Thoughts on Virtual Infrastructure Management

Customer Support Matters

During the past year we have invested a great deal of time and effort in developing Akorri’s software maintenance and support capability.  There’s no question that support is one of the big differentiators between software companies that are loved by their customers and partners, and those that are not.  To quote Steve Jobs, one of our company goals has been to build an “insanely great” customer support capability, and we’re working really hard on it.

Our objective at Akorri has been to try to build a business that is innovative on multiple dimensions.  The top three dimensions Akorri is focusing on are (1) product, (2) channel, and (3) customer support.  We believe BalancePoint is an innovative product and are continuing to focus engineering on innovation while meeting customer and market needs.  With regard to the channel, my goal has been to become recognized by channel partners and their customers as their favorite company to work with in the virtualization management space.  With regard to the customer support dimension, I believe we have made excellent progress.  Every week now I get emails out of the blue from users and potential customers about how one of our support people (Paul, Robert, Don, James, Fritz, Rick, Mike, John, etc.) went the extra mile.  I love that! 

In terms of how we are trying to innovate in support, I don’t mean to suggest that our support offering is entirely unique, or perfect (yet), but there are a number of things we do that I think stand out:

  • When a potential customer evaluates our product, we provide them full access to our customer support and treat them exactly as if they were a paying customer.  Many companies don’t do this because it costs money, but the way we see it, you need to have a chance to evaluate not just the product but also the support.  Our support is available 24×7x365, and can be contacted by phone, email, through the support portal, or at www.akorri.com/support.
  • When we come out with new releases, upgrades have been covered under support, for both minor and also major releases.  When we came out with BalancePoint 1.5,1.7, 2.0, and 2.3 all our customers got upgraded.  Our next major release will be 3.0, and all our existing customers are going to get that without an additional charge.  Other software companies also do this, but many charge for major releases.  We have not done that.  As with 2.0, in 3.0 we will be offering major new functionality, and that is included under the support agreement. 
  • Customers get a login to our customer support portal and a very comprehensive knowledge-base, technical FAQs, documentation, updates, etc.  We also have online, on-demand training and certification.  Again, evaluation users get access to the support portal and get a login to the online training site during their eval period.
  • We do the installation for you, without an additional charge.  You can do the install yourself if you want, but we are happy to install the software.  We do this remotely from our headquarters.

Gartner Group recommends that a software company’s support capability be evaluated on four criteria: (1) installation support, (2) ongoing support, (3) availability, and (4) support reputation.  We are doing our best to build a support capability that exceeds expectations on all of these criteria.  Let me know how you think we’re doing at rich@akorri.com.

March 4, 2009 | Filed Under Customer Experiences, Inside Akorri | Leave a Comment 

comments

Leave a Reply