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With a diverse and expanding customer base, Backup Technology needed a way to quickly and effectively manage all customer queries throughout the buying process, from an initial enquiry through to ongoing customer support, without the extra cost of having to employ more staff. Relying on phone support and then carrying out a site visit when a more in-depth investigation by engineers was required also meant that problem resolution was lengthy and not the best use of an engineer’s time.
Because of the company’s global reach, remote support was an obvious choice for Backup Technology, enabling any customer in any location to be supported at any time from the UK office. “We needed to ensure that our existing support team could continue to provide high levels of service as our customer base grew,” commented Ritchie Fiddes, sales director at Backup Technology. “We had used a remote meeting solution in the past but our supplier was failing to deliver adequate support for their product. However, we recognised that remote support and virtual meeting solutions could give us a very clear business differentiator and distinct improvements to our current customer service approach without the cost of hiring more staff or opening offices in other locations.”
Implementing GoToMeeting and GoToAssist
Initially, to replace its existing remote meeting solution, Backup Technology started using Citrix® GoToMeeting® in October 2005 to set up and participate in remote meetings with prospects, customers and employees.
Fiddes explained, “GoToMeeting provides us with a fantastic way to set up and manage our meetings quickly and effectively, while reducing the need to travel. Sometimes we just need a quick catch-up with a customer, and the ability to set up a meeting in seconds to share files and documents on the same screen has been a great advantage.”
Following the success with GoToMeeting, Backup Technology implemented Citrix® GoToAssist® in June 2007 to enable the company’s support engineers to remotely access a customer’s backup systems. With GoToAssist, engineers can quickly and easily deal with questions, queries and problems without traveling to the customer’s site.
“We were very impressed with GoToMeeting and were keen to investigate other products from Citrix Online. GoToAssist offered a solution that would really enhance the level of service we could offer to our customers,” continued Fiddes. “GoToAssist was logical and straightforward to set up, and our customer service and support staff found it easy to use from the outset.”
Improving operating efficiencies
Because Backup Technology has a dispersed, global customer base, providing timely, highquality support can be very difficult. GoToAssist allows Backup Technology’s technical staff to help customers no matter where they are located by instantly initiating a support session and remotely accessing the customer’s system to qualify and fix a problem. As a result, rather than setting up and staffing regional offices with technical support personnel, any member of the headquarters technical team can instantly support any customer in the world, at any time.
“Before we started using GoToAssist our technicians would have to visit a customer in person, and this negatively impacted the number of customers that we could support. We also found it difficult to support customers with offices throughout the world. Using GoToAssist, we can give our global customers the same care and attention that we give to customers located closer to home,” said Fiddes.
Increasing staff efficiency
GoToAssist is also delivering significant cost savings by increasing the productivity of Backup Technology’s existing team of engineers.
“Because our engineers can log on remotely to fix problems, they can move straight on to help another customer as soon as their session is finished. If we didn’t have this technology in place, our workforce would have to be augmented by as many as 10 engineers to cope with customer demands,” said Fiddes.
Enhancing the sales process
In addition to meeting customer support needs, Backup Technology uses GoToMeeting to drive sales by demonstrating its products and services to potential customers over the Web. “Our sales teams proactively engage potential customers using online chat sessions through our Web site, and can then demonstrate what we can do for them through a remote session over the Internet. This not only enhances our sales process, but has proven to be a fantastic way of conveying our value to companies that are contemplating using our services. We have won some very notable new customers with the help of GoToMeeting,” said Fiddes.
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