We’re excited to share that Barracuda has been recognized as an Excellence Award finalist in the Best Customer Service category for the 2021 SC Awards. Finalists are recognized for outstanding leadership and providing superior security products to the cybersecurity industry. Winners will be announced online during Awards Week beginning Monday, May 3, 2021.
To give you a closer look at what sets Barracuda customer support apart and helps the team consistently deliver the best service for our customers, we spoke with Hossein Ghazizadeh, Chief Services Officer at Barracuda. He shared insights on the team’s approach to customer service, the ways they help customers, and how they continually innovate.
Q&A with Hossein Ghazizadeh, Chief Services Officer
Q&A with Hossein Ghazizadeh, Chief Services OfficerWhat sets the Barracuda support team’s approach to customer service apart?
The most important part of our journey is how much passion we have for the job that we do every day, making sure we provide the best service possible for our customers so that their issues get resolved in a timely manner.
At Barracuda, we strive to provide excellent customer service with live people always on the receiving end to help troubleshoot — there are no phone trees or automated service. Barracuda offers 24/7 phone-based technical support as part of the purchase price. Customers can contact our knowledgeable support team by phone, email, and live chat, or the Barracuda Communities Portal 24/7/365.
We do not segment support based on security levels like competitors. All cases are treated as business critical, and we provide the fastest response times, no matter the complexity of the issue or the time customers call in, because we know every issue is a priority for the customers. At Barracuda, we also do not rely on any outsourcing agencies to give our customers support. Any issues or requests will be handled directly by experienced Barracuda engineers.
The team goes the extra mile to help customers. We had few customers calling in during initial lockdowns last year who did not have budget to renew their licenses, and we went ahead and provided the support they needed. Now, most of those customers have renewed their contracts and have expressed their gratitude for our approach.
What are the most important ways the team is helping customers?
We help customers with everything from doing an initial setup to debugging complex network issues. The team assists customers with their current issue and provides documentation and knowledge base articles to ensure they understand how the products work. We even go out of our scope to pinpoint compatibility issues with other vendors and point out the exact cause of failure, which helps customers contact the other vender and get a quick resolution.
We are helping customers build a better and safer infrastructure and achieve their business goals, especially these days when everyone needs to have secure remote access for their employees.
What are some ways the team is innovating or continually trying to improve?
We maintain a continuous feedback loop using in-person seminars, user groups, online customer feedback forums, regular customer surveys, and ongoing communication and support. This helps us continually improve the service we provide our customers. Our team has an excellent knowledge on the platform, which helps them give some critical suggestions to resolve customer issues.
When the team gets negative feedback, we immediately contact the customer to make sure they’re satisfied and see what more we can do for them. There are situations that require further escalation, and we will bring in the engineering team when needed. If something takes longer to resolve, we follow up with the customer to provide regular updates.
Documentation on Barracuda Campus is another area where we’re constantly working to improve. The content on Campus is broken down in a way that is easy to understand, using screenshots, graphics, and examples as needed to illustrate points clearly. Video content provides a closer look when needed. On article and video pages, we provide space for feedback that goes directly to content owners, so we can quickly adjust to customer needs and requests for enhanced documentation.
Plus, Barracuda Campus visitors can read our product documentation in German, Spanish, Italian, French, Japanese, and Chinese, in addition to English. Campus also provides full search capabilities for all offered languages.
Are there any tools or services the team provides that you wish more people were aware of?
Barracuda Professional Services helps customers and partners properly implement and maintain Barracuda products and secure their businesses, without the need for additional internal staffing, training, or maintenance.
Customers also can purchase Premium Support as part of an annual subscription. With premium support, Barracuda will actively monitor the system and alert the customer if something goes wrong. Premium support customers calling in are routed directly to a senior technician. We have dedicated premium support engineers for some key accounts. This ensures that our team is aware about unique aspects of the customer deployment, which helps resolve issues much more efficiently.
On the MSP side, we offer Data Protection as a Service, as well as Managed Firewall and Managed Backup. These are a value-add for the customer and help reduce support cases.
We also have campus teams who are available to provide trainings and seminars to help get partners and customers educated on our products and how they work.
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