Nor’ Easter Snow Storm

A class ic Nor' Easter to start in the early dawn hours of Wednesday, February 11th continuing throughout the rest of the day. The forecasters began to agree on Tuesday that NPower's New York City service area would receive at least 12 inches of snow. To insure NPower would be able to deliver the services our customers depend on, the team began planning for the storm.

• Identify the staff whose commutes would allow them to get to the office. NPower's location at Metro Tech in Brooklyn offers access via many different subway lines. As a large commercial facility with enterprise operations conducted around the clock, Metro Tech also does a great job of keeping the buildings open and accessible. Four members of the Service Desk team and two senior engineers were able to travel to the office.

• NPower's remote access capabilities allowed staff members whose commute made travel unadvisable to work from home. Not only did they have access to the office Terminal Server and the VPN (Virtual Private Network), the tools used to track our customers' issues and remotely manage our customers' equipment are web-enabled, allowing the team access from anywhere. NPower's Service Desk management was able to monitor and coordinate customer support activities remotely.

• As the team prepared for the expected case scenario, management also prepared for the worst case of nobody being able to travel. Should this event happen: NPower's phone system re-configures so any caller to the Service Desk number hears the emergency notification message alerting them that all support is being done from outside the office. The calls are then routed to a voice mail accessible by the Service Desk Manager and queued for distribution to the staff working remotely.

• On the day of the storm: IT Basic customers were able to work from home through the remote access technology included in NPower's IT Basic offering. Even the ones who had never accessed it before managed to do so during the storm thanks to IT Basic and the Service Desk's assistance.

The remote support model included in NPower's IT Basic offering enables our customers and NPower's Service Desk staff to remain connected whatever the travel conditions are. It also enables our customers to manage their activities away from their office at any time!