Better Support Escalation

Have you ever asked a support question that you regretted a moment later? It happens to all of us, when complexity meets lack of time and a skipped lunch, we tend to ask some of the most obvious questions. Even more frustrating activity is trying to get basic answers that were probably covered somewhere in the wealth of documentation and knowledge base articles.

How about a frustrating system outage on your dedicated server that you needed addressed immediately but didn’t want to pay for escalated support? Even though we fulfill 99% of our support requests within the Urgent SLA window free of charge it still doesn’t seem friendly to get the nastygram about fees required for urgent support – especially when something out of your control is down.

Today, we fixed both of those problems with a small, even elegant, option that you may not even notice most of the time when opening a ticket. But trust me, you will like to know it’s there working for you. Take a look at the new “Service” dropdown option that is available when creating a new ticket:

This dropdown allows you to select the service that you are requesting support for. This helps us route the request to the most qualified individual on the support team that can address your request quickly.

Note that when you select an item you will be presented with a checkbox to tell us if this is a service outage. If the outage affects the entire organization, and you check this box, we will escalate the request for free and bump you to the front of the queue.

Please be mindful that we are monitoring for fraudulent use of this function. So in case your “system down” scenario consists of a single Exchange 2007 mailbox whose password expired, you might find this setting disappears if it is abused. Please be courteous to the other clients and use this feature when it’s absolutely needed, it’s here to save you money and I’m sure that in your time of need you wouldn’t want our support giving priority to something other than a true outage.

But wait, there’s more!

When you select the given category you will immediately be presented with the “Popular Answers” section right on the new support page. These articles are written by the staff that provides ongoing product support and contain a lot of information that you may want to look through and save time waiting for a response.

Hope you enjoy the ongoing improvements and keep on sending us your suggestions so we can serve you better.

This feature will be making an appearance in SM 3.0 for our MSP partners this May.

Come and see us at MSP University Bootcamp

We have the pleasure of sponsoring the MSP University Bootcamp this week and supporting our friends Erick and Garry who have given this event to attendees free of charge in this tough economy. Over 100, very professional looking folks, in attendance going through all aspects of developing and managing an MSP practice.

If you are out in the beautiful Orange County, stop by and say hi!  We have shirts, pens, iPods and all sorts of swag to get you through the weekend. We’re also here to make you money and get you a jumpstart on the hosting services that are selling like hotcakes 😉

Important: We’re doing the biggest event promotion we’ve ever done, considering the current economy, so make sure to stop by and talk to us about it as it expires this weekend.

Spam Show 4

If you are good enough in business you get to develop great relationships with some impressive people. If you succeed at that, you make some remarkable friends that enrich your entire experience. I believe we’ve demonstrated that to a great degree with this weeks SPAM Show. As I originally stated when we started doing the show, it is all about friends joining and talking about the trends in our business. This week we were lucky enough to get Joe Panettieri from MSP Mentor to discuss MSP business trends and developments.

In particular, we addressed many of the developments and the surrounding economic state we find ourselves in. We all discussed where we are seeing growth and where we are seeing shrinkage, opportunities and threats.

This has by far been the most entertaining podcast I have ever heard or been a part of. If you don’t agree and don’t laugh along there is no hope for you – but if you’re busy, overwhelmed, concerned or anywhere in between – listen to the show #4 and let us cheer you up!

Sincerely,
Vlad Mazek, MCSE
CEO, Own Web Now Corp

Notes: Podcast submitted to iTunes and will be available this week on your iPhones and iPods. In the meantime, you will have to use the feed directly or listen straight from our web site. Second of all, huge thanks to Karl @ SMBBooks for hooking us up with a conference bridge!

Note 2: The SPAM Show now has it’s own landing page for longer show notes, sponsorships and better distribution. Check it out, let us know if you’re interested in sponsoring us: http://ownwebnow.com/spamshow

Own Web Now in 2009

Dear Clients, Partners and Friends,

I wanted to offer you a sincere statement about the state of Own Web Now Corp at this time.

First, the great news: We have posted yet another record quarter with record high revenues, profits and user counts. We are the largest we have ever been, and all products are currently at all time highs. We are on track to release half a dozen new products in 2009, and the feedback over the past few months has been overwhelmingly positive as we’ve introduced massive improvements to financial reporting, service management and support.

The good news is that, despite (or rather, in spite of) the poor economy, we are poised for record growth in 2009. We have worked very hard to introduce the kinds of products that users simply cannot live without and we will introduce new, more affordable solutions in 2009.

All the good news aside, things are far from perfect at Own Web Now. If there is one area we have struggled in over the years, it’s been consistency. This unfortunate problem comes as a result of rapid growth and, at times, overworked staff, poor management and issues with process control. Computers are easier to manage than people, and in an environment where people, objectives, metrics and software change rapidly, the problems become very apparent. We have worked very hard to address this issue, develop additional processes and assure that the improvements we have made over the past few months are sustained and not empty gestures soon to be forgotten.

Over the next few months I will be introducing you to the ITIL methodology we have implemented at Own Web Now. I will also be going in depth about our process, our reporting, our controls and our inputs.

For starters, our documentation efforts are now managed by the very same people that provide support online, in person and over the phone. As you may imagine, we answer certain questions repeatedly. Staff is now allocated time to pick repetitive questions, provide them directly to me and vote on the most complete and comprehensive answer. I believe this will create a reliable training platform and more connected community around our services.

Our communication platform for the most part has consisted of this blog. We have extended this in 2008 with the Network Operations site and in 2009 we have added Twitter as well as regular newsletter mailings. Encompassing it all is a new OWN podcast bringing you not just the news from us, but our industry as a whole. People discover, consume and respond to information in different ways. There is no unified way to alert everyone, so we are responding to the mediums that our clients and partners follow. Podcasts are not for everyone but an equal number of people absolutely despises whitepapers and network maintenance alerts. As a last resort, for the ultra-busy, your PAM is always there to answer any questions you may have. If you want to follow our every move, that’s possible too. For everyone in the middle we have a number of solutions as well. It’s a mix, much like our partner and client base.

The past few months have been all about documenting and improving the company as a whole. As you know from working with us, we’ve done this in the past with our infrastructure. We have worked very hard to get to this point, and we’ve had to let some bad habits die and some grow up, both as a technology and as a company.

I appreciate your continued business. I hope you see these improvements as positive. We not only believe in the future of our business model, but that the numbers are showing that it is the hottest thing available right now. As you trust us with your and your clients’ network operations, I want to assure you that we are committed to remaining the leader in this space and helping you grow through these hard times.

Sincerely,
Vlad Mazek
CEO, Own Web Now Corp

Customer Support Notice: Phone Availability

We will be conducting a phone system upgrade tonight at 10 PM EST – 2 AM EST. During this time frame we will not be available for contact over the phone and all urgent requests should be handled through the support portal at http://www.ownwebnow.com as usual.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you and hope that you will find the new features coming with the new system worth the wait.

Centralized Service Control Panels

Many of you have been looking forward to this day, and I am glad to announce the launch of OWN Service Manager dashboard for centralized management of all our services:

You can access this service in our Support Portal right now by clicking on Service Manager tab at the top. If you don’t see this tab, you are not a Client Admin (someone on your staff can give you access)

The entire system is centralized and linked in our process: billing, invoicing, support, documentation, fulfillment and projects are all tied to this service panel. This means that we can integrate all of these services with third party PSAs, offer our support direct to your clients under your own brand/label… I hope this gives you an idea what we are going to work on for the rest of 2009 🙂