"The last six months have seen Grintek Telecom embark on an initiative to provide greater service and support to its customers," says Roger Blain, General Manager, Unified Networks, at Grintek Telecom. "This is in line with trends in the technology industry in general, which has seen a steady increase in customer demand for enhanced services, response and value add from their solution providers.
"Every customer requires a different approach to service and support, and therefore, a single maintenance contract cannot be applied across the board. As a result, we reviewed how our support systems operate and focused on meeting the specific needs of each client. Our customers can choose the levels and types of support that suit their needs from, for example, telephonic service or automated software version deployment for smaller, low-end or routine systems support to remote control, surveillance, disaster recovery and even hacker detection for large, high-end and critical systems. Not only does the customer benefit from a customised maintenance contract, but also Grintek is able to plan its resources more effectively for each customer, resulting in greater savings in manpower and call-out costs.
"At present we have six service managers who handle specific customer requirements and who are backed by Grintek's service and support infrastructure which includes a call centre and 24-hour support desk with national toll free number. The help desk can be used for initial fault fixing for areas that are not critical and can notify an engineer immediately for problems that are more complex. It can also be used to measure our response times, allowing us to monitor our own effectiveness in dealing with customer service issues.
"In addition, our new approach brings us a lot closer to our customers. We can provide them with regular reports on the performance of their systems as well as plan budgets for system upgrades and expansion as the clients needs change. Certain support work can be prepaid to allow the user to plan routine maintenance around fixed costs. Grintek also has the opportunity to cross sell to certain customers as new technology is developed. So successful has our support model been, that one of our customers, a major financial institution, has adopted it for its own clients."
Adds Blain, "Only the companies that go beyond simply dropping boxes to generating added value and fostering long term relationships will still be around in the next few years. Grintek has taken a lead in this area with a support system committed to ensuring that customers gain the most from their technology deployments."
For further information contact Linda Weaver, Grintek Telecom, (012) 672 8059, [email protected]
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