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OpenMethods

Enabling the

OMNICHANNEL CONTACT CENTER

For Over a Decade

Support

OpenMethods’ Customer Care

Welcome to OpenMethods’ Customer Care. Our team strives to help our clients realize the value of OpenMethods’ solutions in creating world-class customer and agent experiences for leading contact centers.

To submit a ticket, please login below or call 310-896-4900.

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STANDARD SUPPORT

Our Standard Support is included with all licenses. For those clients looking for priority response and a customer support account manager, we offer Premium Support. To learn more about Premium Support, please email us at sales@openmethods.com.

 

Our support team triages client support issues into four severity categories:

    1. System Outage,
    2. Major Impairment,
    3. Minor Loss of Service,
    4. No Loss of Service.

For each severity level, our team has specific SLAs and communication protocol. The severity levels and SLAs apply to both Standard & Premium Support, though tickets for clients with Premium Support are prioritized for remediation work. OpenMethods upgrades and downgrades the severity level of incidents if a change in the disposition of the incident warrants an upgrade or downgrade.

 

A system outage is defined as production or other mission critical system(s) are down, work cannot reasonably continue, and no workaround is immediately available.

Examples of system outages include:

    • 30% or more of agents cannot login to the media bar
    • 30% or more of interaction flows or screen pops are not executing for all agents
    • 30% or more of chats are not routing correctly
    • 30% or more of emails are not routing correctly

Our SLAs for system outages are:
Response time: 30 minutes
Remediation work: 24/7 until resolved
Communication cadence: status update once every 60 minutes

Based and dependent on our clients’ business continuity plan, severity 1 tickets may be reevaluated and potentially regraded to a severity 2 ticket.

A major impairment is defined as a severe loss of service. Typically a short-term workaround or business continuity plan is in place so that operations can continue in a restricted fashion. The issue is occurring for a subset of the agent population, typically defined as less than 30% of agents or interactions.

Examples of system outages include:

    • < 30% or more of agents cannot login to the media bar
    • < 30% or more of interaction flows or screen pops are not executing for all agents
    • < 30% of chats are not routing
    • < 30% of emails are not routing

Our SLAs for system outages are:
Response time: 2 hours
Remediation work: 6am-4pm U.S. Eastern Standard Time
Communication cadence: when material updates or progress is made

A minor loss of service is defined as an inconvenience that may require a workaround to restore functionality. Issue is typically occurring for one agent or does not affect core functionality.

Examples of system outages include:

    • One-off agent issues
    • Media bar display issue, yet readable and functional

Our SLAs for system outages are:
Response time: 6 hours
Remediation work: 6am-4pm U.S. Eastern Standard Time
Communication cadence: when material updates or progress is made

No loss of service is defined as a minor error that does not impede operations, an enhancement request, a request for information or documentation.

Examples of system outages include:

    • Enhancement request for PopFlow to parse a data element then persist it for later use in the interaction flow
    • Enhancement request to support a new version of ACD

Our SLAs for system outages are:
Response time: 24 hours
Remediation work: 6am-4pm U.S. Eastern Standard Time
Communication cadence: when material updates or progress is made

The OpenMethods Status Page provides an at-a-glance overview of planned and past maintenance, past or current incidents, and the current status of the OpenMethods platform.

 

Maintenance Updates
The status page will be updated with a maintenance status anytime the platform will be unavailable for a planned maintenance window, a maintenance window to correct an incident, or a planned code elevation.

We provide an update when the maintenance window is scheduled, when the maintenance window is in progress, and once maintenance has been completed.

 

Incident Updates
The status page will be updated with an incident status anytime a production-impacting issue has been identified. The incident will be updated with a resolution once the incident has been fixed.

We provide an update when an incident has been identified or is being investigated, and when the incident has been resolved.

Onboarding Introduction
When onboarded, you will be provided with the URL to the status page so that you can have visibility on incidents, maintenance and ultimately service availability.

 

Subscription to Notifications
You can subscribe to email updates and receive a notification whenever maintenance is scheduled, initiated, and completed, and also when an incident is reported and resolved. Subscribing is easy and only takes a few steps:

    1. Go to status.openmethods.com.
    2. Click Subscribe to updates.
    3. Enter your email address.
    4. Click Subscribe via email.

Whenever there is an update to the status page, you will receive an email with the status details.

If you’d rather not receive email updates, you can access status.openmethods.com and see a chronological list of maintenance and incidents, as well as any planned maintenance windows.

 

Types of Notifications

INCIDENT
If there is a service impacting event, communication will be posted to the status page. Subscribed users will be notified, and non-subscripted users will be able to visually see the current and historical events.

HOTFIX
If a hotfix needs to be applied that does not introduce downtime, the hotfix will be documented as a POSTMORTEM event on the status page. Subscribed users will be notified, and non-subscripted users will be able to visually see the current and historical events.

MAINTENANCE
If maintenance is scheduled – as the result of an incident or a standard code elevation – the maintenance window will be documented in the MAINTENANCE section of the OpenMethods status page. Subscribed users will be notified, and non-subscripted users will be able to visually see the current and historical events.

We define an issue as a gap between expected behavior and observed behavior. OpenMethods has a disciplined 3-step issue resolution process that we apply to all customer support issues. The 3 steps are: 1. define the issue, 2. determine the root cause, 3. define and implement a solution. OpenMethods always strives, within reasonable efforts, to partner with our clients in driving to issue resolution through this 3-step process. Below are key questions and activities within each step.
 

Key Questions:

    1. Please describe the issue. What is the observed behavior? What is the expected behavior? Please list the steps performed.
    2. How many agents are impacted? Is there anything unique about the impacted agents? (Work from Home, Separate Site, etc.)
    3. How many interactions are impacted? (i.e. % of chats or emails, etc.)
    4. What is the frequency of the incident? How often does it occur?
    5. What time did the incident occur? Please include time zone.
    6. Please provide specific agent/incident data: Agent Oracle ID, Agent ACD ID/Extension, Chat ID, Incident ID, Oracle profile, etc.
    7. If possible, please provide a full-screen snapshot.
    8. If possible, please provide the logs that cover the period that the incident occurred.

Activities:

    • Review the system logs
    • Audit configurations (Oracle, OM, Telco Platform)
    • Reproduce the issue
    • Isolate variables/components

Activities:

    • Develop a solution (or workaround)
    • Document solution and implementation approach (as needed)
    • Gain agreement on solution
    • Implement Solution & Smoke Test (as applicable)
    • Confirm Issue Closure
    • Perform lessons learned
    • Update OSvC Knowledge Article if appropriate
    • Update technical documentation and release notes

A large subset of chats (>30%) are not being correctly routed. Client calls OpenMethods’ customer care and the appropriate resources have a call to define the problem and investigate. The issue is designated a severity 1 ticket. Upon deeper problem definition it is identified that the issue is occurring only on chats that are on the “ABC” queue, while all other queues are working properly. The root cause is quickly identified to be a configuration change in Oracle CRM which impacted the ABC queue. Client re-configures Oracle chat queue and retests to validate the issue is resolved.

The same aforementioned issue occurs; however, the root cause is not identified as quickly. Meanwhile while investigation is underway, the client implements their business continuity plan, whereby the impacted agents shift to Oracle native chat routing. The incident is downgraded to a severity 2 ticket. The OpenMethods’ customer care team continues to work the issue per the severity 2 SLAs. Eventually, the team isolates the issue to the ACD (chats get stuck in the ACD). At that time the ACD owner will have ownership of the issue and OpenMethods will place the incident into a “waiting” state and take no action until asked or the ticket is closed. OpenMethods’ customer care team is available to support the ACD client as questions arise during severity 2 business hours.

100% of emails and chats are not routing. Client calls OpenMethods’ customer care and resources have a call with the client team to investigate. Upon deeper problem definition it is identified that an upgrade was made to the ACD version not supported by OpenMethods. The incident is downgraded to a severity 4 and the client implements their business continuity or disaster recovery plan (i.e. either roll back ACD version or revert to Oracle native chat/email routing). Meanwhile, the OpenMethods’ product team will assess the new ACD version as a product roadmap item.

The client reports that one user cannot login to the media bar. After checking the user configuration in the ACD, the OpenMethods’ Admin Module and confirming login/pwd creds are properly being used, the Administrator opens a ticket with OpenMethods and provides the necessary logs/data. The ticket is a severity 3. Later that day it is reported that several more agents are experiencing the same issue (although still less than 30% of agents). OpenMethods’ customer care team upgrades the incident to Severity 2, given the increase in the agent population impacted.

Client has noticed that chat abandon rate is rising above their normal rate. Client has checked that staff availability is not the bottleneck and that chats are just “hanging” somewhere in the process for some reason. Issue is severity 2, unless the following are true of which the issue would be declared a Severity 1:
 

  1. Issue is currently observed (not historical)
  2. Increased abandon rate is in excess of 50% of normal abandon rates for the given time frame

Unless noted different in your MSLA, upgrades are included in your OpenMethods subscription. Upgrades of OpenMethods software is included to your existing environments and deployment architecture. Architecture changes that are not required as part of the upgrade will be considered a separate service and subject to fees.

For all support services, the client assumes responsibility for their business continuity operations plan in the event that OpenMethods’ solutions have an interruption in service or functionality. Best practices for our clients’ business continuity plans are that they support the following primary use cases (depending on what solutions are licensed):

 

    1.  ACD authentication and state management - the ability to login to ACD and manage agent and interaction states.
    2.  Voice interaction processing - inbound/outbound calling including call controls (e.g. transfer, hold, etc.).
    3.  Email processing – the ability to leverage Oracle native email routing and processing.
    4.  Chat processing – the ability to leverage Oracle native chat routing and processing.
    5.  Manual processing of automated workflows – the ability to manually process any workflows that are currently automated via the OpenMethods’ solutions.

Our experience has been that there are potential impacts to your OpenMethods experience when you make changes to your CTI platform or Oracle instance.  We encourage you to provide us notice prior to performing an upgrade so that we can help ensure there or no compatibility issues or allocate support resources if necessary. In addition, we encourage you to add us as a Technical Contact in your client’s Oracle Service Cloud CX account, which will help notify us of upcoming Oracle changes.

Many of our best features started as client suggestions and best practices. We welcome your feedback on how we can improve our products and services. Feel free to log a ticket and we will process the enhancement request with the OpenMethods’ product team.

PREMIUM SUPPORT

Everything included in our Standard Support as well as;

Premium Support includes all of our Standard support features while adding the ability to prioritize tickets above Standard Support customers within in same severity (severity 2-4).

Our Premium package also provides 24/7 support for Severities 1, 2 and 3 (Standard 24/7 Support is Limited to Severity 1 issues only).

In addition to enhanced prioritization capabilities you will also have greater access to our OpenMethods CX experts. You will be assigned a dedicated Account Manager, who will provide support, Monthly Business Reviews to assist you with your initiatives, review open tickets, and allow you to give feedback on product enhancements/roadmap.

OpenMethods will also provide (as a part of Premium Support) access annually to remote or on-site training related to new versions and feature enhancements. As a Premium customer you receive access to a Training resource, rather than the Training documentation.

This access will ensure that you and your customers are receiving maximum return on your investment through all of the benefits that come with the OpenMethods product(s).

One queue to rule them all.

One queue to rule them all.

Customer expectations are simple: know me, know your stuff, don’t make me repeat myself. Harmony helps your brand fulfill these expectations (and more!) by providing agents with a single desktop view of all interactions across all communication channels.

 
Download the Harmony onepager to learn about:
•Unifying chat, voice, and digital interactions into a universal composite queue
•Managing interactions from a single agent desktop
•Transitioning interaction context across communication channels

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Reducing frustrations one PopFlow at a time.

Reducing frustrations one PopFlow at a time.

How many applications do your agents use on a daily basis? What if we told you we could streamline your third party applications into automated workflows? And what if we also told you that those workflows would package all the interaction-specific information for your agents? This may seem daunting to other CX solutions, but it’s the force that fuels us at OpenMethods.

 
Download the PopFlow onepager to learn about:
•Automating repeatable tasks for increased agent efficiency and decreased customer effort
•Eliminating the abundance of third-party applications so agents work directly out of a single workspace
•Increasing agent satisfaction and customer satisfaction

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Solution for companies with too much software.

Curious to learn how OpenMethods Experience Cloud has spent the last decade helping companies maximize operational efficiency? Our solution helps unify your disparate third party applications into streamlined workflows, and creates a universal composite queue out of your CRM interaction channels. Maximize the investment of your initial tech stack and gain additional ROI with our powerful solution suite.

 
Download the OpenMethods onepager to learn about:
•Challenges call centers without OpenMethods face
•Providing your customers with context-specific interactions
•Empowering agents with automated workflows and an integrated CRM
•Improvements in agent effort, customer satisfaction, and overall ROI

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Building a Streamlined and Secured Experience.

Building a Streamlined and Secured Experience.

Your data is sensitive. As it moves between client and server-side applications, it becomes vulnerable to data leaks and attacks. OpenMethods’ AppConnector reduces this risk by creating a single, secure CRM user view - whether you use two or two hundred applications.

 
Download the AppConnector onepager and learn about:
•Protecting the CRM user from malicious attacks and bad actors
•Securing the integration of your third party applications
•Patent-pending server-side authentication of AppConnector

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Data Processing Agreement

 

Please complete the OpenMethods customer notification form to hear about new or replacement subprocessors. Only customers who subscribe will be notified of changes.  Please see our Data Processing Addendum for further information.

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