There are many reasons to migrate to the cloud, including cost savings, business continuity, and ease of use. Certainly, freeing up IT staff is also a principal factor. By eliminating routine chores like updates and bug fixes, IT staff members can focus on their mission-critical core operations. Regardless of the specific reasons the customer decided to migrate, it selected your company’s cloud/hybrid solution based on its reputation and the assurances made during the sales process. Therefore your company’s crucial and ongoing responsibility is the constant reaffirmation that the customer made the correct decision. 

New customers may be a little fuzzy on just what their new cloud solutions can actually deliver.  Therefore, customer handling must be well choreographed and consistent with every call to eliminate any additional confusion. One thing most cloud solution surveys reveal is that approximately 70 percent of customers still prefer talking to a live person when addressing a support problem. The surveys also indicate that being put on hold or advised that their problem is being escalated to a higher level is definitely not acceptable. 

When ranking mission-critical cloud/hybrid solutions, communications is always at the top. I leveraged my knowledge of the fax industry to select a company that I knew had a great reputation for support. etherFAX is a hybrid fax solution that also integrates with many traditional fax server applications so it covers a broad spectrum of the fax industry. I wanted some first-hand feedback so I went directly to one of etherFAX’s support engineers, Ryan Collins.

First, I asked Ryan how etherFAX handles customer escalation; Ryan said “everyone processing calls is enabled to handle all situations including infrastructure and carrier issues, so this is really a non-issue for etherFAX”. When I introduced the subject of number portability, which can sometimes be problematic for cloud migrations, Ryan explained that “etherFAX has a dedicated number porting team to handle these issues.”  It also has a layered support structure to ensure customer satisfaction. Even the company president regularly handles support calls. 

Customer references can be decisive for hosted cloud solution sales. Therefore vendors must formulate a system that works for their particular company and product. When it comes to customer satisfaction, positive support outcomes are indispensable

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Max Schroeder is vice president emeritus of FaxCore Inc. (www.faxcore.com ) and co-chair of the SIP Forum (News - Alert) Fax-over-IP Task Group (www.sipforum.org).