We need heroes, not heroics

I distinctly remember when a fire broke out in one of our customer’s datacenters. One of our own support engineers rushed into the room, risking their own life, placing covers over the server racks to minimize the damage. The sprinkler system activated in time to stop the fire from destroying the building, but not before soaking most of the equipment. 

Our team sprang into action, working day and night to rebuild the datacenter in mere weeks, not months. We sourced equipment from all over the world to recover the IT systems and get their business back up and running. It’s an amazing story of how HPE goes above and beyond for our customers and it’s one that I love to share. 

Stories like this one are the stuff of legends in our organization. They’re seen as a shining example of heroics to deliver a top-notch customer experience. However, what I increasingly hear our customers tell me is they want heroes, not heroics. In a word, they tell me they want consistency. 

Consistency is the reason Starbucks is beloved by consumers. Visit any one of their coffee shops globally and your tall skinny latte will be the same. The staff will treat you with the same welcome and smile, and you will sit in a chair that’s just like the one at your local store. From hospitals to hotels, restaurants to retailers – the best, deliver reliable and consistent outcomes adored by their customers. 

Consistency is a core pillar of customer-centric values. Yes, we need to help you save time, and we need to enable your time to be well spent, but we must do this with consistency. We must do this time and again, mastering repetition and transparency to truly earn your trust. In our industry, there will always be times when we need heroics but the ability to put out a fire should not be prioritized over the day-to-day.

If you’ve ever taken a swing at a golf ball you would know that consistency is hard. There are a lot of moving parts and just a slight change in one of them is the difference between landing on the fairway or the bunker. The IT services industry isn’t any different. That’s why we took two years to develop our new services portfolio from the ground up. 

HPE Pointnext Tech Care is an all-new service with our customers at the core of the mission – helping you get more from your HPE products. Our enhanced digital platform makes it easier to self-serve, self-solve and connect to an expert with a click of a button. And knowing that your investment in HPE products is over the long term, we now provide general technical guidance where you can engage our experts on operational best practices. 

Underneath these headline-grabbing innovations was a much larger body of work. To deliver these new experiences consistently – across all your engagements with us and across all the products we support. By identifying and rooting out inconsistencies, we are going from headline heroics to consistent heroes. You might buy our support service for the leading innovation but we’re planning you will stay because of consistently reliable experiences.

At HPE Pointnext Services, we’re making these changes in response to what you have told us. It’s part of our continued efforts to lead the services industry into a new era, where customer-centricity is at the core and shifting the conversation from what we do for you to one about what we can accomplish together.

Visit our site to learn more.  We’re changing the definition of IT operational support.

____________________________________

About Pradeep Kumar

Pradeep Kumar, Senior Vice President and General Manager, leads HPE Pointnext Technology Services group. In this role, he is responsible for the worldwide services organization of 20,000 IT experts who advise, build and operate IT platforms for our loyal customers. During his 25 years at Hewlett-Packard (HP) and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), he has combined his passion for customer experience and service excellence. He inspires continual innovation and operational excellence across his global delivery, portfolio, and supply chain teams.