IBM Customer Service

OK, by now you've noticed that I've been preoccupied with customer service. Just because we are small IT departments doesn't mean that we can mistreat the people who depend on our services. In the past, I've complained about Google's lack of communication. Today I want to talk about a great customer service experience I had.

We have an IBM xSeries 225 that runs our Web server. It had two drives in a RAID1 array for the operating system and four drives in a RAID5 array for data. Because of it had more than enough disk space and RAM for its primary purpose, I began testing VMware Server on it.

VMware Server is a great way to test out implementations before rolling them out to the masses. Because I'm using it as a test environment with no production information, I never bothered backing up the VMware data. Occasionally I would copy the html folder to another server that is backed up. I wasn't worried about the other data as long as the Web site data was safe.

Soon, our resident Web designer began working on our new Web site in a virtual server. I never thought about the lack of back up for that virtual server. Well, I didn't think about it when one drive went defunct in our RAID5 array. "No big deal," I thought. "I'll get it replaced and everything will be fine." I had no worries about the virtual machines stored on that array.

No worries until the next day when a second drive in that array went defunct. No worries until I realized the server was two months out of warranty. No worries until the web designer called because he couldn't access the only copy of his web site! Suddenly I had a lot of worries.

IBM, unlike Google, has their tech support phone number prominently listed on their Web site. I called, expecting the worst. After a very short trip through the automated phone system and a wonderfully brief amount of time on hold, I was on with a tech. He quickly found that the server was out of warranty and told me up front that there wasn't a lot he could do for me. That should have been the end of the story, for all intents and purposes.

But this tech didn't let it go at that. After explaining in detail just what I was potentially up against, he offered to have the RAID controller logs reviewed for me so I would know for sure what was going on. He then got another tech to review the logs and called me back to give me a plan of action.

So, he wasn't supposed to help me. For all I know, his boss wouldn't want him to help me. In the end, he gave me all the information I needed to save our data and spent considerable time on the phone with me to make sure I understood what needed to happen.

I still need to replace a hard drive and put the finishing touches on my backup plan (yes, I have a plan for that server now!), but thanks to some terrific customer service from a terrific tech -- I was able to service my customer and live to tell you about it!

In the end, there are three lessons here:

1. Review your backup plan often. Servers usage will change over time. Just because it used to not have valuable information on it doesn't mean it still doesn't!
2. Have a spare hard drive on hand for your RAID array. When one goes bad, you cannot wait to get a replacement!
3. Go the extra mile for your users. They will appreciate it more than you know. It's good for your career and it is good for your organization.