Sage News and Discussion

via Sage KB: To better serve customers with multiple Sage integrated products, we are standardizing Sage Customer Support and Customer Service hours (including phone and chat) for the majority of Sage products across North America. Effective Monday, March 3, 2014, the standard hours will be 9 a.m. 8 p.m. ET Monday through Friday, excluding holidays. The only changes in hours (for phone and/or chat) include: Sage ERP X3, Sage 50 U.S. Edition, Sage Fixed Assets, Sage HRMS and U.S. Customer Service (changing to 9 a.m. 8 p.m. ET); and Sage Timeslips (changing to 9 a.m. 7 p.m. ET). All other Sage products will not experience a change, either because they are already in-line with these new hours or they have unique business reasons to continue to provide Support during previously established operating hours, such as Sage Payment Solutions continuing to provide 24/7 support for merchants. In addition, our new knowledgebase and Sage City are available for all Sage products 24/7.

Q: Does this mean VARS better offer support through 8pm as well? Increasingly customers are going to weigh the advantage of going direct to a VAR for support vs Sage. If they haven't yet they will at some point. At least some will.

9am ET? Slackers! Most of my customers get into the office before 7am ET.

VAR after-hour support is quite possible. We include it in our top-level Knowledge Transfer Agreement, as part of additional attention. Doesn't this announcement just mean that Sage has a single support center (some of it virtual) that is the destination for all calls, regardless of region? Irvine support is effectively 6am-5pm PT. Placing a support call at 7:30 pm ET which results in long queue, or ""our expert in that area will call you tomorrow"" isn't much of an advantage.