Subscriber Discussion

Milestone Tech Support Wait Time, Does This Happen To Everyone?

AW
Alex Wasilesku
Jul 26, 2016
IPVMU Certified

For quite sometime now I have noticed myself and the other engineers waiting on hold for over an hour just to get to a tier 1 technician. Is this a common occurrence amongst other integrators? Does anyone have a best time to call them to reduce the wait time? If something is not working properly and my fellow engineers need support I cant have them waiting on hold for over an hour every single time.

Hik, Avigilon, Exacq, Pelco, these are just some examples of other manufacturers that we integrate and never run into wait times like this with.

Just seems strange as one of the largest competitors in the market to have such a slow turn around with tech support. They recently added the option to press a button and your spot in the Que will remain and they will call you back. Unfortunately on numerous occasions they have never called back.

UM
Undisclosed Manufacturer #1
Jul 26, 2016

Hour long plus waits have become common, even though the average wait was about 10 minutes six months ago.

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JH
John Honovich
Jul 26, 2016
IPVM

1, any idea or theory about what changed?

UM
Undisclosed Manufacturer #1
Jul 26, 2016

No idea. Our rep swears that it's just our imagination. We've been wondering if they've outsourced their support, or made cuts.

U
Undisclosed #2
Jul 27, 2016
IPVMU Certified

any idea or theory about what changed?

Theory: The added burden of supporting/troubleshooting their ONSSI takeover program has impacted their existing client base.

If so, I believe you already called it...

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AW
Alex Wasilesku
Jul 26, 2016
IPVMU Certified

Do you know why the sudden change? The reason I made this post to begin with is because I remember 6 months ago it took 10 min lol. Now its just ludicrous.

JH
John Honovich
Jul 27, 2016
IPVM

Milestone response:

In line with our continuing business growth, we have seen a rise in demand for technical support resources, and we have recently had some personnel movement and turnover, all of which contribute to a surge in call hold times, especially during peak call periods. These periods are typically 7:00 – 9:00 & 11:00 – 2:00 PST and likely similar in other regions. To help address this we are working to add and train staff as fast as possible.

We do have an auto call-back system which preserves a caller’s place in line so they don’t have to wait on hold until the next technician is free, and we offer a full choice of tech support options beyond phone calls. Note that 80% of the call subjects (like licensing) can be handled other ways:

- Self-help support resources are available on our website in the Knowledge Base, manuals, guides and tutorials, whitepapers and eLearning.

- Support cases can be started online in our partner portal My Milestone.

- Tech Support can be contacted via email.

- Tech Support has an online chat service available Mon-Fri, 6am-5pm PST and similar in other regions (languages listed besides English are Dansk, Nederlands, Français, Deutsch, Italiano, Русский, Español).

(1)
KW
Kris W
Aug 01, 2016

Tried Milestone once because it was a spec on the Job we wanted to get. Support was horrible! Long hold times and tech support was rude and not helpful. I will never touch Milestone again. Avigilon blows them away in every aspect IMO.

Avatar
Gert Molkens
Aug 01, 2016
IPVMU Certified

"- Self-help support resources are available on our website in the Knowledge Base, manuals, guides and tutorials, whitepapers and eLearning."

That's a nice one. They have/had a problem with the 2016R2 Mobile server/client. The events didin't show up in the 'actions' menu on mobile devices causing some of our Milestone users not being able to open doors remotely through their app.

The first tech i spoke to on the phone just told me events weren't present in the mobile app, this was not in the functionality of the app. So, i thanked him, hung up and called again to get another one.

After creating a case and a few days later the answer finally came: it was a known problem in the latest release and the solution was to downgrade the mobile server to the previous version. This worked perfectly fine, no problem. Happy with the solution.

I did look for this in the knwoledge base but couldn't find it. Tried again after i got the response that it was a known problem, still can't find it. So much for self help and knowledge base. I don't know if this has been rsolved or not, guess i'll just have to try and see how it goes with the next customer i upgrade?

If they say they have a problem of understaffing at the moment, how is creating cases and e-mail support going to resolve that?

I hope they find the right people in the near future and get their support back to the level it was, lets say, a year ago. It was good and i was perfectly happy with it. In the mean time, they get the benefit of the doubt.

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