(ICU 04 Item 3 ) ------------------------------------------------ [10/07/04]
Subject: the Cadence hotline
PRINCES & PEASANTS: This is one of those personal learning points I got
from doing this survey -- I found a group of people who NEVER call the
hotline EVER. At first I thought I was being bullshitted by Cadence sales
guys getting users to lie for them in my survey until I read the rest of
the no-call-hotline responses. They still had the usual bugs and gotchas
with Cadence tools, but they were from user companies who with massive EDA
purchasing budgets and Cadence coddled them with on-customer-site help.
These were the "prince" users because the EDA vendors treated them like
royalty. The rest of the "peasant" users with small EDA budgets were
stuck trying to help themselves via the hotline and SourceLink.
The biggest complaint the "peasant" users had with the Cadence hotline is
it being outsourced to India. They really hate it. At the ICU talk where
I first shared these results, two users walked up to me and thanked me for
sharing this fact. They stressed it's not a racist thing or anything like
that -- they just felt they were getting really poor support from the
engineers staffing the Cadence hotline in India.
Most of the time when you call the Cadence hotline, do you feel that
you get access to (choose one) knowlegable experts, or people with
average skills, or the truly inept?
knowlegable experts: ############ 24%
people with
average skills: ################ 32%
the truly inept: ###################### 44%
Do you get good follow-through (Y or N)?
Yes: ############################ 56%
No: ###################### 44%
What's the *typical* turnaround time you see for your hotline questions?
Hours: ########### 22%
1 - 2 days: ######### 18%
within 5 days: ############ 24%
weeks: ###### 13%
months: #### 8%
never: ######## 16%
As an EDA user it was a bit disturbing to see that the hotline's typical
turnaround time was "weeks to never" 37% of the time and that you get good
follow-through only 56% of the time -- it's like saying your wife is
faithful 56% of the time. Not a good situation to be in.
I don't use the hotline. We have Cadence Experts who visit us daily.
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We have on site support. They are very responsive and we have limited
access to R&D personal. Don't use hotline, thank God.
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We do not use the hotline, but call the company-dedicated team of AE's.
They're mostly pretty good.
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I have huge concerns about Cadence hotline cases assigned to AEs in India.
The support I get from AEs in India does not meet my expectations and
is sub par to the support I receive from AEs in the USA.
Currently, have a critical FE issue assigned to a support AE in India. He
dropped this critical case and didn't do anything for 6 weeks. When I
learned about the delay, I complained and the AE finally did something.
The case is still open and he isnt updating us on it progress. Further,
he is not knowledgable of FE, place and route, or timing.
I have had other critical cases where AEs in India dropped them because
they went on vacation and didn't bother to reassign the case to
another AE.
AEs in India should not be handling critical customer cases.
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Two things have recently made the help desk harder, much harder to use.
First the move to India. It's just much harder to communicate with them.
Second is the fact that all new requests must go through the web. There
is no more quick resolution for things that take a little discussion
to understand.
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If you get help from overseas, it will take a long long time for you
get a response and most of the responses are useless.
This is where they really stink. The first line of defense is some guy
in India with a standard set of excuses for why it took so long to reply.
Then they always want a testcase for even the easiest to reproduce bug.
Then even with the testcase they can't reproduce the bug. You get to
communicate to "R&D" only through this zero-knowledge intermediary,
minimum 2 days for any response; usually a week or more for any
meaningful result.
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Generally, most are knowledgeable and are local (San Jose or Arizona).
I have found that the ones in India are not knowledgeable. Not due to
intelligence but more due to inexperience. Usually turnaround time
to questions is 1-2 days. Resolution of problem has ranged from 1-2
days to a few months for complicated problems.
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Our experience with the hotline is truly awful. We'd always get complete
idiots. Usually we had tried everything they could think of before we had
even called them. We would continually be told to do something that
didn't work or that we had already tried. Out of dozens of calls I can't
remember a single instance when they solved our problem.
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I can speak only for Europe here. Most people who work on the Cadence
hotline are junior engineers. They can help you very good with basic
things and they are all very exerted. If they grow in experience, they
move also forward to other jobs inside or outside of Cadence.
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It seems to take at least two calls to get in touch with someone that can
discuss the problem "on our level". My impression is the first responders
seem to be dedicated to making you go away. Once a higher level
acknowledges a problem, there's usually reasonable follow through.
However, resolution seems to average two weeks or so in my experience.
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People with average skills who can access to experts.
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General hotline doesn't get any useful response. There are only operators
I think at the end of the line. However E2E program works well. Usual
response is within 1 day.
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Never use hotline. I am a user of Conformal. When I ran into bugs in
the tool, I was able to find no help on the web and got no response to
emails or to phone calls. It was bad enough to make me think about
switching to Formality. Even though I think Conformal works better, at
least Synopsys has excellent customer support.
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It really depends on the tool. For LEC, the response is generally very
quick. The support team is helpful and very knowlegable. The support
team is actually the people from Verplex. If they decide to leave, I
don't think it will be the same. For CeltIC, it is a different story
when going through the hotline. The people has no clue. The turnaround
time is weeks.
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The Cadence support personal contacted on line are very good. Most are
highly knowledgeable in skill and the tools your requesting support on.
When submitting a ticket through SourceLink, I usually get a response
with in 4 hours. When I leave a message via phone, usually get a
response within 2 hrs.
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I don't use the hotline anymore. It takes too long for the inexperienced
support people to close. Sometimes over a week for an issue that others
could handle in one phone call. I had dedicated AEs set-up to handle
our requests.
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Hotline's not so good. I think Cadence hires people with "people skills"
for that. However, those people tend to do a good job referring you to
the right second-tier people. Follow-through is typically 3 days.
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