The entire team is based in Portage, Indiana,
and is available from 8AM to 7PM Central time. "With our centralized team
and the proper infrastructure, such as our own system and a lab, we can satisfy
all customer needs", explains Justina Payne, head of technical support at Fronius
USA.
When a customer calls our hotline, a
technician will pick up within minutes and is ready to answer technical
questions. This means that callers do not have to talk to an admin person
before getting to the actual technician. "At the beginning of a call, we
make sure that a customer is in our system and quickly open a service case.
Then we immediately get to the customer's question", Payne explains. After
the call, the customer receives an email with the service case number for
future reference and contact information for any follow-up questions. If the
initial technician is not able to answer a question, second-tier support from
our application engineers can help further. For extremely special cases,
colleagues from Fronius International offer third-tier support.
Speed matters in technical support, as
end-customers can be very sensitive about inverters being down. To resolve
issues quickly, we maintain short wait times on our hotline, provide fast
answers, and offer a paperless Return Merchandise Authorization (RMA) process.
"We want the experience to be frictionless", Payne says. "Our
customers also tell us regularly that they appreciate the pleasant attitude and
rich knowledge of our team", Payne says.
What sets our support apart from others in the
industry is the holistic view on the entire system. "We always look for
the root cause of a problem and go beyond the inverter for troubleshooting as
opposed to simply exchanging the inverter right away. Often the root cause lies
in other parts of the system". This holistic approach helps customers fix
issues for good.
Over time, the team has seen a thing or two.
End-customers regularly call in with all sorts of questions, and the team is
happy to explain how solar works, e.g., why the inverter is showing a "low
power" code when the solar modules are covered in inches of snow. "We
try to answer any question and give every caller a good answer with next steps
for their situation", Payne concludes. Through a voluntary customer
satisfaction survey at the end of each call, the Tech Support team makes sure
to consistently maintain high standards. "The satisfaction of our
customers is what really counts at the end", Payne concludes.
Technical Support is available at (219)
734-5500 or pv-support-usa@fronius.com.
For 24/7 support, we also offer the online support tool Fronius SOS at
sos.fronius.com.