When things go pear-shaped, we're ready.
Last week, one of our key integrated platform partners experienced a significant outage affecting their entire customer base. We understand this was caused by a network connectivity hardware failure following a power-related issue within the data centre.
For all affected, it made for a disruptive couple of days.
We wanted to share what we did in response. Partly so our clients know what happens behind the scenes when something like this occurs, and partly because we think it’s a good example of what genuine support looks like in practice.
At around 8pm on Bank Holiday Monday, our Operations Manager noticed an issue with property data being fed into client sites from the platform and escalated it to our emergency support team. On investigation, it was apparent the issue was affecting all the platform’s clients (not just our shared ones) and we decided to get ahead of the situation.
Within the hour we’d posted updates across our social channels, letting our clients know what was happening; that the issue was platform-wide and entirely outside anyone’s individual control; and that we were keeping a close eye on things.
By Tuesday morning our full support and development teams had built and rolled out a banner message function across our clients’ websites, giving each business a simple way to let their visitors know that their booking system was temporarily unavailable and to get in touch directly in the meantime. We spent the day in contact with clients, updating messaging as the situation developed and linking through to the platform’s own status page so everyone could follow progress until the situation was resolved.
A lot of what we do for our clients happens quietly and routinely in the background (and we think that’s how it should be). But when the unexpected happens, we want you to know that we’re watching, we’re ready and we’ll always be the first to act.
That’s what being a genuine digital partner means to us.
Digital made human. Human made digital.
It’s not just a strapline. It’s a reflection of how we actually act when things go pear-shaped.
