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Case Studies
East Point Systems
Profile by TeamSupport Staff
East Point Systems (www.EastPointSystems.com), headquartered in East Hartford, CT, is a rapidly growing Microsoft Certified Partner and solutions provider to the Mortgage Field Services industry. The company's software helps users track, report, and facilitate communication about work orders on foreclosed properties. East Point customers comprise a nationwide network of contractors and inspectors, all operating on a common data platform. "We were looking for an ASP.NET [a web application development framework] based ticket tracking system ... one derived from the same technology stack as our current systems so that it would be familiar and easy to integrate via an API," said Jason Margarido, executive VP, technology & operations.
"We discovered TeamSupport by searching Google; its ease of use and simple ticket workflow attracted us initially. We evaluated several other candidates, but in the end it was TeamSupport's integration of e-mail, knowledgebase and customer-facing portal, and flexible API that sealed-the-deal for us!"
East Point went "live" with TeamSupport in March 2010, after Margarido and his staff spent a month-and-a-half ramping-up and adapting TeamSupport to suit their infrastructure and workflow. "We had to replicate customer accounts so that support tickets would attach to the correct record, define customizations for various ticket types, and establish escalation policies; the API interface was simple, easy to use, and to get back what we were looking for," he said. TeamSupport was connected both to an internal, home-grown customer management application and a new, more powerful Microsoft CRM installation. "We wanted the API to integrate the current system during our migration; once we're fully onto Microsoft CRM, we'll change the code entirely over to the new system."
As with anything new in the workplace, there was some initial resistance. It was quickly overcome, however, "because TeamSupport helped us so much in dealing with day-to-day issues ... it gave us a centralized base to manage everything throughout the workflow," noted support manager Ahad Malik. Once ticket and issue policies were established, Malik helped his support team incorporate ticket writing into their customer sessions and learn to include the essential information needed by fellow team members and supervisors to quickly understand and respond to issues.
With a diverse and geographically spread out user-base, the East Point support staff is challenged to stay organized and on-top of their customers. TeamSupport "gave us a unified system, not only for tracking the calls we receive, but to improve communication between [our own] team members on issues," said Malik, especially in regard to "issues from repeat customers and/or repeat issues. We solve problems more quickly by having the relevant information on hand." In addition to keeping everyone organized, and because every ticket is associated with a specific account, TeamSupport helps track time spent per customer. East Point uses Bomgar, a remote support tool, to connect with end-user systems for troubleshooting and training. Rather than track issues by phone call, tickets are created per remote session.
Aside from ticket management, East Point is compiling the necessary data to make extensive use of TeamSupport's knowledgebase and Wiki features, both for internal consumption and via its Customer Self-Service Portal, "we see them being an integral part of our workflow," said Malik. Currently, TeamSupport is deployed to East Point Systems' product development, customer support, and training departments. The company is evaluating an expansion into sales, billing, and other management areas.
Margarido characterized the support received from TeamSupport as "Exceptional – they've been extremely responsive to our issues, feature requests and general usage questions ... we never have to follow-up with anything, they keep us updated." Both he and Malik would definitely recommend TeamSupport, "It's a great centralized resource for ticket management with the support to back it up ... they made it very easy for us to integrate into our daily operations."
Jason Margarido is an IT professional with more than 14 years experience in commercial software engineering. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from Eastern Connecticut State University and has been with East Point Systems from 1996-2002 and since 2004.
Ahad Malik joined the company in 2009 as a technical support representative. He quickly rose to become manager of the technical support department as well as East Point's internal hardware and networking expert. Ahad has eight years of computing and network administration experience.
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