All networking equipment eventually requires some maintenance, like your house, cars, computers, etc., due to an accident, age, or network threat to name a few. Extreme Networks’ award-winning technical support is here to protect your network. Today every organization, regardless of industry, runs off their network, which is why it must be protected by the best support in the market, Extreme Networks’ Global Technical Assistance Center or GTAC.

Any network downtime can cause massive ramifications if not dealt with quickly. Retail stores have point-of-sale devices which must be constantly connected to their network to process transactions. When a store network goes down it directly impacts the operations, resulting in lost sales. Any network outage which interrupts these devices can be disastrous.

With all of this in mind, I sat down with Brian Townsend, the director of customer services at Extreme Networks. Brian answered my GTAC questions and shared his insight about how Extreme has achieved our #1 industry-rating for technical support by Gartner Peer Insights and maintained our status as an industry leader in customer service and support. This is not a recent trend at Extreme Networks, customers have always raved about our quality customer service. Here is a glimpse of my conversation with Brian:

Question #1: What separates Extreme’s GTAC from other service organizations?

Easy, the tenure of the team, which is approaching 10 years on average, being 100% in-sourced, and our tearing model all make Extreme Networks unique with an unparalleled reputation of exceptional service. Our entire team is driven to ensure any challenge one of our customer’s may face is resolved as quickly and seamlessly as possible.

Question #2: Does having two levels of engineers truly make a difference for customers? 

No question, this means that a customer doesn’t get passed from level to level to level, needing to continuously repeat the problem statement or details that have already been shared.  Having two levels, speeds up resolution time, which is ultimately what our customers want and deserve. Can you image explaining yourself to as many as 5 levels of support as some of our competitors force their customers to do? I can’t and that’s why we’ve streamlined Extreme support services to resolve customers’ requests quickly and efficiently. We’ve set ourselves a part from the competition with a 94% first person resolution rate.

Question #3: Who or what do you attribute the overwhelming feedback to?

The dedication and teamwork of the engineers. It’s truly the dedication, teamwork, and customer-first focus that makes us successful. We empower engineers with these values so they can provide customers with the best outcomes and solutions.

In addition to GTAC’s 24/7 technical assistance, they also offer customers access to the GTAC Knowledge Base where users can search for answers to commonly asked questions provided by trained Extreme Networks’ engineers. The GTAC team also hosts The HUB Community, an online community where end-users share their experiences with Extreme Networks’ products. The HUB helps end-users limit downtime and improve network efficiency by creating an environment for IT staff to learn, share, and develop their ‘Extreme’ networking skills. The HUB Community has over 5,000 members and is growing fast, join today!

GTAC’s two-tier support approach has been noticed not only by our customers, but also by our Service Sales team. The Service Sales team markets this approach as a differentiator from the competition. According to Rob Rosa, vice president of service sales, “Extreme’s GTAC delivers a differentiated approach outside the traditional OEM manufacturers with a team of engineers that stands far above our competition.” But, don’t just take it from us, Dave Falls a Network Engineer at Beaufort County School District says, “All of my dealings with GTAC support have been superb. I’ve been impressed with everyone from the sales staff to the technical staff and how they have bent over backwards for us to ensure that everything is working as it should.”

No one wants to think about needing to call support, but you might have to because we live in a world where anything could happen. So, when you ask yourself, “Who’s got my back?” Remember GTAC always does!