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Maintenance Support Plan
In Chicago, there are two support lines: the Basic line and the Priority line. The SPSS
Basic Technical Support line (312.651.3410) is open from 9am - 5pm Monday through Friday,
Central Time. The SPSS Technical Support Priority line is open 8am - 5pm Monday through
Friday. The SPSS Priority line is to be used by Site Coordinators, Technical Contacts and
Customer Express customers. If you have any question about your eligibility for Priority
Support, please contact your Sales Representative to discuss the yearly maintenance plan
details. In addition, you can send email to
support@spss.com. Please be sure to provide your
SPSS ID or serial number when contacting us via email.
SPSS Base version 14.0.1 is the most current version of our base product. This version
currently receives full technical support and the previous versions receive only operational
support.
Users on Second Most Current Versions
We will provide operational support to customers using the second most
current release of software actively under development and customers using software no
longer under development but currently sold. The second most current versions of SPSS Base
are versions 14.0.
Users on Older Versions
We will allow one operational support call to customers using any product released
prior to the second most current version. Customers are encouraged to upgrade.
Technical Support provides support for all current SPSS products. We also provide first level
support for third party products sold by SPSS. That means we will attempt to answer general
operational or installation questions and will provide in-depth operational guidance as much
as possible. In some situations, a Technical Support Representative will need to call the
Technical Support department of the third party software company for guidance and may even
need to escalate support responsibility to them for a particular problem. The exception is
student products, such as Student Version and GradPack, for which Technical Support will
provide installation assistance only.
Technical Support will be provided for software, which is the most current release on its
particular platform. We will also support software, which is not the current release while
the current release is no more than a year old. In the case of software, which is licensed
on an annual basis, Technical Support is provided to those customers whose maintenance is
current.
What Technical Support offers
Installation Assistance
- Assist the customer or technical contact in the installation of SPSS products.
- Resolve any media or environmental problems that prohibit a successful installation
of the software.
- Clarify any system requirements necessary.
- Verify the software is operational.
- In situations in which installation problems are evident and common trouble
shooting techniques have been unsuccessful, "walk through" the installation
procedure over the phone with the customer.
Interpretation of Error Messages
- Interpret error messages.
- Suggest corrective action.
Suspected defects
- Assess the scope and magnitude of possible defect.
- Assess whether the defect can be replicated
- Report defect to Product Development.
- Determine reasonable workaround for customer if possible.
General Troubleshooting of Printing and Local Issues
- Verify abnormal operation.
- Suggest problem solving techniques.
- Determine workarounds when needed.
Abnormal Termination
- Assess source of abnormal termination of job.
- Suggest problem solving strategy to customer.
- Suggests ways to avoid problem.
Types of Questions Technical Support Can Answer
"What does this mean ... "
- Clarify SPSS definitions, assumptions, computational methods and output
presentation.
- Identify procedures that will produce particular statistical analyses.
- Clarify documented examples which may be unclear or may be ambiguous. Expand
on the example or definitions if necessary to comprehensively define a concept.
In addition to the above, Technical Support has a fundamental responsibility to the customer
to help use what is in the documentation to get a specific task done by expanding on what
is documented and giving an example of how to do it. This does not include major data
restructuring or getting SPSS to do something in a complicated way that another module or
third party product will do simply.
"How do I ... ?"
- Traditional Usage Questions
- Sample syntax for Frequently Asked Questions
- Advice on how to execute syntax for a particular statistical model
- Insufficiently documented features
- Reading Data
- Data Manipulation
- File Manipulation
- Statistical Analysis
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