Less Talk, More Action: The Importance of the Customer Experience

Everyone likes to talk about it. Aryaka Managed Services delivers it. Part 1 of a 2-part blog.

More than ever, in the digital economy, providing customers a superior, unique, unforgettable experience is what matters most. Of course, a product or a service must be technologically sound, function reliably, and provide excellent value. Yet, the lasting impression rests more and more on what we think and feel about when using or consuming a product or a service.

Do a quick online search, and there is no shortage of articles about the topic: From a CFO’s role in a great Customer Experience, or when a great Customer Experience requires Digital Transformation to succeed to even what Customer Experience will look like in 2030.

And no doubt about it. A modern, digital enterprise that is open for business around the clock and offers its products and services worldwide must have a customer experience-centric mindset. If anything goes wrong with any application that an employee or customer uses, it is all too often and too easy to blame the network. And while frustration or disappointment with a particular technology’s unfulfilled promises is a reason – be it features, cost/value, or reliability – what has caused the most irritation is how a service makes a user feel. A good or bad experience feeling. That is the users’ experience from quoting, onboarding, deployment, management, orchestration, troubleshooting and time to resolution, time to roll out new capabilities and features, and communication. In short, the Services Lifecycle. And how this lifecycle is experienced matters more and more in a crowded market.

Many services providers fall short here. Especially the large, well-known telecommunications  service providers with their large and bureaucratic siloed structures, that may equally have served as an example of Kafka’s novel ‘The Castle’ (look it up here, it’s well worth a read). Users tolerate the experience because they feel change is too burdensome, too costly, or they are just plain afraid of change in itself.  Their mindset is that no one ever got fired for going with the incumbent! No wonder Harvard Business Review has a paper out with “Rewiring Telecoms for Future Success Means Shifting to a Customer Focus.”

A Managed Services Experience That Is Simply Different 

Enter Aryaka’s Cloud-First WAN. Since this is a blog about customer experience, I let a customer speak first and then go into more details about what makes Aryaka managed services different to address changing business needs. In part 2, I will go into more detail about the Aryaka approach. No rewiring needed.

“Aryaka support? In one word: awesome! I don’t know where you get the people, but I have never met people who work that diligently, are dedicated and quick. And also, they think with the customer. We don’t have to specify what we want. If we explain what we want to do, they think with us to come up with a solution. “

– Jan De Beule, Infrastructure Manager at Premium Sound Solutions

For more details on how we help Premium Sound Solutions, you can read the case study here.

As the digital economy accelerates, a massive shift is underway, from applications and workloads moving to the cloud, employees accessing the very same applications and workloads from anywhere, to the shift in expectations – and how to meet them  – of a modern enterprise network and security services delivery to a more consumer-friendly consumption model.

Business Changes Require a New and Different Approach in the Digital Age

• Application and user bandwidth requirements have grown and changed substantially, and enterprises are looking for an optimal balance of cost, flexibility, reliability, and performance that MPLS and the internet alone are challenged to provide.
• The emergence of the hybrid workplace has shifted the demands to providing connectivity that is flexible and adaptable. Employees need to be enabled to access applications and data for the same level of productivity, at home, on the road, and onsite (in the office, factory, store, or anywhere else).
• With the shift to the cloud, low latency and secure connectivity are paramount. Either via the internet or direct, private connections, users require fast and secure access to cloud and SaaS applications from any location. Legacy architectures that require the backhauling of traffic to the enterprise data center or rely on local internet breakout to the nearest cloud compromise performance and security.
• Enterprise IT needs to move at the speed of business. Cloud (IaaS & SaaS) usage, remote & mobile users, geographical expansion, the proliferation of devices, and an increase of attack surface & cybersecurity threats increase the complexity of 24×7 management while requiring a comprehensive approach to networking and security agility and flexibility.

The Right Architecture Matters

The convergence of networking as-a-service (NaaS) and networking security-as-a-service (NSaaS) – or as Gartner defines the SASE (Secure Access Service Edge), promises to address the needs of enterprises in the digital age.

Aryaka’s global Services PoP-based (Points-of-Presence) WAN architecture combined with our own secure converged services edge technology is ideal for the cloud-first delivery of services. We take a platform approach to provide integrated services spanning the branch, data center, and the remote user while delivering application acceleration, network optimization, security, multi-cloud networking (Software-Defined Cloud Interconnect), analytics, and insights, leveraging global orchestration provisioning and management via our global NOC (Network Operating Center). In addition, Aryaka’s managed services are backed by 24x7x365 multi-lingual customer support.

Aryaka Cloud-First WAN Architecture – Delivered as a Managed Service

Aryaka’s architecture enables enterprises to adopt a cloud-first approach for their network and security infrastructure. It permits enterprises to significantly boost employee productivity and quickly roll out flexible hybrid workplace environments. And do so with an unparalleled performance experience for business applications.

In part 2 next week, I will go into the pillars and seamless integration of people, processes, and technology that is second nature to Aryaka’s Managed Services approach. One that makes our customers feel good, as Kevin Moonsamy, IT Manager from Arcelik, states:

“The biggest benefit of Aryaka? Happy users!“

I am looking forward to publishing part 2 of the blog and accompanying Whitepaper next week. Meanwhile, you may check out what our customers have to say about our services delivery and their experience.

About the author

Klaus Schwegler

Klaus is a Sr. Director of Product Marketing at Aryaka Networks for the last five years. He has over 25 years of experience in the networking, data center, and semiconductor industries, having held positions in product and program marketing, customer service, and business development. He held roles with Equinix, Cisco, Philips Lumileds, Infineon, and Mitsubishi Electronics. Originally from Germany, he's made California home for over two decades and speaks German, English, and some basic Italian. He thinks alpine skiing is the best way to disconnect from our hyperconnected world.