A rather large number of our customers have been emailing our support desk, asking questions about what we’re going to do differently in the wake of last week’s 48 hour network outage that plagued just about all of our customers.
Todd, Cole and I have been manning the help desk ever since the network came back up and by now, I think I’ve typed ‘I’m Sorry’ about 1000 times. Get ready! Here comes 1,001:
I’m sorry
Before I took my Sunday nap, I was reading through the final chapters of “Driving Change: The UPS Approach to Business.” It’s funny, because I’m seeing a lot of parallels between the business model of ReadyWire and a gigantic global company like UPS. UPS grew from a bicycle messenger company into an enabler of “global commerce.” Sure, we’re still in the bike messenger phase, but without a doubt, ReadyWire enables companies to connect on a global level.
Hundreds of businesses depend on ReadyWire each day to communicate with their clients. I’ve heard from dozens and dozens of individuals who were unable to collect orders as a result of our 48 hour downtime. Hotels from Bolivia to Orlando were unable to collect reservations. A home appraisal company in middle America couldn’t access their customer quote information from their digital database. Throughout the world, many businesses came to a screeching halt as a result of our network outage. This is something that we’re not proud of.
The success of UPS is a result of their strong pillars, one being their “ability to deliver – and not just packages and documents…UPS has long measured every aspect of its operations, from how many left-hand turns a driver will encounter on a route, to the number of packages the company delivers worldwide each day. (Source: Business principles that underpin a century of UPS).”
We need to take a chapter out of UPS’s book and measure every aspect of our operation. To be perfectly honest, everything is being layed out on the table. The following is some of the questions that I’ve been asking myself over the past few days:
1. Network- Is ReadyWire’s network in shape? Is our Houston data center serving our best interest for shared and reseller hosting needs and is our data center in Chicago providing us with the best solution for our streaming media customers? Is our network safe and sound? These are the tough questions that we’re asking ourselves right now. If we find that the answers don’t measure up, we’ll certainly make changes. Even going as far as moving servers to another data center is a possibility.
2. Online Help Desk- When our network was down, ReadyWire clients such as yourself were unable to visit our website and communicate with our customer service team. We need to correct that, and fast. We’re working on making our website & technical support portal 100% redundant, so that you’ll always be able to reach us.
3. Telephone Call Center- I reviewed our telephone records throughout the outage. Hundreds and hundreds of calls poured into our phone bank, to the point where our provider couldn’t handle all of the calls. We’re going to work with our phone company to ensure that doesn’t happen again.
But on that same note, it appears as if having a network status voicemail line could have been quite helpful to you. We’re going to make a “Network Status Announcement” a standard feature of our phone tree. Most importantly, we’ll work to keep it updated with useful information in the event of an outage.
Any suggestions or comments? Just like the title suggests, this is an open memo. I would love to hear your suggestions or comments. Please do not hesitate to write me personally. You connect with me one on one by emailing rick @ readywire.com. If you would prefer to talk, shoot me an email and I’ll give you a call when it’s convenienant for you.
Sincerely,
Rick Hall
Senior VP of Operations
ReadyWire Multimedia Solutions
