As both a provider and a consumer of Software as a Service, the DevOps team at Signiant knows the value of communicating the right information during incidents.
Since 2000, Signiant has helped companies of all types and sizes move large files fast.
Initially adopted by the Media and Entertainment industries, many of the world’s top content creators and distributors use Signiant solutions to ensure fast, secure delivery of large files over public and private networks. Today, media and entertainment aren’t the only industries needing to move massive files, and Signiant’s rapidly growing customer base includes companies with digital assets ranging from satellite imagery and big data analytics to genome sequences and biotech research. Built on patented technology, Signiant’s solutions move petabytes of high-value data every day between people, systems and to the cloud with proven ease.
With so much valuable data at stake, it’s critical for Signiant’s customers to never feel out of the loop. That’s why the Signiant DevOps team turned to StatusPage to handle incident communication.
Landing on a SaaS status tool
The Signiant team previously had no dedicated solution for incident communication. As a result, any hiccup in service resulted in a flooded queue for service agents and a stuffed inbox of “what’s going on here” notes from internal team members. They considered building their own status communication tool. But as a SaaS provider, it’s in Signiant’s DNA to bring on best-in-class tools rather than put together a homegrown solution.
“While we can create ‘something,’ it wouldn’t have the same functionality as StatusPage, and it’s really not our core business,” Said Dave North, Director of DevOps. “In general, we like to use other SaaS services that provide solutions to problems rather than grow our own where possible.”
The team at Signiant got on board with StatusPage with two primary goals:
- Communicate with end users around service interruptions and maintenance.
- Alert colleagues internally and fend off all of the “are we having issues” emails and phone calls.
Since implementing their StatusPage, the three-person DevOps team has been able to keep these distractions at bay, giving them more time to focus on fixing issues during downtime. The team is ready to seamlessly communicate with around 100 internal stakeholders and a large pool of external customers.
Introducing Statuspage
After working with their marketing team on some customization and branding for the page, rolling out StatusPage to Signiant’s internal team was as easy as sending an email, North said. Right away, his team saw great feedback on their status page.
Internal feedback on the status page ranged from:
“Dave, this is excellent! A nice professional touch and should be reassuring to our customers.”
to:
“Already subscribed, love it!”
The Signiant customer care team took the lead on educating their customers about the page. Now, all new Signiant customers are informed about the status page during onboarding. The technical support team also tells customers about the page whenever they call in for support issues.
Whenever there’s an outage, the status page is the first place the DevOps team is directing people to — both inside and outside the company. Going back to their roots as a SaaS vendor, it’s easy for the Signiant team to know the pain of poorly-communicated incidents. They try to take the approach of over-communicating and letting their customers know the kind of information they’d like to receive as a consumer.
“We wanted something that looked professional and clearly communicated to our customers,” North said. “StatusPage delivers that in spades and honestly if you’re a SaaS vendor today and you’re not using StatusPage, you should probably ask why not?”
Key customer takeaways
- Signiant’s services help companies of all types and sizes move large files fast
- The team knew they never wanted to keep any customers or internal team member out of the loop
- Previously, the team didn’t have a dedicated incident communication tool, so any interruptions in service led to a flood of communication from customers and team members
- Since implementing StatusPage, the three-person DevOps team at Signiant has been able to keep distractions at bay and keep customers and colleagues happy, during incidents
- Now, all new Signiant customers are informed about the status page during onboarding
- The technical support team also informs customers about the page whenever they call in for support issues