Customer Service? As expected?

[GavinMcMenemy]

Hi All,

Apologies: this is a bit of a rant.

I standardised our network with Meraki equipment about a year ago. I replaced aging Dell PC switches and a slew of  (rubbish) wireless APs. The network deployed smoothly and the equipment works fine. Simply put we were fans.

But recently I've been asking "What am I paying for?" Meraki kit isn't cheap plus you have to license it. One of the sells to management was guaranteed good quality "Customer Service" but I'm not getting that from the support team at this point.

We have an unusual problem.. I stayed late to make a trivial change to our corporate network. I had scheduled time with 3rd line support guys from our ISP, we were all well prepped and ready to go. However when we flipped the switch we discovered that our L3 switch was misbehaving.

We had to abandon the project, after a few (after) hours of trial and error trying to get around it.

I've raised a high priority ticket with support but I've not received more than a cursory email back ( and only couple of times after being chased). It's clear that the support engineer isn't reading the supplied information and isn't engaging with our ticket. I tried to call in but I was kept on hold for 30m and couldn't get through to any one. I do have other work to get on with.

I asked my colleagues about their experience and they have all abandoned tickets because support was refusing to engage with them. This has meant a couple of projects have just muddled by and we probably with a sub optimal solutions. For all their faults Dell's enterprise support is all over their tickets and incredibly proactive if we have to speak to them. Same with Microsoft.

Is my experience an outlier or has everyone been in this boat?

btw. If this is in the wrong forum please move it.

[JRH]

You're not alone, I have a bug that's been open for more than 12 months.  Apparently, it is being treated as a priority (after I escalated through our account manager etc.), it still doesn't even have an engineer assigned and each month they say...

"This issue is being treated with a high priority but does not currently have an engineer assigned."

We're running nearly 200 APs, so whilst not massive we're still a decent size, however at this rate by the time they resolve the bug I will have replaced Meraki with another vendor.

One of the reasons we went with Meraki was the direct support but this (and other examples I've experienced) show that it can be pretty poor.

[Jeff_Longley]

Its something that gripes me too.

I've had one or two instances of truly excellent support, but sadly, that's been it.
I've actually found better support here on the community that within the support portal itself.

Direct support *should* be better - Another vendor we use does it, and it's damn near perfect. The people you speak to aren't in tiers, and the person who makes initial contact owns the case through to completion (which is typically a single phone call).

For now, I'll be searching here long before I log a support call.

[BrandonS]

I'll chime in to say that I have been happy with support on the whole.  I manage dozens of organizations and have put in probably ~100 tickets over the years.  I would say more than 90% have been handled to my expectation or beyond.  That said, definitely call in for urgent issues and don't be afraid to ask for someone else or to escalate when you feel it is necessary.  I have probably been pretty lucky and not encountered any real serious bugs or issues, but I still give Meraki support very high marks overall.

[BlakeRichardson]

I haven't had any issues with support myself however with another vendor I had a problem that support were dragging their feet with. 

All I can say is don't sit back and wait, keep contacting support and your Meraki account manager. If you keep doing this your account manager if they want your continued business willl escalate the issue through their channels and when support issues start affecting sales I am sure things will get sorted.

The problem I was having with another vendor resulted in a personal visit from the head of sales for the pacific region and being put in contact with the head product manager for the particular service we were having problems with. 

Dont give up, but I also agree you shouldn't be having these problems. I can only assume support is overloaded. 

[GavinMcMenemy]

I have a meraki account manager?

I guess I should look into that.

[BrandonS]

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@GavinMcMenemy wrote:
I have a meraki account manager?

I guess I should look into that.

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If you go to Organization > License Info then click add another license and then click contact Meraki sales it will show your assigned sales/account manager and their contact info.

[BlakeRichardson]

Your account manager will also be shown if you go to Help>Get Help and scroll right to the bottom of the page.

It will include their name, email and a contact number for them. 

[BrandonS]

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@BlakeRichardson wrote:

Your account manager will also be shown if you go to Help>Get Help and scroll right to the bottom of the page.

It will include their name, email and a contact number for them. 

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This is a bit easier than my method 🙂

[GavinMcMenemy]

I did not know this. And in fact the I had assumed that the person listed here was just my sales contact from back (way back) when we purchased our MRs! Many thanks. He's getting an email from me!!

[BlakeRichardson]

@GavinMcMenemy That information is kept up to date, the reason I know is my account manager was recently promoted and I found out because this information was updated on my dashboard. 

[GavinMcMenemy]

I've had an email acknowledging the issue so hopefully things will start to happen.

[BlakeRichardson]

@GavinMcMenemy Good to hear, good luck and hope you get the issues resolved.