TI Tech Support Followup

Joe Gregorio

Over a month ago I published a quite long and detailed story listing a slew of problems I had recently had with TI Tech Support. Yesterday afternoon I received a telephone call from Douglas Batts, the Director of World-Wide Technical Support for the Semiconductor Division of Texas Instruments.

He called to apologize for the poor service I had received, explain some of the things I had experienced, and detail some of the changes they had made to ensure these problems wouldn't occur again. Here, in part, are some of the problems and their resolutions, quoted from an email he later sent me:

Regarding the url, there was a time period of 2 weeks where many links via the Update Advisor were broken and those were fixed.

The url stated in the documentation, https://www-a.ti.com/downloads/sds_support/C6416TEB02.htm now automatically routes to this url https://www-a.ti.com/downloads/sds_support/C6000-2.00-SA-to-TI-TEB6416.htm (the same one provided by the PIC support) and works properly.

The phone number the customer is referring to is 972-293-5050 the Software Upgrade Center number, apparently for a period of one week the numbers were down when they made changes to the switch.

And the serial number - service codes for the Code composer studio has been added to the database and the customer was able to access Update Advisor.

Very bad timing, a number of things failed on TI's end, and this customer happened to experience all of these problems.

I'm impressed with Doug's follow through on all the issues and should also add that I have been working directly with the local sales representative and applications engineers and have been similarly impressed with their knowledge, thoroughness and helpfulness. We're not done with the project yet so I am not willing to claim a happy ending, but I am optimistic.

This is one of those six-sigma moments, where on the TI end they say, "Yes, the phones will be down for one week, that's not good, but its acceptable."  But the customer hits it (and a series of other problems) and has a horrible time of it.  That's a shame on their end; the interface to the customer is THE most critical part of any transaction.

Its good to see that they have resolved those issues that plagued you, but one must wonder if they have learned and will prevent them from being problems in the future.

Posted by Lou on 2003-07-24

Yes, I believe they have learned a little and will prevent at least some of them. Doug also outlined organizational changes that took place.

Posted by Joe on 2003-07-24

I'm glad to hear that TI demonstrated possession of a clue and took the steps to clear things with you.  The C64xx are solid chips.  Good people work real hard to make sure they do good thing for TI's customer.  Hopefully you've been able to accomplish what you wanted to with a minimum of pain unrelated to your previous pain :).

Posted by Adam Keys on 2003-07-29

good person prove it in acts not through words so lets prove one self
thanks for you

Posted by anonymous on 2004-10-13

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