Business As Usual?

We’ve always been a bit cautious about emailing our clients. We all hate our inboxes being swamped with useless emails that don’t add any “value”.

However in the current situation we felt that we needed to let our clients know what we were doing and what, if any, impact the current situation was having on us.

As I tried to articulate in a recent blog post on the company blog, the current situation is not something any of us had been expecting and things are moving very fast. We had planned to test having everyone work from home, but it became very clear that the “test” was to become our new normal.

Friday evening we sent this email to all our clients. The feedback has been mostly positive, which I’m happy about.

Dear Customer,

I am writing to you as you are a Blacknight customer, to tell you about the measures we have taken to ensure continued service during the Coronavirus crisis.

As responsible citizens, our first duty is to support the appropriate government directives on social distancing, to do everything we can to limit the spread of COVID-19 and protect the most vulnerable in our society.

As of last Friday, Blacknight is operating as a distributed company, with virtually all our staff working from their homes. It’s business as usual (but you might hear dogs barking and children playing when you call).

Of course, staff who need to access the data centres will continue to do so as required. If you have dedicated servers or co-located hardware with us, now may be a good time to check with your account manager, and make sure you have the appropriate contact details for on-call support.

We have made appropriate arrangements with partners and suppliers to ensure that we have adequate capacity and contingencies in place.

Blacknight is fortunate that we can continue to operate with the current social restrictions. We are very conscious that many of you are adversely impacted by the current situation. If you’re facing financial difficulties, please reach out to our finance team to see what we can do for you.

The new reality has led to increased demand for online services. If you find that you require additional resources, please contact your Blacknight account manager or any member of the sales team.

I have written in more detail about our response to this crisis on blacknight.blog. I remind you that all announcements regarding service interruptions and maintenance are posted on blacknight.tech. We will continue to post regular updates on those sites, and on our Twitter, Facebook, boards.ie and other social channels.

For more details, go to https://blacknight.blog/a-new-reality-for-now.html

Stay safe,
Michele Neylon
CEO, Blacknight

Of course it was a little prettier than just raw text!

Over the next few weeks and possibly months I suspect we’ll all be spending a lot more time at home than we’re used to.

Maybe I’ll finally get round to doing some work on my garden!

Jokes aside, however, at a time like this “digital” and “online” will become even more important than ever before. Companies and businesses that might have been contemplating taking orders online or ramping up their online presence will probably do so. If anyone needs assistance please reach out to our team. We’ve got a lot of experience and expertise to share.