A Third-Party Management Best Practices Checklist
When it comes to customer support, Dell has made a lot of progress in terms of improving its reputation by instituting a ProSupport program for its servers. Starting today, Dell is now extending that same level of support to its PCs and tablets.
Jim Roth, executive director of the support and deployment product group at Dell, says the ProSupport program relies on a predictive analytics capability that Dell has developed that enables it to alert customers when a particular component is about to fail. Based on SupportAssist agent software for Windows environments that Dell installs on its devices and servers, Roth says customers can either opt to have Dell install that software or download it themselves. That latter capability is provided in case IT organizations are dealing with a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) environment where IT doesn’t have direct control over all the devices being acquired.
As the way hardware is acquired continues to evolve, Roth says the agent software created by Dell includes application programming interfaces that connect Dell devices back to a self-service portal provided by Dell through which IT organizations can manage those systems.
In addition, organizations that sign up for the ProSupport receive 24×7 priority access to Dell engineers; ProSupport; coverage for drops, spills and electrical surges; and an option to retain damaged hard drives after replacement to ensure the data on those devices is not seen by anyone outside of the IT organization.
For organizations that have more than 1,000 systems in the ProSupport program, Dell will also make available a dedicated Technical Account Manager.
Dell says that customers that sign up for ProSupport spend 84 percent less time on the phone with technical support and have 58 percent fewer steps in the support process. For overworked IT organizations, Roth says that reduction in routine maintenance and support activity alone should free up enough time for IT organizations to perhaps finally add a lot more value to the business elsewhere.
