Case Study: Talon Data Services
Talon Data Systems needed a customer support software program to meet the demands of a new client. Their old system lacked essential features and wouldn’t scale. TeamSupport has helped the growing company tighten up its workflow and serve customers better.
The Customer:
Established in 1998, Talon Data Systems is a value-added integrator of high-speed storage and networking systems. The rapidly growing Los Angeles-based company designs, installs and supports solutions ranging from small attached storage systems to petabytes of SAN (storage area network) and clustered NAS (network attached storage).
Talon also manufactures NetFlightâ„¢, billed as the industry’s fastest WAN (wide-area network) transfer appliance. The Talon team – with over 100 years of combined professional experience in data storage and networking workflows – provides engineering and support services, plus a selection of best-of-breed products to handle large amounts of data.
Initially focused on media & entertainment with clients like Comcast/NBC Universal, DirecTV and E! Networks, the company has since expanded into such diverse enterprise markets as logistics (APL) and medical research (City of Hope), all while adding locations across the United States and in Europe.
The Business Challenge:
Mike Bott, Talon’s head of engineering, needed a customer support system to meet the demands of a new client. Their old system lacked essential features and wouldn’t scale. Team Support made the short list, along with several competitors, and soon became the favorite based on its API, overall functionality and reasonable cost.
The TeamSupport Solution(s):
A tipping point was the quick and easy set-up of TeamSupport’s Customer Portal. “It required zero cycles on our part,” said Bott. “You check a box and—poof!— there’s a portal…You can customize it, of course, but the fact is, you can be up and running with a portal customers can use to open and view their tickets right out of the gate!”
“We implemented TeamSupport just ahead of a huge managed services contract for a major new client,” Bott recalled. “There was a hard requirement for a customer portal and ticketing system; we were able to demo that and it was a big part of what helped us win the business from a giant ‘household name’ competitor.”
TeamSupport’s automated SLA (Service Level Agreement) tracking and reporting was also a deciding factor: “It escalates and starts ‘complaining’ with emailed warnings if a ticket isn’t responded to in the correct amount of time.” Bott also appreciated TeamSupport’s effortless email integration, adding: “It’s smooth and light weight…we use e-mail to push updates into Team Support; when customers respond, their comments add right onto the ticket.”
Integrating TeamSupport into Talon’s day-to-day workflow was “So intuitive! To get employees up-to-speed, we just set-up their account and answered whatever questions after they’d read the basic ‘how to’ docs we provided … it was so much easier than our previous ticketing system!”
The Results:
Today, Talon Data currently operates 16 seats of TeamSupport’s Enterprise Edition that impact Bott’s systems engineering group, as well as Talon’s software development, operations and sales departments. “It’s allowed me to scale a bit better; it’s tightened-up the workflows; it’s easier to provide upward visibility by subscribing people to customer tickets in the system.” Next on Bott’s to-do list is “integration with our external time-tracking application and it looks to be very straightforward.”
Bott came to Talon Data with a wealth of hands-on storage and networking experience – not only in engineering, but customer support, operations and sales – when he joined the company some four years ago. He has no reservations about recommending TeamSupport to others; Bott and his staff are “very happy with TeamSupport’s interface, as are our customers!”
