The natural disasters of the last decade have convinced all business owners, whether they were personally affected or not, the value of disaster preparedness. Most recently, Hurricane Sandy delivered a noteworthy reminder to northeast businesses on the importance of IT infrastructure continuity. As winter storm Nemo, with epic blizzard potential, was approaching anxious customers, one partner made a small gesture with meaningful impact.
Genuine Concern for Customers
eMazzanti Technology and many of its customers are located in Hoboken, N.J., ground zero for Hurricane Sandy’s wrath. When the National Weather Service was warning of another potential weather disaster, Carl Mazzanti, eMazzanti’s CEO, decided to take a proactive approach to reassure nervous managed service and infrastructure customers. On Thursday, Feb. 7, Mazzanti sent the following message to everyone on his company’s e-mail list:
‘Winter Storm Nemo Service Advisory
The National Weather Service has issued a Blizzard Warning in effect from 6 am Friday to 1 pm EST Saturday. In anticipation of this storm eMazzanti has taken the proper precautions to ensure that we will continue to seamlessly provide the same superior quality of service.Although we, at eMazzanti, are hopeful that this winter storm will not be the cause of any business emergency we are fully prepared to support you in the event that there is a need. eMazzanti has taken the steps to verify the integrity of our customers’ business continuity. This includes staffing engineers outside of the anticipated region of impact for this storm and verifying customer backups.
We recommend everyone heed the warnings by the National Weather Service and please stay safe through the impending storm. Should you have any questions or concerns, please email or call us. We are here to help.
Far more effective than any sales message could ever be, Mazzanti didn’t seize the opportunity to sell backups. The message is simple, reassuring and genuine.
Lessons from Hurricane Sandy
A five-competency network and managed services provider with 19 employees, eMazzanti learned many lessons during Hurricane Sandy. “We became experts during Sandy. In our own office we had three to four inches of water, so we experienced it along with our clients,” explained Jennifer Mazzanti, president of eMazzanti. “We have clients in Manhattan, some of whom were without power for weeks.
“Going into this winter storm, we knew what we had to do in terms of being ready. We sent staff out of the area, sandbagged our datacenter and were checking backups in the days leading up to the storm,” added Mazzanti. “We realized during Sandy that you need to be up and running as soon as possible. If you are not stable yourself, you can’t service your customers well. So before Nemo, we took a lot of extra measures to make sure we were ready.”
For most of eMazzanti’s customers, the blizzard had little impact on their business, but many appreciated the proactive winter storm e-mail. “We’ve received a lot of thank yous,” noted Mazzanti. “Customers felt better knowing that we were thinking about them and preparing ahead of the storm.”
The goal of most partners is to be a trusted advisor to customers. What better way to earn that trust than to look for and act on opportunities to be proactive? It doesn’t require a pending disaster — anything, from legislation to community events, that affects your customers can be an opportunity for you to provide value.
Are you communicating with your prospects proactively? Add a comment below or send me an e-mail and let’s share the knowledge.
Carl Mazzanti is Co-Founder and President of eMazzanti Technologies, Microsoft’s four time Partner of the Year and one of the premier IT consulting services for businesses throughout the New York metropolitan area and internationally. Carl and his company manage over 400 active accounts ranging from professional services firms to high-end global retailers.
eMazzanti is all about delivering powerful, efficient outsourced IT services, such as computer network management and troubleshooting, managed print, PCI DSS compliance, green computing, mobile workforce technology, information security, cloud computing, and business continuity and disaster recovery.
Carl Mazzanti is also a frequent business conference speaker and technology talk show guest and contributor at Microsoft-focused events, including frequent prominent roles at the Microsoft Inspire (Worldwide Partner Conference / WPC).
Carl, a serial Entrepreneur, gives back to the community through Entrepreneur teaching engagements at Georgetown University, the company’s ocean wildlife conservation effort, the Blue Project, and Tree Mazzanti.
