Less Talk, More Action: The Importance of the Customer Experience (Part 2)

Everyone likes to talk about it. Aryaka Managed Services Delivers It.

Part 2 of a 2-part blog. Part 1 is here.

One of the fundamental issues with technology is that enterprises are often focused on individual products’ features and capabilities and pay less attention to making technology solutions work well together and supporting the life cycle from implementation to deployments and rightsizing changing business needs. This often leads to additional costly support needs to help with the complexity to make it all work. As highlighted in part 1 of this blog, large Telco Service Providers, with their often bureaucratic and time-consuming processes, struggle to provide timely and B2C-like expected customer experience with the concurring trends that are the new normal. (Looking at the Net Promoter Score (NPS) of the Telco segment at large, I am generous here in my choice of wording. To say it in the words of CustomerGauge: “The telecommunications industry has historically underperformed in terms of CX.”You can download a free copy of their NPS Benchmark e-book here)

Aryaka Managed Services Experience Is Different

Let’s get into details on how Aryaka provides a managed service with our integrated people, process, and technology approach. And all with a single point of contact for a seamless user experience.

Aryaka Services are based on three pillars to deliver; as one of our customers said, “Happy Users!”

The tight integration of all three and our complete control and accountability has earned us an industry-leading NPS of 65 and back-to-back Gartner Peer Insights Customer’s Choice recognition.

Day-1 SLA-Backed Global Backbone

Optimized Global and Regional Connectivity

Our 40+ global Services PoPs deliver managed service richness at the cloud edge, based on an architecture that integrates connectivity, compute, and storage, are very different from conventional transport hubs or virtual PoPs. Aryaka Services PoPs, placed within 30ms of any knowledge worker across the globe on six continents, are interconnected via dedicated Layer 2 links across the world, ensuring best-in-class end-to-end application performance and link availability SLAs that Aryaka’s orchestration and visibility back up and that span the last, middle, and first miles.

Multi-Cloud Connectivity Globally

Aryaka’s multi-cloud networking as-a-service, or Software-defined Cloud Interconnect (SDCI), delivers direct connectivity to public cloud PoPs including AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Alibaba Cloud, and Oracle Cloud and direct connectivity to major SaaS applications. We also provide Cloud Services Extensions (CSX) that extend the geographic reach and allow for rapid, scalable access to hundreds of cloud services globally by leveraging colocation providers and a software-defined fabric. CSX is fully managed by Aryaka, providing a single point of contact and ease of use for customers.

High Availability and High Performance

Our architecture provides multiple layers of redundancy across the network traffic path, ensuring that customer connectivity to the Aryaka private core does not get compromised and maintains the highest uptime and end-to-end Service Level Agreements (SLAs) with five-nines for uptime and SLAs for packet loss jitter and latency. Middle Mile (Aryaka Core Backbone ) redundancy is provided via redundant L1 / L2 private connectivity between all PoPs having any-to-any full mesh and partial mesh connectivity. Each PoP provides uninterrupted uptime with redundant systems at both the hardware and software layers. First and Last Mile redundancy consists of connectivity from the customer edge to the Services PoP edge and can be one or more edge links across different ISPs.

Flexible Bandwidth Allocation for Remote and Onsite Users

Our secure remote private access solution, delivered as a managed VPN as-a-service, leverages the high performance of the global core backbone and combines flexible utilization of deterministic, dedicated network resources to both branch and remote users for maximum performance irrespective of traffic shifts between the two. In addition, the service offers consolidated visibility into network and application performance and security policies across enterprise core connectivity and all VPN domains.

Cloud-First Services Delivery

Innovative Roadmap and Aryaka Patented Technology

Patented application optimization, secure multi-cloud connectivity, private access remote worker aggregation, and security service integration are examples of the capabilities delivered via Aryaka’s Services PoPs. We own the technology and services roll out and move at the speed of a modern digital enterprise.

Fast and Flexible Services Roll-Out

Deploying Aryaka completely eliminates the CAPEX of purchasing hardware and the ongoing expenses associated with legacy WAN infrastructures. Customers simply can tell us what is needed, and we do the rest to set up the required services. We eliminate costly waiting periods to spin up new sites and services, and customers benefit from our ability to rapidly implement required changes to be up and running in hours.

Full Control and Visibility 

Aryaka delivers observability with complete visibility and control of thousands of applications and the overlay and underlay network infrastructure via the cloud-based MyAryaka portal and single service workflows for immediate insights and change management. I like to describe this to customers with ‘you see what is happening and do something about it instantly.’ No waiting for or finger-pointing between the underlay or overlay network provider to take any necessary action.

Automation Supported Analytics and Insights

Our support team uses an in-house network intelligence tool that leverages Big Data to list any detected anomalies in near real-time. The tool analyzes multiple parameters of deployed customer sites’ to automatically detect anomalies and continuously detect any behavior change.

Seamless Service Management

White-Glove Service Onboarding and Deployment

Aryaka has over a decade of expertise deploying customer networks worldwide with installments in over 100 countries. We know customers place their trust in us with their business-critical applications on our network. The Aryaka onboarding process follows a proven hi-touch step-by-step approach that involves several organizational functions to ensure the best customer experience. At the same time, a dedicated assigned project manager for onboarding and deployment provides constant and timely communication and oversight. This is a critical aspect of our white-glove experience, and customers are fully involved and informed at each step. In deployment, customers can rely on pro-active monitoring and alerts, service management from dedicated support engineers, and regular service management meetings.

Problem Resolution Expertise

Our knowledgeable and continuously trained support staff is available 24×7 and offers support in multiple languages. A clearly defined process of prioritizing support issues and escalation path for quick and expert problem resolution and SLAs are standard for all customer deployments. In addition, we provide SLAs for incidents management and service requests and change requests clearly defined in scope and time to resolution. Customers also have access to self-help via the MyAryaka Customer portal with a detailed knowledge base of deployment guides and documentation. Our support staff consistently earns five stars customer recommendations, which is also reflected in an industry-segment leading Net Promoter Score and Gartner Peer Insights Voice of the Customer recognition as mentioned at the beginning of this blog.

Integrated and Intuitive Single Workflows

Our team applies agile methodology and continuous improvement for service delivery and optimization with our integrated platform and services workflow approach. We offer a seamless experience across the service lifecycle with a single point of contact. All issues are managed by Aryaka and supported by our trained experts. Proactive customer engagement and the tight integration of people, tools, and processes in a single, closed-loop workflow ensures a seamless experience. From onboarding, deployment, monitoring to troubleshooting, and change management, with Aryaka, there is no handing over responsibility or accountability to technology vendors or 3^rd party service providers. More than anything else, our closed-loop service workflows make all the difference for customers compared to other providers out there.

Choice Of Co-Managed Or Fully Managed Models

Our customers have the option to consume Aryaka’s Managed Service as a fully managed service or select a co-managed model. This allows for flexibility and resource/investment protection of existing tools and processes that a customer may want to leverage for its networking and networking security infrastructure.

Last Mile Services with Procurement and Management Worldwide

Our Last Mile Services simplify contract management and payment processing while entirely relieving enterprises of essential network responsibilities, including link procurement, deployment, monitoring, and responding to outages. Aryaka fully manages the last mile for our customers, from procuring and managing the onsite internet links and resolving issues that might disrupt services, so IT can focus on modernizing business as required in the digital age. Enterprises rely upon Aryaka Last Mile Services for a genuine headache-free global end-to-end network solution. More details about our Last Mile Services are here.

Bringing It All Together 

Tight Integration of Service Platform Infrastructure, Control, Management, and Workflows

Aryaka’s tight integration of infrastructure, cloud delivery, and service workflows allow for the rapid rollout and orchestration and management of all vital networking, cloud, and security services as a cloud-based consumption model offers a simply better user experience. Ease of use, agility, and flexibility are built-in and available from the ground up and from Day 1. There is no waiting, no products to buy, no inventory to maintain, and no configurations, deployments, or patches to worry about. Customers choose to consume a service, and we take care of the rest. It is really that simple.

From service workflows to management and control, the experience is SaaS-like in consumption and very different from a traditional telco-carrier or managed service providers that offer services on top of someone else’s network and rely on various stitched together technologies.

Final Thoughts and Words

We are known and celebrated for our patented application acceleration technology. Simply put,  applications run faster, more reliable – just better – on our network. Yet, while our customers come to us based on our technology and the promise of operational simplicity, they end up staying thanks to our relentless focus on customer service and our alignment with their business needs. I wrap up this blog with the words of Ben Warner, IT Infrastructure Manager at Henny Penny:

“Aryaka’s support team is second to none. I’ve been doing this for a long time, and I have not seen a company drive excellence in support like Aryaka. That has transcended across many management changes. Aryaka has a great product and vision that’s supported by the best engineers. Give yourselves a pat on the back and feel proud of what you do –it means a lot. You are the best of the best”!”

Resources:

• Whitepaper – Aryaka Offers An Unparalleled Seamless Lifecycle Experience
• Podcast Series Dreamers & Doers
• Gartner Peer Insights Voice of Customer Report
• TechValidate Customer Reviews

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.