We reviewed our hosting provider again recently as part of a major upgrade in capacity to handle our growth.

Saasu client data (and our own) sits inside some pretty cool technology infrastructure in an extremely high grade location with world class qualifications including some from financial institutions and government security organisations.

Just some of our technology infrastructure features -

• Guards on the front door
• Hundreds of cameras
• Concrete all round - including the roof
• Biometric security
• Multiple levels of steel access doors and cages
• Multiple levels of redundant power, telecommunications and air conditioning
• Laser smoke particle detection; not to mention
• 24×7 monitoring plus
• Heavy duty protection from ram raids and even plane crashes

That helps us well sleep at night and we think it helps thousands of our users to sleep well at night too.

We also had yet another client with laptop problems recently. This follows a long line of similar client problems with their equipment being lost or stolen from client offices and cars not to mention dropped or broken laptops. All these events mean their business is impacted negatively because of lost data because many people still use software with local data copies on their PC/Mac.

But not if they use SaaS. In every case the saasu.com clients get up and running in minutes with much relief.

No loss of -

• Data (nor any data disclosure risk) - just find another computer with Internet access
• Time just when you need that time the most
• Revenue
• Client Satisfaction

It is unlikely any laptop with a local copy of your financial records will ever offer the same security and peace of mind as SaaS ‘big iron’ technology infrastructure.

Yet another reason why SaaS (Software as a Service) will prevail over Software for most businesses in the long run and why more and more are realising this benefit every single day.

I witnessed a customer service experience that was dear to Saasu’s philosophy. We are very strong on customer service. Even great companies occasionally drop a ball, all great teams do, but the true test is recovery. We keep training, practising and perfecting our customer service game. See our Saasu Satisfaction Guarantee page for the detailed promises. (more…)

Joel on Software: Seven steps to remarkable customer service. The “Fix everything two ways” is something we definitely do.

We keep reminding ourselves that customer service is our best marketing channel we have. Saasu acquires a lot of new business via word of mouth. We make every effort to ensure we don’t get caught in the enterpise level traps of customer service. We attempt to generate a customer service ‘automaton’ approach where we map how the customer wants to interact with us (user story) then we set an automated process in place for dealing with answering questions, logging feedback or bugs and providing the medium of communication they want without forcing them in a direction they don’t like.

Service is a sales channel

A key failure point of many enterprises is to put a price on customer service as an “expense”. This is denying its ability to be one of your best sales channels. It amazes me that companies spend millions of dollars on sales teams while they let the side down on the service side. We know that if you look after the customer they simply tells lots of people about the amazing experience.

Service is a chance for humans to help other humans

Denying your staff the opportunity to really help people because it costs money to do so is a real crime. I mean this in a emotional way. Humans like to help other humans. If you don’t build that within the service culture of your organisation you aren’t creating a giving, compassionate attitude toward customer needs. These values shouldn’t just reside in the realm of relationships at personal, family and community level, they should pervade the business community also.

Service must be Authentic

Much anger and frustration towards larger telco’s and banks exists in the community because of this issue. A lot of banks produce nice looking adds to try and make you like them but fail at customer service. There is no authenticity present around the relationship.

Service needs to be a human approach supported by technology

We have resisted moving to having a computer answering the phone. We expect some day we will split our phone numbers into support, accounts and sales to help manage the incoming calls which are building daily, however we will always strive to have Human involvement in communication. Our view is that if you want to force people to talk to a machine then they would probably be happy to use the net instead. They use the phone because they want human help, the customisation it offers and the speed of interaction. Wasting 5 minutes surfing a phone menu system only to be put on hold really kills your customers perception of your organisation.

Service includes managing customer requests for features and product

We always document customer requests for features and notify them when they have been built. Why? Many enterprises pay huge money so survey customer needs and experience. Customers, even prospective ones will give you this information for free if you simply help them to give it to you via different channels to supply the information. Talking to a human on the phone, a feedback form, a new feature/product email all acquire voluntary feedback.

Good service is often as simple as answering the question asked

We answer the vast majority of email support questions within a couple of hours but we don’t always answer support questions the same day. We tend to open the email or answer the call by following a simple approach of logging what questions were asked and simply working through each with either (a) answers or (b) an action we plan to take to get an answer. I get frustrated a little when we can’t answer the question but sometimes we don’t have the information to answer them or the legal authority to do so (tax questions). Access to the right person who knows the answer isn’t always possible. That said, we are about to implement a new process involving 3rd parties to allow users to treat us as a one stop shop which should improve this.