Sally's Corner

Greetings to each of you! Welcome to the Q2 2007 edition of the Customer Support Newsletter. We have a lot of exciting support initiatives to share. In 2007, we are focused on streamlining your Customer Support experience by enhancing our Web self-service offerings, expanding our global support centers and launching a patch database.

Your feedback counts and makes a difference. Throughout 2007, we will continue our survey process to hear directly from you on how we might better serve you. The survey process is conducted on a per incident basis and also randomly once a quarter. As many of you already know from our presentations and discussions, our Support Analysts are compensated on how well they deliver support to you. Your survey responses are reviewed with the Support Analyst to provide instruction on how to continually improve your support experience. I personally follow up with any dissatisfied customers so that we can improve our service. Thank you for responding to our surveys so far, and please keep the feedback coming.

Our self-service initiative aims to deliver support service anytime, anywhere. We will begin implementing a new Customer Support system at the end of 2007, which should greatly improve the self-service Customer Support Portal. This will include a more robust capability to research issues and their resolutions anytime, anywhere with the enhanced flexibility that you have been asking for in self service.

Now as part of IBM, we are expanding our global support center strategy. We launched our Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) support center in October 2006 and we have already doubled our investment in resources to support our customers in their local language and local time zone. Languages supported through the EMEA Support Analysts include Italian, German and English.

Our Latin American Support Center will be operational in Q3 2007 and further expands our global support center strategy. Already, our Spanish-speaking Support Analysts are preparing for the center’s grand opening. In early 2008, we will expand the Latin American Support Center with Portuguese-speaking resources.

We all know how frustrating it can be to call a Customer Support center only to learn that your issue is a known problem. As a direct result of your feedback, we will now be able to offer you a solution to that issue. In May, through our Customer Support Portal, we will be launching the Product Patch Information Database. This database will contain information for various known product issues so you can call us to get the latest patch. Also as a result of customer feedback, we ask that you call us to get the patch, vs. providing it on the portal. This enables use to better assist you with its installation.

To deliver the industry’s best customer support, we must maintain a continuous improvement process which begins with your feedback. Over the next few weeks, we will be working with J.D. Power and Associates (JDP) to obtain feedback from you about your Customer Support experiences as a critical component of our Certified Technology Service & Support Center Certification. As a valued customer, you may be invited via e-mail to respond to a survey administered by JDP. Please recognize that this e-mail is a legitimate transaction. To participate, simply click on the designated link within the e-mail invitation. If you are contacted and are able to provide feedback, we thank you for your input. If you should have any questions about the JDP process, please do not hesitate to contact me.

I hope that you enjoy this edition of the Customer Support Newsletter. Also, please let us know what types of articles you would like to see in the future so we can continue to improve our communications with you. Once again, we appreciate your business.

Product Patch Information Database

May We Assist You?

Customer Support is always working hard to make sure that you receive the best support in the security industry. As such, we recruit and hire only top-quality candidates and then provide them with superior technical training and instruction in the IBM Internet Security Systems Support Way guidelines. These guidelines help to ensure the following:

• Your support requests are addressed in a timely manner
• The priority of your incident and all pertinent details concerning your incident are well documented
• You are aware of the current status and the next course of action of your incident
• You are notified of any status changes to an incident
• Your Support Analyst is pursuing the best technical methods to resolve this issue

Each time you open an incident, we strive to provide superior service and we regularly audit our incidents to improve your customer experience even further. We are also working to address your needs in product development. Since our Support Analysts regularly interact with you, we are bringing them together with our product engineers in a unique program called, "Walk in the Customer's Shoes." By directly observing the interaction between customers and Support Analysts, our engineers gain a greater understanding of your product needs.

Improved Web Self-Service