Netgear brings Rapid Response Team to UK channel

Vendor's initiative cuts out switchboards and gives direct access to sales and technical support for the channel

Networking vendor Netgear has launched its Rapid Response Team in the UK which aims to give the channel fast access to sales and technical support.

The service is available exclusively to resellers and distributors through a dedicated phone number and email address to specialists in the Netgear team.

Rob Wells, senior director for northern Europe at Netgear, said: "With the transactional nature of a lot of our business, on a lot of occasions there are channel partners - whether it's a reseller, a distributor - that will have questions that need answering because of the nature of networking and its complexities.

"We wanted to make our sales team very accessible to the channel and guarantee them that somebody is on the phone or email so they can call any time, to keep their business as efficient as possible."

"If partners are managed accounts with a dedicated account manager here at Netgear, they have direct-dial details into that person. But for the wider channel that perhaps just has some questions, it can be pretty tricky to get hold of people within organisations if you're having to go through switchboards. It can be frustrating, so that's what we're trying to remove to make the team very accessible."

Netgear first launched its Rapid Response Team in Japan before replicating it in the US, with the UK and Germany now leading the European rollout.

The UK team has three dedicated staff members based at Netgear's Bracknell UK head office, with a further eight on hand to take calls at busier times.

The team will aim to take every incoming call instantly, but Wells said that the channel should expect the very longest wait to be around four hours.

"We didn't put a specific time against it, mainly because at this point we're unable to measure it so we didn't want to set any expectations," he said.

"The target would be for someone to be on the end of the phone every time it rings, and that's what we're aiming for, but the most I think we'd be looking at [in terms of response time] would be four hours. But, like I said, the intention is to have someone there every time for someone to speak to."