Backup and Customer Support
Unitrends announced today announced a continuing expansion of its customer support organization. I particularly liked the quote from Mike Coney (CEO):
“Many technology companies view customer support as a cost center, one that can be transformed into aconsulting engagement by holding customers’ feet to the fire when they need help the most,” said Mike Coney, CEO of Unitrends. “That’s an awful practice, and at Unitrends, we feel strongly that no matter how effective our technologies are, the people behind them are our most powerful asset. We want our customers to sleep well at night knowing that if they find themselves in a disaster – one that jeopardizes their data and their jobs – help from a knowledgeable and dedicated Unitrends employee with the authority to make things right is one phone call or email away. That contrasts sharply with those who employ call centers that give the appearance of providing customer service – which, unfortunately, is all too common in the industry today.”
At Unitrends, we offer integrated backup appliances that may be deployed as a physical appliance or a VMware vSphere or Microsoft Hyper-V virtual appliance. The most common understanding of “integrated backup appliance” is that various types of backup software (e.g., dissimilar bare metal recovery, file backup, image backup, HOS backup, GOS backup, replication, archiving, disaster recovery, etc.) is integrated with an operating system, database, and other components. In the case of a physical backup appliance, you also integrate the physical server and storage as well.
All of this is true as far as it goes. But in my opinion, what gets dramatically under-estimated is how important the integration of support with the backup appliance is. This is not just a technological statement. Yes – modern backup appliances should use advanced technology that enables not just reactive but proactive management and monitoring of those backup appliances across tens of thousands of customers. But even more importantly, creating a customer-obsessed customer support team that is intimately familiar with not just the backup appliance but complex customer environments as well is incredibly important.
Got a different opinion? Want a job? Let us know!
