Storage vs. Rock’n'Roll
I have had a bit of a rock’n’roll past, I spent several years driving round with a motley bunch of pirates/musicians (The Klopeks) in my much loved LDV minibus playing in bars and basements up and down the UK. One thing that I’ve noticed with music is that people are easily led, if there is one person in the crowd that openly cheers and gets involved, everyone wants a part of it. Everyone knows that music has a scene, but I think that storage does too.
I find storage vendors and storage technology is very much like live gigs and like a music scene. If they already see someone else using something, they’ll be more likely to jump on that band wagon. If someone is already having a good time with it, surely I will too? Even if it doesn’t actually fit! There is definitely a ‘scene’ to the storage industry.
This can work absolutely fantastically, and this is one reason above most that I try to work above and beyond for my existing customers. If they have an issue, question or problem, doesn’t matter if it’s not my problem, I need to help them out. All too often I hear from other companies “that support expired 2 days ago I’m afraid”, or “technically that would be vendor x and not us I’m afraid”, and so the customer goes unloved. When we built our support infrastructure I said to our call centre “One rule above all others, never decline to take a support call”. Take the bull by the horns and get to the bottom of the issue and resolve them for the customer or they will not purchase again!
