PTC Technical Support Quality

TomU · ‎Jan 27, 2021

I'm curious if anyone else is noticing an increase in the amount of time it takes to get meaningful responses and/or appropriate case resolution from PTC Technical Support. I haven't gone through and attempted to quantify it yet, but it seems like there has been a steady decline in how quickly tech support is able/willing to respond to cases with useful information. Over and over I keep getting responses like 'requesting more time' or 'talking to design leads'. It feels like these are just resetting some internal clock for a couple of weeks to keep a TS manager happy but that nothing is really happening. I have several cases with very simple questions that have been open for many months now. It feels like either no one is working on them or there is no one left in tech support who actually understands how the products work. Is it just me or are other customers sensing a decline as well?

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To provide a little context, over the past 10 years I've opened 625 cases:

Of those, 46 are still open:

jgoncalves · ‎Mar 01, 2021

I do not see an increment of time to respond, but the randomness to be assigned with a TS who is responsible and have the knowledge to resolve the issue on time.

What is bad is that PTC does not have the vision to use TS Cases/History to improve PTC Products.
Many of the cases are poorly followed with SPR, and some bugs are not even addressed or resolved.

tbraxton · ‎Apr 19, 2021

I have also taken notice of this trend. It is not for all cases that I open but more than a few take a long time to get a substantive response. I have a suspicion that a bot is being used to send out a generic message about working a case based on time constraints. This is based on my observation of a canned response identical to other brief "updates" I have received from the same support engineer on a different open case.

The front line support has to consult R&D much more often than 10 years ago to get a relevant response in some cases.

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Involute Development, LLC
Consulting Engineers
Specialists in Creo Parametric

TomU · ‎Apr 19, 2021

@tbraxton wrote:

The front line support has to consult R&D much more often than 10 years ago to get a relevant response in some cases.

Definitely. It used to be that something would only go to R&D if it was seriously broken or very, very deep in the code. Now almost every single question needs an SPR and has to wait for a response from R&D, and frequently something ends up getting lost in translation between the two. It just doesn't seem like the current TSEs have the depth of product knowledge that TSEs in the past did.

To be fair, not ALL interactions are this way. I opened a case the other day and the TSE assigned took the time to look at the source code and diagnose the root cause before his first contact with me. It was amazing, and it was the first time it has happened in over 20 years of opening cases with PTC.