Synnex Canada Responds and Makes Things Right After an Error

Recently, we went through our first DOA HP LaserJet business series printer in what seems like years!

We spent a few hours troubleshooting with HP support walking through everything from firmware updates, firmware recoveries, to recovery-mode firmware wipe and reloads.

Nothing worked to get the printer to recognize the 1500 sheet tray that we added to the unit.

So, HP Support ticket ID in hand we called in to our supplier, had the printer set as DOA, and provided the printer’s serial number to our Synnex Customer Service contact.

Needless to say, through a series of errors made on Synnex’s end we ended up spending a _lot_ of time working through the resulting mess over a series of months.

We put out a couple of Tweets to let the powers that be at Synnex know that our frustration levels were reaching critical mass.

• MPECSInc Tweet: You are about to lose a customer, us, over a Synnex RMA screw up that Canada is trying to back charge me $630 on.
• MPECSInc Tweet: Yeah, what a waste of JessieB's and my time. We spent HOURS getting through the mess. Damage Control needed.

After the first Tweet Mary Ellen Grom approached us almost immediately by phone.

Long story short, we went through a mind-bending RMA process with Ingram Micro Canada a number of years ago and needless to say we leave them to the very last for any distribution orders we need to place.

Synnex Canada came very close.

We are very happy to announce that not only has the mess been straightened out but Synnex took extra steps to make sure we were happy given the amount of time we spent on the problem.

This situation and its resolution demonstrates very clearly to us why a very substantial part of our distribution purchases have been made through Synnex Canada over the history of our company.

The Synnex Sales Team that is assigned to us has always been very responsive whether by phone, e-mail, or notes on an order placed.

Our Synnex Microsoft licensing contacts have been consistently better than any of the other distributor’s contacts hands-down.

Most certainly we are _not_ the biggest fish in the sea. However, in this day and age when we all face business pressures from all sides every customer/client relationship needs extra special attention. And, when we make an error the restitution to our customer/client should be worth something to them.

Thank you to Mary Ellen and the Synnex folks that reached out to us to straighten things out and make things right. :)

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

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SBS Migration DNS and Shaw’s Customer Phone Support = Huge Improvement

At least here in the Greater Edmonton Area.

In the past, trying to get through to Shaw Internet Support would cost at least half and hour to an hour of wait time. Once through, the folks on the other end of the phone would not necessarily follow through on the support request or not understand what was being asked of them.

We needed to make DNS changes to our client’s domain hosting setup to prepare for the migration we are doing today.

The call was on hold less than 5 minutes and the fellow that took care of all of the needed changes took care of them all without any problem.

• Redirect www.domain.ca to Shaw’s servers for hosting their site. It is currently hosted on their own internal server.
• Implement ExchangeDefender’s inbound MX record for their domain e-mail.
• Implement a DNS A record for remote.domain.ca to point to the new SBS 2008 server.

With these changes out of the way, we are now getting ready to remove ISA 2004 from SBS 2003 and restructure around 1 NIC. From there, we will install SBS 2008 in Migration Mode and go as we have done the preliminary health checks on our source server and everything looks to be good to go! :)

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*All Mac on SBS posts will not be written on a Mac until we replace our now missing iMac! (previous blog post)

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Business Principles: The other guy did it! Oh really?!?

We have an ongoing Internet outage here in an Edmonton burrow that is affecting some of our clients.

The Phone Company in their great wisdom has messed up an entire city burrow with an infrastructure upgrade. There is no Internet connectivity there. Period. This situation has been going on since last Thursday morning.

Some of our clients have an ISP that rides on top of the Phone Company's infrastructure. That ISP is in the midst of what can be called a PR disaster of epic proportions.

How is that? The only point of contact for many of their customers with crippled Internet connections is their support phone number. That phone number currently has a fast busy due to an entire city burrow phoning it at once.

So, where does that leave the ISP's customers? Presently, completely out of the loop.

What does that mean for the ISP's customer base? More than likely shrinkage! :*Þ

A simple phone call by the ISP to the radio stations here in town with a request to broadcast a message indicating that there are wide scale problems with the systems in the burrow and that the problems are being worked on would go a long way to helping ease their customer's pain.

Hearing from the ISP, "it is all the Phone Company's fault" via their front line phone people - when one does get through - does not go very far with most people today.

Take responsibility, apologize for the mess, and let your customers know that you care about their concerns.

What is our role in all this?

To keep calling into the ISP for status reports every 3 or 4 hours so we can in turn let our client's who are affected by this whole mess know what is happening.

This little service that we are providing goes a long way towards setting us apart from the "other guy".

Howz that?

We are taking the time to call into the ISP on our client's behalf and then let our clients know how things are progressing - or not.

It shows our clients that we care about them and their business livelihood.

Taking that Extra Step in our Customer Service pays huge dividends in our client relationships.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists