When an IT organization selects a new IT management tool, the selection process is grounded in multiple factors. Stakeholders will evaluate a prospective solution for its features and functionality, its scalability and reliability, its ease of use, and its cost. One other factor that some buyers overlook is customer support. The breadth, depth, and quality of customer support can make and break your success with a tool.
At a basic level, customer support is there to help you fix problems that you're having and answer questions that you might have about the tool. But some vendors try to do more than that bare minimum. For that reason, you should fully vet a potential vendor's approach to customer support when evaluating a tool for potential adoption.
Listen to Shamus McGillicuddy's recent podcast on network observability customer support using the player below
I've been having dozens of discussions with IT operations professionals recently about how they feel about the customer support that their tool vendors offer. Here are seven key takeaways from those conversations:
1. Responsiveness
How long does it take for someone to respond to you when you reach out for help?
2. Access to the right people
Can you get an actual expert on the phone or chat in a timely way?
3. Documentation
Many customer support organizations will reference product documentation when answering a question or helping you fix something. Make sure that documentation is clearly written and complete.
4. Communication channel flexibility
Does customer support communicate with you in the way you and your team prefer, email versus phone versus Slack, etc.
5. Relationships
Is the customer support anonymous and ignorant of your environment, or do you have dedicated people who know you, your environment, and the use cases that are important to you?
6. Proactive and transparent communication
Does customer support help understand the impact of a product release and give you ample warning for maintenance windows to minimize impact?
7. Solution-oriented approach
Does customer support simply exist to answer questions and fix problems, or does it try to maximize your investment by collaborating with you on how to get the most out of the tool?
These are just some of the factors that should guide buyers when they are evaluating the customer support organization of a prospective vendor. If you'd like to learn more about how you should approach this evaluation, check out the latest episode of my podcast, Mean Time to Insight.
Listen to Shamus McGillicuddy's recent podcast on network observability customer support using the player below
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