We're a software company and our support staff uses Rescue to help our customers who are in a pinch and for regular maintenance. It's a tool that we use to take over servers because that's typically what most of our support works on. But we also use it to pop into an iPad for a sales rep out in the field who's struggling.
It's a SaaS model. It's an app that resides on our technicians' computers but it goes through their Cloud.
We primarily use the LogMeIn Central program for established connections. But LogMeIn Rescue is a little easier to get into when you're in a pinch. If somebody is really in trouble, Rescue has been a great supplement to the other LogMeIn products that we've used for decades.
The speed of getting in there and resolving a simple problem has improved my organization. That's the key to this whole thing. When COVID first broke out, we went around to all of our customers and helped them set up their users who are now working from home. Rescue was key in being able to do that quickly. We typically charge for this support time but during COVID, we offered that service for free.
It was really critical for us to be able to get in there, get them set up, get out of there, and not spend a lot of money on things that weren't really our responsibility. When we were getting into people's home computers, it can be a bucket of snakes if we're not careful. It was really nice to get in there, install our stuff, get out, and move on to the next one.
I actually had a temp that I hired, who came in just for that purpose. It's somebody I knew who I just brought in for extra labor to help us through that workload. It's a very easy product to get people started on if they have basic tech concepts. The customer's experience is completely simplified. It's great.
Rescue does offer quite a lot of power. As far as the technical tools to go through and look for problems and to apply patches, you can save your work and apply the same setting changes and stuff to another computer when you get into that other computer. We don't use it that often but the automation aspects of it are pretty powerful. We only use that for our internal systems but it's a great tool for that.
We don't use its Access Wizard to enable mass deployment of the unattended access features. We really use this tool for ad-hoc support. We use this in emergency situations and as an alternate way of getting in there. If we're going to get into supporting a system, we would use their regular LogMeIn-based product, LogMeIn Central. That's where we would do all that kind of automation. We wouldn't do that in Rescue.
Rescue has hugely helped to decrease the time it takes to handle support issues. It really dropped the cost of doing support for our customers. All of the LogMeIn tools in one way or another are helping us to do that. We've been doing this for a long time. We've been in business since '77, and we've tried all sorts of different tools, which is unusual for a software company. The reason we went with LogMeIn was because of the security and ease of use. Security was a big thing. It was the security and ease of use, as I literally can get anybody in here, even if they're not IT, and get them onto a customer's system and help the customer through something that might not be that technical. We used to have to pick up the phone and walk people through every screen. Comparing Rescue to modern era remote control over the internet, if we didn't have these tools, we'd have to have two and a half times the staff. There are fifteen staff members between Join.me, LogMeIn Rescue and LogMeIn Central.
If I'm trying to get LogMeIn Central installed and I'm dealing with somebody who doesn't know the difference between the right and left mouse button, I'll pop in Rescue and then I'll install the Central product. The purpose of Central is it's just there forever, whenever you want to pop it in the machine. Although Rescue can do the same thing, Rescue tends to be more of a one-time connection, a hotspot connection to just pop in there and put out a fire and move on. Customers expect it these days. If you don't have it, you're in trouble, customers don't want to learn IT.
My customers exclusively sell cleaning chemicals and PPE. So the COVID situation has sometimes tripled their business and it's a unique niche market where they don't have time for things. Rescue allows me to almost be invisible, go in there, solve the problem, and let them continue doing their work. The more invisible I can be and the less I'm sitting there on the phone, walking them through it, the less I have to drag them through the process, the more they can be making the world safe. Rescue is a mission-critical tool with the way it allows you to do stuff, get in there, get out, and get the job done. Even if I had three times the staff or two and a half times the staff to go do that stuff, we'd lose customers because they would not have the patience to be dragged through all that stuff.
Rescue has increased our customers' and users' satisfaction. It's the tool that we use when they throw their hands up in the air, whether they're on an iPad or they're on a server.
Another good example of how it has helped us is with all of the hurricanes that have been coming in this year. This happens to us every year. We'll talk to a customer and realize, they're saying, "Hey, I'm in the path of the hurricane. I want to grab a backup before I leave the building." Because of Rescue and the other LogMeIn tools, we can instantly get in there and solve a problem. We had a customer that get hit pretty hard. Three-quarters of their building roof was ripped off and we had the backup running in a couple of hours because we had gone in and made sure that they took the back up with them when they left the building. They were right in Lake Charles where the last two hurricanes came through. So, Rescue has absolutely made the customers 100% happier just knowing that we can help them out in a pinch and so quickly and easily.
This has increased their willingness to call when there's an issue quite a bit with the extra services we've been offering since COVID. They've been more willing to turn things over to us and let us do the work. It's also because they're so busy. The fact that they can see us made them more comfortable. The other day a customer said, "I feel so much better knowing you guys can go in there and check things for me now."
Everything we do helps them with productivity because we're an industry-specific package for them. They can't invoice their customers and they can't see what they bought if our systems aren't working. They're highly dependent on us. They're absolutely more dependent and happier to turn it over to us than ever.
