PTC levels up its global support offering

This revamp was rolled out at PTC Live just a few months ago, so it’s early days. But here’s what I found interesting about how it’s all shaping up so far:

• Customers can use several different mechanisms to interact with PTC for support. Online portals with knowledge base articles, telephone access to experts and in-person support let people choose how much they want to pay and what mechanism suits them best. I’ve written before about how different generations, locations and types of enterprises prefer different methods of interaction and PTC has a mechanism for whatever works best for the customer.
• In-app support isn’t new, but the tight integration between the knowledge base and Creo, Windchill and other PTC products is key to the support offering’s success. Pushing support to that level, offering tips and techniques that are contextually relevant to what the user is doing is truly helpful and makes the user aware of what else she could be doing with PTC’s products outside her comfort zone. PTC must, however, be careful not to cross the line between delivering useful content and pushing products in-app and ePortal support.
• PTC’s support team is ISO 9001 certified, something PTC says that fewer than 40% of support organizations bother to do. If you’ve ever been on the line with someone who clearly knows less than you do about what’s wrong with your tech, you understand the importance … A very, very quick perusal of other engineering software providers’ support offerings indicates that PTC may be unique in this certification — if you know differently, please leave a comment below.
• The ePortal offers pro-active support alerts for specific products/issues to only those users who are affected. For example, PTC’s new Upgrade Manager can help sysadmins plan migrations. Stan Balish, Software Administrator at BAE Systems, said that migrations are a bit “like going to the dentist to get a root canal — painful but necessary” to get the functionality in the new releases. Mr. Balish said that the new Upgrade Manager is “amazing”, and helped save significant time and trouble in a migration from Windchill 9.1 to 10.

What’s changed since I first learned about Global Support back at PTC Live? Confidence. In June the team was excited to be showing off the eSupport Portal and plan details, and was hopeful of the programs’ success. Now, real confidence in the offering is backed up by the outsiders, like Mr. Balish, PTC brought in to speak about their experiences. Brian Martin, Sr. Mechanical/Application Engineer at SGT, Inc., currently under contract to NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, spoke about how well the new portal can help him manage support tickets in a dashboard, create software usage reports to help manage licenses and subscribe to document change notifications — in all, it saves him about 12 hours a month, 70% of what he used to spend on the support portal, freeing him up to do other tasks. Mr. Martin also spoke about how PTC’s support “persona” has changed. In 2012, he was approached by PTC to offer suggestions on a Beta version of the new portal. He was impressed to be asked, by how serious PTC is about improving and how interested they are in his comments.  Mr. Martin says that “PTC is changing the way they deal with customers, leveraging feedback to develop a tool like the eSupport portal”. Dwight Griffith, President of PTC’s largest North American reseller TriStar, said that shifting from “maintenance” to “global support” changed how his team interacts with customers. The discussion moved from cost to value, to higher-level, more strategic engagements that expand TriStar’s and PTC’s footprint in the accounts. Mr. Griffith says that Global Support has helped him grow the number of new account wins “exponentially” and move the attachment rate of support to services from 90% to 95% to 100%. [Keep in mind that PTC’s resellers deal with small and medium businesses, which are less likely to buy support — hence the lower attach rate to start with.] PTC’s Global Support offering comes in a several flavors, from Gold to GoldPlus to Platinum. You can read more about the details here. Clearly, customers are embracing the opportunity to help guide PTC’s services direction and better use group expertise (customers’ partners’, the company’s) to help with daily tasks, upgrades and migrations. PTC reports that usage of the ePortal has increased 165% in the six quarters since they started this revamp. At the very least, these new support offerings will help solidify PTC’s presence in its current accounts. But the potential is much bigger and it will be interesting to see if this affects total sales per customer on the software side: will this increased level of support lead to more strategic relationships that freeze out competitor products? Too early to tell. Image courtesy of PTC.