x24) in CSS, and those cases are routed to consultants well trained in the product, i.e: if some customer /partner open a case for Business Workflow it will be processed by the WFM team and not for generic basis consultants.

Then if we got a case that is an known issue, that also is solved by configuration or by system tunning (based in a several previous cases with same symptom and solutions or in our experience), we send the answer that is consulting, however if we're not sure about, we contact an internal special support unit called NEXUS to confirm with experts if is a bug or not.... now you probably ask your self: "if this is a well structured procedure why you make mistakes ?" (i hope you have this question)

The answer is very obvious, or we got a wrong input (i guess is not the Mike's case) or we, as humans make a mistake in the initial evaluation.

Nevertheless, i want to remark that we aren't than "trigger-happy", i've been dealing with cases that after few days evaluating the root cause i found that is a consulting topic, and then i decide to go ahead and help my customers to do the right setting, also sometimes is not than easy to find the root cause, as you probably know an small parameter can be the cause for several failures.. and to find out this small parameter we have to check the entire application. This is a common behaviour in Support

Mike, i do accept that we make mistakes and we want to reduce this, but we also, are now on more focus on bug fixing via CSS, and we have more experts answering questions here in the forum (as you can see in [my blog|https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/10518] [original link is broken] [original link is broken] [original link is broken]😉

However, as you also are a moderators here in SDN, you know that some questions remains there for a while without any answer. This is something that we're trying to fix, with our Product Managers, Developers and Consultants as well as Partners and experienced consultants like you.

I can understand your feeling and we really appreciate to know your point of view regarding the support at SAP, this for sure help us, however i kindly ask you to use the email support.uk(at)sap.com each time you need to complaint about a CSS case, you can trust on me that it will not be deleted.

Kindest Regards,

Luis

[markus_doehr2]

Hi Luis,

I appreciate your explanations.

Still the question remains:

- Why is the CIC not permitted (that´s cited) to tell me why a call is not processed?

- Why is the CIC not permitted to contact development if the call is there?

I wrote already two years ago (and last year) a lengthy email to the complaint management and asked nicely, if nobody thinks, that this sap-internal process is somewhat... well... wrong? On the statistics and on the internal BI reports this may look all ok but your really upset the customers, especially the "long term" ones, who know that this was pretty different some years ago. At that time we didn´t have that discussion here.

What I also find interesting is the fact, that, if you talk to sales persons those days, they will tell you that they are busy with explaining (in a more or less defensive matter) the justification for the increase of maintenance instead of selling products.

For me a consulting issue is apparent if:

- the documentation is there but is not understood by the client (lack of experience etc.)

- the setup is a modification of the standard/special configuration that is "non-default"

In all other cases I have to assume, that something is a product defect, because if I don´t know something (e. g. incomplete documentation), I can´t judge whether it´s a customer error (my error) or not.

I give you an example:

In the past we did a setup of ESS on Enhancement Pack 3, everything was done as documented but all we got was a blank browser screen. I took screenshots, logfiles, explained in detail what I did (it took me more than an hour to do all that) and opened a call. Almost immediately this was "consulting" and was put to XX-RC. We finally found out, that copying (1:1) the default role to our own role "solved" the problem. I put that into the call and guess what: The reply was like "good to hear it´s working - please close this call" (265451/2008); no follow up, no forwarding back to support - nothing.

We concluded from this: We won´t implement ESS --> SAP won´t sell licenses for that - at least not to us. If the support is that picky and is not disposed to at least call and talk with us, then it´s - for us - only logical that we won´t implement a product that is defective if there is not a spark of interest to find out the root cause.

Markus

[pokrakam]

Hi Luis,

Once again, I very much appreciate the feedback and the 'nice chat', glad you see it that way

It's interesting that you mention that you work in SAP Support, considering I noticed that your last response had a CSS ring to it.

About the percentages used by my last reply, that was estimations, and i accept, that for sure, sometimes i make mistakes when we reply that is consulting, but based on my experience the mistakes are around 5% of the cases or less...

Now this is a personal response which is explains what you meant. Allow me to explain what you previously said in a little more detail:

Based on my experience, more than 95% of the CSS cases that we answer as "Consulting" are for sure consulting topics (Lack of experience, misconfiguration, etc)...

==> Customer lacks experience

The other 5% (this is, of course, an estimation) normaly seems to be consulting due to the problem description, but the root cause is a bug or malfunction.

==> Customer cannot explain the problem  

In other words customer is at fault in both cases. And that is exactly what I was responding to when I spoke about "refusing to even acknowledge that ... CSS might get it wrong".

I realise this was probably unintentional on your part and it may be a silly example, but it is typical type of response I am used to from CSS. Their language and attitude often conveys a rather unsupportive message. I know it's not me, because there are many similar comments by quite a few people.

The "positive call closure" survey asks the question of whether the person was courteous and helpful. Well, technically the above gets full marks because - to exaggerate a little - it's about the most courteous and helpful way possible to call the customer an idiot I say this in a joking manner, but sometimes I do honestly feel that way when I fill out the survey.

What makes me think that there is some kind of prejudice is that my support experience is completely different between BC-WFM (where I am a regular) and elsewhere. In this thread I am mainly talking about my 'elsewhere' messages. When I open a message in BC-WFM I usually get excellent support. If it were a pub I would probably have my own barstool with my name on it, but at least they recognize me and usually take my messages seriously straight away. For sure I also get it wrong occasionally and so do they but those are a minority of cases. I'm happy with that, but it just doesn't work that way elsewhere.

I do of course understand some of the problems that you guys must face, and perhaps our views in this thread do not represent your world view. I accept your 95% theory, but then why are there such strong opinions in this thread? I believe part of the the answer to that question can be found by looking at it from a different angle:

Let us consider only the most experienced 5% of all people logging calls at CSS.

For purposes of example let's say you would get 90% "good" questions from this group.

CSS's rate of dodgy responses probably drops down a fair bit, but it's certainly nowhere near 10% that one should theoretically expect (in my experience around 50%). I sometimes still spend ages compiling a detailed problem description for what is clearly a fault only to spend the next few weeks trying to explain the problem and justifying why it is a bug.

Consider also that these top 5% most experienced people are also those who tend to log a lot more calls per year than the others and are thus more sensitive to the quality of support. They still make up a minority of calls overall, but unfortunately for CSS these are also likely to be the people logging the most critical problems in most need of good support. Get those wrong and your rating plummets.

however i kindly ask you to use the email support.uk(at)sap.com each time you need to complaint about a CSS case, you can trust on me that it will not be deleted.

We have involved SAP UK several times in the past on support issues and not had much luck. To be fair, they were very supportive and helpful and tried to do all they could but ultimately they did not seem to have a lot of influence. I have worked with and for SAP UK Consulting on several projects and ... well, let's just say that the picture wasn't much different.

Thank you for your positive messages though, I shall continue to try other channels if I have a problem with support and hope that it improves.

Cheers,

Mike

[pokrakam]

>

> BTW: Seniors Management for SAP Support are already aware of this thread and follow up yours comments and recommendations.

Actually in that case I thought it may be prudent to put my money where my mouth is and back up my last post with some examples.

My last BC-WFM message (0020079747 0000543583 2008) was immediately accepted as a bug, solved quicker than I expected, and a nice touch was that they acnowledged my efforts with

"Thank you very much for the detailed analysis in the attached document. It helped a lot for the analysis and the correction." (OK it was actually a little more detail than I usually provide but still...).

For a recent ABAP message (0120025231 0000271534 2008) I spent hours putting together a detailed problem description (verified on two independent systems) that included examples of both success and failure.

Guess what? "Consulting provided to customer" was attached.

I don't know how others feel, but personally I find that quietly attaching "Consulting" without further explanation even worse than saying so outright in the message. I can understand if it's an obvious conclusion, but that was certainly not the case here.

The rather brief response further went on to apologize that this is not possible and had not been implemented. Erm.. did I not just mention success? Yes, I did, with example! So how can something that works be "not possible"?

I queried this discrepancy and eventually got an answer as to why it appeared to work in some scenarios. Why could they not explain this in first place? Or did the first person not read my problem description properly?

They created a new note 1163754 explaining it, which is also inaccurate (the scenario works perfectly well with BOR objects).

Now the subject matter of the message itself is unimportant (it was also low prio), but the point is how can I view this as quality support?

If they had said outright that this is broken or a design fault and sorry but it's low priority and will be fixed sometime, I would have accepted it and gone my way. But a) don't mention consulting when something is broken/missing/partially works, and b) understand and answer the whole question first time round!

Contrast this with 0020079747 0000300203 2008 for an unresolvable problem in BC-WFM with an excellent explanation I accepted and was happy to explain to customer. The difference is like night and day.

Am I wrong in thinking CSS responses are a bit hasty at times?

Cheers,

Mike

[CarstenKasper]

Sorry about your feelings. As mentioned in the first line of this thread I do not want to bash anyone. I am sure if SAP would completely shift their support over to germany there would be many talented people solving errors, but a huge amount of people asking in SDN for solutions to their OSSs as well. I suppose there would not be a major change in the quality of support.

What I am interested in is: Is it going to change? And if so for the worse or the better?

It meaning the quality of support to be clear

Edited by: Carsten Kasper on Aug 14, 2008 2:16 PM

[marilyn_pratt]

I saw your apology only after my response. Quality of support discussions are perfectly legitimate and our management is forwarding your comments to global support. We in no way dissuade criticism, and rather than being defensive we should be responsive. So thanks for that part of the thread. As for the other issue, my personal opinions are my own about what constitutes racial profiling. I will continue to be mindful of that.

[pokrakam]

I've had mixed reactions and have observed that the quality of response varies by application area. 90% of my calls in BC-BMT get an excellent response. Sadly I have had the opposite experiences in other areas. It seems to me that the more popular a topic the more clueless the support is, I dread reporting anything in MM.

One interesting episode that sticks in my mind is being branded as racists by OSS.

What happened was: OSS responded with their usual 'Consulting Query'. Project management decided we didn't have time to argue about it, said we'd pay for it, just fix it. After several exasperating phone calls over the next few days trying to explain the problem to someone who couldn't speak English the consultant politely asked for someone with better English skills (we were paying them SAP rates by the hour!). Well that was a 'racist attitude' according to OSS and stirred up a few waves....

Another factor that influences matters is the problem description. I've had good returns on Low prio calls with very detailed explanations.

Cheers,

Mike

Edit: having just read pk's comment, I might add that the non-English speaker referred to above was from an Eastern European country.

Edited by: Mike Pokraka on Aug 14, 2008 12:49 PM

[CarstenKasper]

Hmm, so after reading up the other thread linked in here it seems normal SAP behaviour.

Customers have critical business prosesses running on a system sold for money. Every year an additional 1/5 of the cost of the maintenance base is going to SAP for support.

What really concerns me is:

The system offered to the customers contain bugs. This is understandable. The amount of bugs has risen during the last year due to the complexity of the system landscape.

Now there are very few experts for a growing customer base handling a rising number of issues. SAPs answer is to employ students from India and wherever (who post in the SDN searching for questions to the OSS messages they are assigned to).

How long will this work in the future?

I see, SAP is charging the customers more money for support. Seemingly without any benefit.

Sometimes it seems to me that the only way to get attention is to open a message with priority Very High. Maybe this will lead to a lot of customers only open up HIGH messages in the future.

[Former Member]

>SAPs answer is to employ students from India and wherever (who post in the SDN searching >for questions to the OSS messages they are assigned to).

I hope you're kidding !

[former_member184657]

And the India-bashing begins....

was keenly expecting to see this, the moment the post was made.

Yawn yawn.... tell me something new.

pk

[markus_doehr2]

I did intentially not name any country because I see this in all support countries - including Germany.

One issue why this is happening is also visible here in the forum. People post questions without even thinking about what could help in solving the problem.If I see questions like

"I have a problem with my system, please help"

then it´s very understandable, that the first level support is VERY basic because they won´t pay a high amount of money to experts to write "please attach logfile XY" to even get an idea what the actual problem is.

If many people would e. g. follow

I´m sure the first level support would be better

Markus

[former_member184657]

> I did intentially not name any country because I see this in all support countries - including Germany. 
> Markus

Thanks Markus. But its no secret that whenever something goes wrong with SAP or anything technical in nature, including baggage claim chaos in Heathrow, fingers are automatically pointed obscurely towards the Indian sub-continent. Though no names are taken, it implies only one thing.

Looking at a LOT of the useless posts here in SDN, one is bound to come to that conclusion. But then theres a talented bunch out there too. It hurts to read things about you country and countrymen.

If theres a huge IT stir-up in India, then theres definately a reason for that too. Walldorf alone cant solve all the world's SAP problems. Can it? Reason? Resources... Good or Bad or as some put it... students!!!

German's and Americans and British all have wonderful talent too just like India or China or Phillipines or Ireland. But they lack enough resources. Which is why IT majors look to this side of the world. Whether good or bad, they need the "resources" to get the work. Some work is better than no work, i say. Imagine if SAP wants all its customers problems to be resolved only by "experts"... you might end up waiting for months together to get the highest priority issues to get to their attention.

Finally case in point, please refrain from statements that could affect the sentiments of a whole nation.

Sorry for the ranting. But over the months, Ive seen just TOO many such allegations/discussions/rantings etc.

Peace,

pk

PS:

Mike I was referring to this:

>SAPs answer is to employ students from India and wherever (who post in the SDN searching for questions to the OSS messages they are assigned to).

Edited by: prashanth kishan on Aug 14, 2008 1:58 PM

[marilyn_pratt]

Thank you Prashanth and Mike and Marcus, as you say it more eloquently and heartfelt (and faster from your part of the world) than I could have. Carsten's statement would immediately have been regarded as abusive by me and duly removed and himself warned. We do not tolerate such conversation. Today your countrymen on the bash list, tomorrow mine. I will leave this thread intact for the moment so that others may observe and reflect. If there is any further abusive (and that's the meaning of abuse button) statements made concerning national origins I will weigh deleting the thread in its entirety. For the moment, I personally apologize for the ugly direction the conversation has turned and am grateful that there are balanced and reasonable voices to counter a sentiment that can easily be regarded as a nasty prejudice.

[NathanGenez]

PK,

Just to be clear, I was clarifying the statement that this was done in Germany. The location of support isn't the issue to me although it's certainly preferable if both sides speak the same language. The point is that the support in the US and Germany have been relocated and a great deal of talent lost. For those of us who have been working with SAP for as long as we have (and this includes the customers too), they're now having to state their case for an error message with someone who has spent... how long on SAP? months? That's where the frustration lies. Coupled with the increase in support costs I completely understand if customers want to rant a little bit.

-nathan

[marilyn_pratt]

Ranting is welcome. That's the purpose of the coffee corner. Active global support should be made aware. Thanks for the candid part of this conversation.

[former_member184657]

Thanks Marilyn and others who have made an effort to correct - or rather i would say clarify - their intentions. I have no issues with people ranting about things they feel frustrated about, especially when theres even an iota of truth. They have every reason to talk about it as long as they can keep it civil, which did happen in this disussion. It is also the reason why the mods would notice that I havnt marked even a single post in this thread as Abuse.

My only concern was that when a-certain-country-bashing begins, thats when the environment turns hostile. I hope this trend would continue, without any mods having to edit or delete posts.

Peace.

pk

[NathanGenez]

the bulk of the support from AGS is done in India or Ireland. Only Level 3 Dev Support is in Germany (in St Leon Rot and Walldorf, depending on the release).

interesting request. i myself have never had that kind of a response but don't doubt it.

[markus_doehr2]

> I know we all have had our quarrels with SAP and by no means I am going to bash them. The OSS is a good support platform!

Yes - better than support platforms of other companies - true.

> This being said I have a simple question:

> Am I the only to whom this has happend? Do those support people have such a huge load of work that the go a bit out of line?

No. I get those messages too. See my thread (who asks a likewise question):

> As I never had the pleasure to experience Support life or even Walldorf by now, it really gets me curious.

I've been there quite often and I had the possibility to have a look "behind the scene". This was, however, in the winter times and all offices were VERY filled up with people, almost everyone was on the phone.

I think, that the problem lies in the complexity of the products. It's no more one huge monolithic system divided into "modules" but highly distributed environments where many many factors need to work together to make it actually work.

I think there are only some very few people having the real "overview" about their product(s) and how they relate and interact together. Those became too complex over time that everyone working in the support can deal with that. There are many "experts" - but they are - in my opinion - to single threaded on their "expertise", they don't know what's going on beyond the edge of the plate - due to that complexity.

Markus

[Former Member]

Hi,

>Yes - better than support platforms of other companies - true.

From my experience, some other companies are much worse but some others are much better ! No, I won't give any names.

I have often to wait a whole week before SAP support starting just to read the question.

Very often the first level of support is, well, very very first level.

When you get to the right level of support (Waldorf), you can also get some excellent and very fast support. Once, I had my own, specially compiled for me, release of SAP web dispatcher in less than 2 days. But it took 3 weeks to get to the Waldorf developper. In that case, I was very satisfied.

This is not only a SAP problem but a "modern" pleague.

The worse hot lines are Internet access providers for private customers.

>I think there are only some very few people having the real "overview" about their product(s) >and how they relate and interact together. Those became too complex over time that everyone >working in the support can deal with that.

I completely agree with you on this opinion. Even internally in my own company, we have now big problems to get enough knowledge and be "experts" of ECC, PI, SOLMAN, SRM, CRM, MDM, ABAP stack, Java stack, Oracle, SQL Server and all the interactions between all these software layers.

Olivier

[markus_doehr2]

> This is not only a SAP problem but a "modern" pleague.

...and that is "house made".

Due to jumping on the Web 2.0/(e)SOA bandwagon we now need six machines to have the same functionality we had before with two boxes (speaking of ESS/MSS). At the two-box-time we were able to solve 99 % of the problems ourself, if there were any - because it was simple, it was "logical", you could follow it easily.

Now we have a mega-complex environment with J2EE, JCo, WD-Java, PCD, RRA/WSRP and all those "the-customer-needs-those-technologies-urgently"-things with the result, that I need 30 % more time per box to search for a potential problem.

If you now have a support situation try to explain that someone else at the other side of the world who has not a clue of how your environment looks like. Pretty understandable that there are "students" sitting at the other side of the channel and first collecting all information before they even try to "solve" something - which is nothing more but a huge time (and eventually money) eating situation.

Markus