Good customer service is a critical cornerstone of any business, and it’s no different here at SentryOne. Many of you have likely worked with me or other support engineers over time so you have some insight into how we work. However, I want to take this opportunity to tell you a bit more about the inner workings of this team, how it’s structured, and give you some details on the new systems we’ve implemented.
Client Services is part of a larger Customer Success team led by Scott Brooks, VP of Customer Success. Our team consists of a Manager, Senior Support Engineers, and Technical Specialists. The structure of this team is likely very familiar to many of you as it’s no different than any other organization. Where we differ is in the way we approach customer services and how we develop our engineers.
Most support teams are tiered: when a ticket comes in, it is triaged, categorized, and assigned to a technician. If the severity or complexity of the issue is above that technician’s expertise, it is immediately escalated to another technician or engineer while the original engineer goes on to another issue.
At SentryOne if a ticket is submitted that is outside the scope of knowledge of an engineer, another engineer is brought in for assistance instead of simply escalating the ticket. This accomplishes a few things: it keeps the customer from having to deal with multiple engineers and having to explain a potentially complex situation multiple times, and it allows the original engineer to learn! The latter is incredibly important to the development of a support engineer. Instead of staying within a defined tier and not pushing their boundaries, the engineer is able to learn more complex topics and grow as a technician.
This approach also builds team cohesion and allows for a more collaborative atmosphere within the team. On top of this, there’s also constant and open communication between the Client Services, QA, and Product Management teams. If someone on the support team isn’t able to pin down an issue, it’s immediately raised in one of many communication channels or brought up in a meeting. This method has allowed us to decrease resolution times, and more importantly, increase engineer productivity and customer satisfaction and retention. The end goal of all of this is to help you, the customer, as quickly and efficiently as possible.
In this spirit of efficiency, we also recently decided to migrate to another ticketing system. While many of the processes will stay the same, the new system has many advantages that will help us communicate better internally as well as deliver better customer service to you.
Many of the features available in the old Help Center will remain the same, while others (like submitting feature requests) will see some enhancements. The end goal is to have a thriving community – a place where you can ask questions, share your ideas, and get help from other SentryOne users as well as the support team. To read more about this new and improved SentryOne Community, I highly recommend checking out Customer Success: Moving from Zendesk to the Salesforce Cloud, a post written by the very people who built it.
If you have comments on how we can make your support experience better, please don’t hesitate to tell us!
