When bank’s router crashed, customer service team stepped up

Feb. 2, 2018

This piece is presented by SDN Communications.

When a key piece of equipment suddenly failed at Dakota Prairie Bank in January, IT operations officer Shari Lund knew it would impact customers. They’d have to rely on old fashioned pen and paper transactions.

The bank-owned router was down; rebooting didn’t work. That meant it wasn’t directing electronic traffic between branches: the Presho and Draper locations couldn’t get live data from the main office in Fort Pierre.

Lund called Dan Gabrielson, a network account executive for SDN Communications, to see if he might be able to help. Gabrielson is based in Rapid City and enlisted help from SDN’s technical experts in Sioux Falls.

The SDN staff members took on the chore before even discussing terms for the work. Gabrielson figured those details could be worked out later. The immediate challenge was getting an operational router in place because the bank was dealing with a time-sensitive, service-impacting problem.

Gary Fischer, a sales engineer for SDN, rounded up the bank’s router configurations.

Bill Tetrault, supervisor of managed services, got a temporary router prepared and sent it by overnight delivery to Fort Pierre.

Lund installed the router, and Josh Ecklein, a managed services engineer, worked remotely with her to get it properly configured.

Together, they had the bank’s network up running smoothly the next day.

“As soon as we fired it up, it was golden. We haven’t had any issues with it since,” Lund said.

Gabrielson credits SDN’s technical team for coming through in the clutch for the bank.

Lund said she knew the bank system’s three routers were a weakness in its network and that the devices needed to be replaced. However, the router failure in Fort Pierre happened before she had finalized an option to replace them.

“He saved me, big time,” Lund said. “They did a wonderful job.”

Now, all of the bank’s routers, including the temporary unit in Fort Pierre, will be replaced.

At the time of the router incident, SDN was serving Dakota Prairie with an MPLS broadband connectivity to link the bank’s three branches. Now, the bank is becoming a customer of SDN’s managed router service, too, Lund said.

Lund was asked if there was anything else SDN could have done to help the bank during its router crisis. No, she joked, unless SDN could provide her with a crystal ball to help predict the date of any future problems.

On second thought, she added, SDN’s managed router service should help on that front by monitoring equipment and reducing the potential for future problems.

That’s because the managed router service is different from a typical router in that SDN provides the device, configures it and keeps it patched and up-to-date. The fixed monthly cost includes troubleshooting, if it’s necessary, monitoring and performance reports.

“I think that will reduce the likelihood of this happening again,” she said. “So I’m kind of excited about it.”

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When bank’s router crashed, customer service team stepped up

Here’s a bad day: You’re running a bank and your router goes down. What happened next is an impressive display of customer service.

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