The guiding principle of Metalink’s Customer Support service is “think globally – act locally.” Metalink’s Customer Support team is actively engaged to provide our customers with comprehensive support before, during, and after the deployment of a Metalink chipset - throughout the lifetime of the customer’s product.

We believe that fast and accurate response will enable our customers to shorter time to market. The shorter the path to the right expert that solves your problem, the greater customer satisfaction achieved. We have therefore built a three tiered support chain that is flexible, yet without compromise of professionalism.

For each unique customer project, Metalink assigns a Field Application Engineer (FAE) to manage communication with our customers, and to ensure that Metalink’s chipsets perform at maximum capacity in the customer’s design according to specifications and Metalink’s application recommendations.

Support - the three-tiered system with escalation process

Metalink employs a three-tier support system to ensure that our Customer Support services respond quickly and effectively to customer needs.

1. A local Representative Engineer, trained by Metalink, is the 
    first point of contact for the customer. In case there is no local 
    representative, a direct means of communication to the
    second tier is provided (by phone, E-mail).

2. The representative Engineer is supported by a Local Account 
    Engineer or a Remote Account Engineer based at Metalink’s
    headquarters. The Account Engineer is responsible for
    managing the customer account. The responsibilities of the
    second-tier engineer include frequent meetings with the
    customer. This ensures that the second-tier is close to the 
    field and well-aware of the customer needs. This direct
    communication with the highly experienced engineers ensures
    timely and accurate response to all customer inquiries.

3. The third-tier is managed by a Corporate Expert, a specialist in
     his field, e.g., hardware, software, application, etc. Each of
     these engineers supports the accounts FAEs on an ongoing
     basis to address any questions or complex request from the
     field. These experts have direct access to any internal
     resource required at Metalink’s headquarters.

All customer inquiries that arise from the field are routed through an escalation process, where the service call is registered in the CRM database and treated with the right SLA (Service Level Agreement). The CRM system ‘escorts’ Metalink’s escalation process via a well-defined set of actions and priorities. Starting with the registration, assigning an engineer and up to the successful closure of a service call according to the SLA policy.

Metalink Designs

• The Reference Design Files (RDF) are a complete hardware 
   design kit that includes detailed instructions documents,
   schematics, layout samples, BOM, etc.

• The software kit includes: The firmware, the drivers and
   example codes, the software user’s guide documentation,
   release notes, application notes, and more.

• Broadband Studio is Metalink’s advanced development suite
   that allows the designer to test any modem function from an
   external PC. The customer can perform tests using the Metalink
   Evaluation board, similar to its own developed system.

• Evaluation Boards are used for design support and 
   demonstrations. The designer can test evaluation boards for
   any function, and compare results to its own design.

Tools & Methods

FTP Site: Metalink uses a secure, web-based FTP site that allows customers to login with a unique password, and to download updated documentations and software. The FTP site allows customers to upload materials and documentations for Metalink to examine (e.g., Gerber files for our engineers to review, parts of software codes for comments, etc.).

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs): This tool is alsoavailable from our secure site and allows our customers to pose questions that may already be known to Metalink.