Technical Support Policy Frequently Asked Questions

What is Technical Support?

Full Support is provided for the current release of the product and includes the following:

Installation Assistance ¹
• Assist customers or technical contacts in the installation of SPSS products.
• Resolve environmental problems that prohibit a successful installation of the software.
• Clarify system requirements.
• Authorize replacements for defective media.
• Verify that the software is operational.

Interpretation of Error Messages

• Interpret error messages.
• Suggest corrective action.

Suspected defects

• Assess the scope and magnitude of possible defect.
• Assess whether the defect can be replicated.
• Report defect to Product Development.
• Determine reasonable workaround if possible.
• Work with Development to address the problem in a patch or future release.

General Troubleshooting of Printing and Environmental Issues

• Verify abnormal operation.
• Suggest problem solving techniques.
• Determine workarounds when needed.

Abnormal Termination

• Assess source of abnormal termination of job.
• Suggest problem solving strategy to customer.
• Suggests ways to avoid problem.

Clarification of Documentation or Output

• Clarify software definitions, assumptions, computational methods and output presentation.
• Identify procedures that will produce particular statistical analyses or results.
• Clarify documented examples which may be unclear or may be ambiguous. Provide additional examples or definitions if necessary to comprehensively define a concept.

General "How to" Questions

• General questions about using the software.
• Sample syntax for Frequently Asked Questions.
• Advice on how to execute syntax for a particular statistical model.
• Insufficiently documented features.
• Reading Data.
• Basic Data Manipulation.
• File Manipulation.
• Assistance in setting up Statistical Analysis or procedures.

Operational Support is provided for the release of the product prior to the current release. It is functionally the same as Full Support above with the exception that SPSS Inc. will not fix defects or replace media for a release that is not the most current for its platform.

• On-site installation assistance
• Explanations of basic computing theory and applications
• Determination of how to solve business problems
• Product training

¹ Note that Installation Assistance is the only support provided to those who purchase SPSS Grad Pack licenses.

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Technical Support currently has a standard Technical Support Maintenance Plan. Technical support is also provided during the 60-days following product purchase for installation assistance.

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SPSS Technical Support has centers around the globe to assist you. If you have a Technical Support Service contract, you can also submit your questions directly after logging into our Web site.

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Technical Support does not provide consulting or training. Please contact SPSS Worldwide Services for details of Consulting and Training Services provided by SPSS.

Technical Support does not help with licensing, order status or administrative issues. Please email SPSS Customer Service or visit the SPSS Customer Service website for this type of assistance.

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SPSS Technical Support Representatives are working with our products daily and can frequently answer the calls that come into the department on the first contact. However there are a few things that you can do to help us out:

1. Read the manual. A large number of the questions we receive can be answered by reading the manual.
2. Check the online help files which contain many complete explanations and examples for every aspect of the software.
3. Double check your syntax or where appropriate, your transformation logic. Frequently a misplaced "/" or "." is at the root of the problem and can easily be overlooked.
4. Investigate your data. Frequently problems with result sets have to do with missing data. A good investigative technique is to list out a subset of cases along with the variables used in a logical expression and the computed result. Then you can step through the logic checking your results as you go.
5. Carefully read the error message. Most error messages will indicate which command or command lines caused the error. Some will actually point to the offending text. It helps in this regard to have one's output (Viewer, Navigator) preferences set to "display commands in the log," even if most commands are executed from the menus. It is often useful to try replicating a procedure which produces an error message with one of the sample data files shipped with your software. This provides SPSS Technical Support with the ability to immediately attempt to recreate your problem on our systems.

When contacting Technical Support, please provide the following:

1. Some type of identification: your SPSS Customer ID, Contract ID or Product serial number. The Technical Support Representatives must have this information in order to verify your eligibility for Technical Support.
2. The release or version of SPSS and the release of the operating system you are running on.
3. If appropriate, the error number and message, as well as the command file that produced the error message and the resulting output.

Note:

• Be prepared to engage in trial and error investigative techniques. Often we can quickly deduce that your problem could be caused by one of several things, but we need to systematically find the cause.
• A Technical Support Representative may need to refer you to a page in a manual, so have available manuals near the phone when you call.

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We have Technical Support Representatives who speak Spanish, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Swedish, and Japanese in addition to English. Remember to contact your distributor if you purchased your software through a distributor as representatives in these offices speak the local language. Our contact page indicates specific telephone numbers and email addresses to use where we will provide technical support in non-English languages.

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Our Product Support matrices have details for each of our products.

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We strive to acknowledge phone, email or web-entered queries within 4 hours, and attempt to resolve all cases as quickly as possible.

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