Newsletter February 2008
Pod Watching
Written by: John Stephens
Reading the title and given the time of year, many residents of the Pacific Northwest might think this article is going to talk about the upcoming whale-watching season in March. Doing some quick internet research, one can learn that the annual migration of gray and humpback whales back to Alaskan waters is approaching. However, the pods about which this article speaks are not pods of migrating whales. In order to head off any other guesses, I’ll also let you know we’re not talking about storage units, seed clusters, or even alien cocoons. No, instead what the Pod in the article title refers to is the Service Pod we employ here at Convergence to provide a better customer service and technical experience to our customers. We’ve broken down our Service Desk from a single entity we jokingly referred to as “The Monolith” and have arrayed ourselves in modular support teams, each dedicated to a smaller group of customers to provide them responsive, informed, and efficient resolution to service issues. There are a number of reasons Convergence made the change in our support structure. These include our desire to maintain a relationship with each of clients, to provide the most efficient support, and to ensure support is always at a high standard.
One of the values Convergence was founded on, and one to which we religiously adhere today, is Relationships. To us, having a relationship with our clients means that we know them, both personally and technically. We don’t want to be an anonymous voice on the end of a telephone, we want to know the people for whom we troubleshoot issues or provide support, and we want to expertly know the networks. One of the ways to accomplish this is to dedicate certain technicians to a group of clients. Rather than a customer calling in with the potential to speak to any one of our 20 technical support personnel (technicians, administrators, and engineers), we’d prefer each client have a dedicated team of support professionals. After all, when someone calls in with a technical challenge, the whole point is to get the issue resolved. By dedicating support professionals to a smaller group of clients, we ensure support is accomplished, issues are resolved, and the time to recovery is as short as possible because the technicians who provide the support have intimate, detailed knowledge of the networks and the people they support.
Efficiently resolving issues is also very important to us. When a user calls in and states e-mail isn’t working, our technicians don’t have to think about where e-mail services reside, but rather, can move immediately to investigating the server or service. Times to resolution can be reduced dramatically because, suddenly, our techs don’t have to consult documentation or diagrams. Instead they know off the top of their heads where things are, how things are supposed to work, what services are most important to a client, and how best to fix them. The result: more timely and responsive service, and hopefully, customers whose needs are met better and faster. Through pods, we know our customers, both the people and the networks.
Finally, our use of Service Pods helps us maintain the highest levels of service. Rather than having one administrator assigned to each account, we have an entire support team. This allows us to provide consistently high levels of support even during vacations, breaks, and emergencies. When your administrator goes on vacation, you don’t have to worry whether someone else on the support team will be able to provide the same high level of quality service because you’ll know you actually have more than one administrator trained and knowledgeable about your business, your network, and your people. And, of course, this gives us the ability to better respond to emergencies as well, allowing us to dispatch the same techs that provide daily support and maintenance to clients whenever there are problems or disasters. Each client has a number of dedicated technicians who can troubleshoot issues from the smallest to the largest. And the level of service isn’t dependent on a single person. Rather, each customer is assured that his or her needs will be met by a dedicated team.
Here at Convergence, we’re continually striving to provide better, faster, and more responsive support. So if you make it to the coast this spring, feel free to marvel at the migrating whales, but know also that pods can refer to other things, things that, hopefully, enhance your ability to have smooth business operations and maximize the use of your IT resources. If you’ve got questions, give us a call. And, of course, if you’d like to meet any of the technical whales in your pod, give us a ring for that as well. We’d be happy to invite you to our little patch of ocean to see our pods in action. Until next time, have a great February and keep a weather eye to the horizon…in March we’ll talk again, and all of you should soon see more personalized services, including the implementation of private support numbers for every client.
Until next time…
If you would like to receive more information simply contact us.
What People Are Saying
- “What a great company! Convergence has gone above and beyond in their customer service and the technical knowledge of the staff is superior.”
- Kristen Potts, Big Brothers Big Sisters