Company: Unitrends, Burlington, MA
Company Description: Unitrends increases uptime and confidence in a world in which IT professionals must do more with less. Unitrends leverages high-availability hardware and software engineering, cloud economics, enterprise power with consumer-grade design, and customer-obsessed support to natively provide all-in-one enterprise backup and continuity. Learn more at www.unitrends.com or follow @Unitrends on Twitter.
Nomination Category: Customer Service Department Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Customer Service Department of the Year – Computer Hardware
 Nomination Title: Unitrends
- Which will you submit for your nomination in this category, a video of up to five (5) minutes, explaining the achievements since July 1, 2020 of the nominated department, OR written answers to the questions? (Choose one):
Written answers to the questions
- Reference any attachments of supporting materials throughout this nomination and how they provide evidence of the claims you have made in this nomination (up to 250 words):
Total 248 words used.
Here is one example of a Unitrends case study that mentions outstanding customer service: “I was surprisingly impressed overall. Anytime we have a support call, it is solved so quickly and easily, with almost no downtime. Unitrends support has exceeded expectations.” https://www.unitrends.com/case-studies/canada-diagnostic-centres Here is a sample of Unitrends product reviews that mention customer support:
- If you are submitting a video of up to five (5) minutes in length, provide the URL of the video here, OR attach it to your entry via the "Add Attachments, Videos, or Links to This Entry" link above, through which you may also upload a copy of your video. If you are submitting written answers to the questions for this category, provide them in the spaces below.
- Outline the department's achievements since July 1 2020 that you wish to bring to the judges' attention (up to 250 words):
Total 250 words used.
Data Points:
- Achieved 99% CSAT—up from 98% since last year’s Stevie Award submission
- Over 84% of chat requests answered in under 30 seconds—up from 80% since last year’s Stevie Award submission
- Average of 37 Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) recoveries per month performed by the customer service department. This is up from 30 events per month since last year’s Stevie Award submission
During a DRaaS recovery, our team moves data and applications protected by Unitrends hardware to the Unitrends Cloud so our customers can keep operating during an outage. The average 37 monthly recoveries include services for both actual disaster declaration events, a time when customer service is of the utmost importance, and testing events to ensure SLAs and BC/DR goals can be met. Our customer service department is held to an SLA of either 1-hour or 24-hours for server spin-up and the department responds to DRaaS events 24/7/365.
Other accomplishments:
- Expanded support reliability and scalability through broadened geo-support coverage in the addition of three new support facilities located in Miami, Vancouver, and Orlando.
- Implemented focused support for new Windows Server 2022 and Windows 11 file and image level backup and recovery offerings.
- Further expanded hardware support for new ION/ION+ desktop appliances. These appliances are for offices with no server room and provide a completely silent micro desktop (ION models) or a powerful and ultra-quiet desktop tower (ION+ models).
- Full support coverage 24/7/365 + holidays via phone, email, chat and online support portal. Anytime, anywhere, any way you choose.
- Briefly describe the nominated department: its history and past performance (up to 200 words):
Total 197 words used.
Unitrends, a Kaseya company, has been in the business of making backup and recovery as hassle-free as possible for over 30 years. From the beginning, Unitrends’ mission has included expert customer support that exceeds both industry benchmarks and customer expectations. As our solutions have grown from a simple backup appliance to an integrated BC/DR solution, customer support satisfaction rates (CSAT) have remained a priority. The department has maintained CSAT at 98% or higher over the years. Weekly CSAT reports are reviewed by our executive team, ensuring a high standard.
Recent history includes the 2018 merger of Kaseya and Unitrends. Though organizational changes are often the norm during mergers, the leadership of the Unitrends hardware customer service department has remained steady. Vice President of Support, Dan Wixon, has led the Unitrends department for the last 10 years and has also taken on leadership of global support at Kaseya. Most of our customer support management team has remained at the helm. One such example is Luke Stokes, Manager of Customer Support Engineering, who began as a Tech at Unitrends in 2006. We know our dedicated and knowledgeable hardware customer service department is key to our high customer satisfaction rates.
- Explain why the achievements you have highlighted are unique or significant. If possible compare the achievements to the performance of other players in your industry and/or to the department's past performance (up to 250 words):
Total 245 words used.
The quality of technical support and customer service is a frequent hot button topic among IT professionals. With increasingly complicated tools, stretched budgets, and “always on” becoming the standard for many organizations, it’s no wonder the typical overworked IT admin has little patience for slow or uninformed support staff. Unitrends is unique in the tech and backup industries for our reputation of highly reliable, fast, and knowledgeable customer service.
The excellence of Unitrends hardware customer support is one of the most mentioned reasons customers like Unitrends backup appliances and decide to stay with Unitrends. Users frequently say that our support team is dependable and knowledgeable plus solves the problem quickly—a key benefit with so many IT admins managing multiple products on little time.
The Unitrends hardware customer service department has maintained this high level of service amidst many challenges. In the last year, integrations have increased in pace across the corporate product portfolio for all Kaseya solutions. These integrations streamline operations for our customers but also increase demand on the Unitrends support staff. Not only does our customer service department receive more calls as customers add products, but our Techs must also have a broader range of expertise. Our Techs now help customers with their Unitrends backup hardware as it works in concert with products like Kaseya VSA and Cyber Hawk. It’s significant that Unitrends CSAT rates stayed high and, in fact, increased one percentage point from 98% to 99% during this time of growth.
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