How to Get the Most from Your Tech Support Call

How to Get the Most from Your Tech Support Call

Technical support experts share their tips on how to fast-track issue resolution

SIOS provides high availability protection for our customers’ most critical applications, databases, and ERPs. When our customers call tech support, there is no time to waste. We’ve earned a reputation (and several awards) for our HA/DR expertise and support excellence.

We’ve asked our tech support team to share the following five questions that can fast-track your issue resolution.

Fast, Accurate Diagnosis

Thorough and accurate tech support is similar to diagnosing an illness. Imagine asking your doctor to treat a headache. The human body is a complex interaction of multiple systems. The source of your problem may not be obvious or even in your head. To diagnose the issue and recommend a treatment, your doctor typically begins with questions aimed at identifying the circumstances that caused your symptoms.

Failover clustering also involves multiple systems at every layer of the IT infrastructure – network, storage, OS, application, database, and server. And like your real headache, your HA issue is often caused by something unrelated to your HA clustering software. Like your doctor, a good support professional will ask a variety of questions to characterize your issue. The more information you can provide about your support issue, the faster and more effectively it can be diagnosed and resolved.

Fast-Tracking Issue Resolution

As an IT best practice, consider logging key information and system changes as an ongoing business exercise. By putting answers to the following key questions at your fingertips, this process will speed the diagnosis and fast-track issue resolution. (It may also help you prevent issues from occurring in the first place).

1. Can you describe the error you are receiving? What is the exact symptom you are witnessing that is causing concern?
2. When did it happen (time, time zone you are in?)
   A typical diagnostic method is to examine log files from the machine with issues. Log files can be hundreds of lines of message strings or command output. By tracking the precise time you noticed the problematic symptoms, we can significantly narrow the log file examination.
3. Have you or are you able to upload the logs?
   Providing an explanation and description of the error along with the timeframe for which it happened goes a long way in diagnosis provided the logs can be uploaded to the support ticket.  In some IT environments uploading the logs requires using corporate-approved file sharing, while dark sites require no electronic distribution of system logs.  If logs cannot be provided externally, be sure that the full logs are captured and archived for reference and review with the support agent as the case progresses. Applications and systems, especially those under duress can produce exhaustive and extensive logs that can overwrite critical information.
4. Which system was the primary cluster node at the time?
   Given the interconnected nature of clustering, it is important to inform your tech support representative of whether the cluster node you are calling about was functioning as the primary or secondary node at the time of the issue.
5. What have you tried to do to remedy the issue?
   Great physicians know that their patients have likely tried a home remedy or over-the-counter medication prior to the visit. Knowing this information is helpful in diagnosis and treatment.  The same applies with great support technicians.  Sharing not only what you were trying to do at the time of the issue, but how you tried to resolve your errors can help them craft a better treatment and recovery plan, and make sure that their recommendations for recovery protect your critical data and applications.

For more than 20 years, SIOS Customer Experience team has been helping enterprise customers implement HA/DR solution for a wide range of use cases. We value our customers and encourage them to contact us whenever they have questions about their HA/DR.

Reproduced with permission from SIOS