Zeiss Care[less] Agreement: When Priority Support Is Nothing but a Premium Promise

[[Je...]]

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We pay a premium for our annual Zeiss Care Agreement. This promises us priority access to Remote-In support service.

I contacted Zeiss last Friday, six days ago, about an urgent situation where PiWeb is not opening from Calypso. This prevents any results from generating (Thanks, Zeiss, for making PiWeb the ONLY reporting option. PiWeb sucks. Sorry, it does. I will gladly elaborate on "sucks" in a technical manner upon request).

I have since contacted Zeiss four times. I have had zero communication from Zeiss. I haven't even been notified that a support ticket has been opened, much less actually received support.

This is not an isolated incident. Multiple red flags point to a deteriorating culture within Zeiss, especially in regards to customer-centric service. A few of these include:

• The ongoing calibration scheduling problems

• A decreasing valuation of in-person training

• "Live" on-screen customer events being nothing more than a pre-recorded webinar, occasionally followed by a brief Q&A session

• Zeiss's increasing love for growth-hacking techniques such as "Vendor Lock-in," and "Gating," which attempt to force existing customer loyalty without listening to or providing equitable value.

• The 10-year refusal to admit that PiWeb is poorly designed and a product-market misfit.

• Redesignating Application Specialists and Trainers to "special projects" such as contract inspection services.

I'll wager other users could add to this list.

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I still love Zeiss (I think). Their products help me succeed in my career and help me serve my customers. However, I also have an eye for pattern-recognition, and I don't like what I'm seeing.

[[Je...]]

Good morning Jeff. I am sending you PM. Please review promptly so I can get you the support you require.

[[Mi...]]

Forcing PiWeb is ridiculous and very Apple-like of Zeiss.

Incentivizing the new thing is fine. Make PiWeb the default sure, but actively removing the simple custom printout is almost predatory. It should still be available to be used at our own risk, or as a backup in the event of PiWeb failing, with no support from Zeiss.

It makes me wonder what discussions Zeiss has had to stop table file creation in upcoming versions, which would essentially prevent any third party software like QC-CALC being used to collect data.

[[Je...]]

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Jeff,

I truly appreciate your prompt response and the urgency you are meeting this need with. Thank you.

I read your PM and provided the requested info.

[[Je...]]

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Hello Jeff,

I am awaiting your response via email. I have not yet received the info. I am suspecting that this may be the cause of the problem. Please add a "delivery confirmation" and "read receipt" to your email and resend to verify where the problem lies. If your emails are not making it through to our CIC team then the cause of this block needs to be identified.

Please copy cic.metrology.us@zeiss.com

[[Je...]]

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Jeff,

I will do so, but I just tested email delivery internally and to external, non-Zeiss email addresses, and both were successful. It may indeed be something on Zeiss's end.

[[Je...]]

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Jeff,

I will do so, but I just tested email delivery internally and to external, non-Zeiss email addresses, and both were successful. It may indeed be something on Zeiss's end.

[[Ow...]]

On your soapbox this morning Jeff? 🤣 .

Let me join in 😉 , I won’t go into much detail but yeah, I’m not a fan of Pi-Web.
My view is that PiWeb is a poor profit-enhancing marketing tool with what might be good intentions of helping bring enhanced reporting options along with advanced process capability monitoring but, using the customer as guinee pigs to develop it has left a bad taste in about every customers mouth.

I suppose everybody has a different view but, I can’t bring myself to like anything about the Calypso interface changes, from colors to icons…smh.

Also, you have to wonder if the calibration scheduling issue's had more than a few looking at different options.

On a positive note, I just finished a quick-reply ticket call with a technical support guy by the name of Logan Crane that couldn’t have went more smoothly or more professional.

Charles Darwin: It is not the most intellectual of the species that survives; it is not the strongest that survives; but the species that survives is the one that is able best to adapt and adjust to the changing environment in which it finds itself.
- However, it can have consequences, the Pacer and Gremlin cars killed American Motors Corporation (AMC) 😭 .

[[Da...]]

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Bad news. When will that be?

[[Je...]]

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Thank you sincerely, Owen, for sharing your own positive experience.


Update:

Jeff Penrod promptly addressed my concern, and I received an outstanding service call from Anthony Leen, Zeiss Application Specialist, 10 minutes later. The intensity of my original post was driven by my urgency to meet my customers' needs, both internal and external. It appears that my emails to Zeiss CIC were not received. Zeiss is investigating the root cause, and I am also reviewing if the problem is originating on my end.

I take responsibility for not following up with parallel methods of communication to Zeiss, which could have included:

(1) Phone calls to Zeiss Support Hotline

(2) Utilizing the Service Request generator from Zeiss's customer portal, which I was not aware existed. I plan to try this in the future, because I can view status updates on tickets.
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I maintain that several of my points of critique from my original post are valid, but my perceived delay in response time in this particular incident is not.

Stay tuned for more awkward, poignant forum posts from this neuro-spicy 🌶️🔥 CMM Programmer.

[[Ch...]]

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Niche Construction is a leading theory that challenges Darwin. Looks like Zeiss is a Neo-Darwin Niche Construction type.

"Niche Construction theory emphases that organisms are not passive elements in their environment. Niche construction is the process by which an organism alters its own (or another species') local environment."