Cloudera Support recently received Service Capability & Performance (SCP) certification for the third consecutive year. In order to earn this industry-leading mark of distinction, a support organization must demonstrate an ongoing commitment to exemplary standards and methodologies in over 100 major performance areas. At the heart of this achievement is the fundamental mission of Cloudera Support: Enable total customer success.

Cloudera strongly believes that timely, accurate, and healthy communication has to exist between the customer and our support organization in order to result in a successful outcome for both parties. In this technological space, seamless collaboration truly is key.

To help foster the communication we know is so important, Cloudera Support has created a

The video begins with defining various problem types. We understand that it often can be confusing to identity whether or not a software issue qualifies as a “support ticket,” so we’ve dedicated the very first portion of the video entirely to that question. A positive customer experience can literally be gained or lost right at the onset of the engagement, based on how quickly and easily he or she is able to reach a person who can solve their issue.

We then turn to the topic of customer escalations. There are myriad reasons for escalating a support case. We recognize that it’s crucial to have the opportunity to speak with a member of management about the impact of the problem you’re facing and how it’s affecting your business operations. An empowered customer understands how and where to escalate an issue to receive the necessary additional assistance.

Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are a fundamental pillar of any enterprise support organization. Cloudera Support aims for complete transparency as it relates to SLA knowledge and understanding among our customers. The video reviews where SLA details can be found online, along with descriptions of exactly where responsibilities lie (both with Cloudera and the customer) during each stage of the customer case life cycle. Understanding what to expect and when it will occur during an interaction with Cloudera Support, the customer can feel confidently prepared for case acceptance and updates to follow.

The final topic explains how to open the doors to the benefits of predictive support. Cloudera Support utilizes its own software to perform advanced analytics in order to predict failures and problems before any actual impact to a customer’s operation occurs. This insight is derived from diagnostic bundles sent from our customers’ clusters to Cloudera Support. These bundles contain no user data, table data, or other personally identifiable information (PII), but instead contain the configuration, logging, and other metadata that allows us to scan a cluster against our known database of previously encountered problems. Additionally, by having cluster metadata on hand via a recently created bundle, it dramatically lowers the time-to-resolution of support cases by obviating the requirement to ask for various logs and configurations in a piecemeal fashion, which can be very frustrating to a customer. It cannot be overstated how crucial diagnostic bundles are to our support efforts and to your successful issue resolution.

These four best practices for support case interaction lay the solid foundation of a successful customer experience with Cloudera. We strive to partner with our customers to help achieve their desired milestones, use-cases, and overall business goals. We invite you to watch the video today to get started utilizing these best practices in your next Cloudera Support encounter. Enterprise customers with questions, comments, or feedback are more than welcome to reach out to the Customer Success team directly.

Alexander Lavoie is a Senior Proactive Support Engineer at Cloudera.