A Closer Look at Artel’s Customer Support and Service Department 

Adding value with knowledge, sincerity, and integrity

At Artel, we’re proud to offer flexible solutions for real-time media delivery in critical applications across sports, news, entertainment, and more. Just as important as our award-winning product line is our top-shelf customer support and service department, which guides deployments from design through the life of the product.

Maybe You’ve Met Frank?

Frank Mangiacotti wears many hats here at Artel. He’s been with the company for more than 15 years, starting in operations and then later moving on to engineering and now his current role as a systems architect. Frank works with customers in pre-sales, post-sales, and ongoing customer support, and he also has a hand in product management and marketing.

Back when people still traveled to trade shows, he helped ensure we showcased solutions that addressed the key technical challenges facing our customers. Working in the Artel booth with the rest of our team, he offered our customers a valuable technical perspective and helped them match our solutions to their requirements.

In his spare time, Frank explores ways that Artel products can address new challenges in the media and entertainment market, as well as common challenges in other markets.

Friendly, Accessible Support

Frank does a lot of work before a sale to help customers understand their requirements and how the right product and functionality can meet their needs both today and in the future. Frank offers a lot of these insights over LinkedIn, posting information and ideas about issues we’re helping customers overcome.

After engaging with Frank’s on LinkedIn, one new Artel customer — another technology vendor — committed to using our Quarra PTP-aware switch in a new demo rack used to present the vendor’s gear to its own customers. Frank had answered all of the vendor’s questions about PTP, why it’s important, and how to handle it across a network and within a larger media workflow.

Frank provides a demo chassis in his lab that potential customers can access to conduct remote training, present webinars for potential customers, and load customer configurations to help debug service issues. If a third-party vendor is required to supply an element of a solution, Frank will research the third-party equipment to meet the customer’s specifications. In the end, our customers gain a very clear and comprehensive picture of both their requirements and how best to deploy the Artel equipment.

Engagement, Trust, and Responsiveness

Frank is a prime example of Artel’s corporate culture and a style that’s authentic and engaged. That style builds powerful trust with our customers, along with the success of our products in high-profile events ranging from elections to the Super Bowl.

Our customers also know that if they call with questions, they’ll get a real person who can answer technical queries and help them move forward. That sets us apart from other companies who merely take names and contact info, put people into a queue, and have someone follow up with them in a few days. Our team responds to every question, big or small, so that our customers can meet their own technical and business needs.

We often do a lot of work to educate our customers, not just about the functionality of our products, but also about balancing cost, performance, functionality, and related factors to get the best fit for their budgets and operations. We want them to get it right the first time and invest in products that will provide continued utility and value. Rather than talk over their heads or talk down to them, we focus on meeting our customers at their level of expertise and helping them toward a better understanding of the technology or solution.

From Training to Troubleshooting

When Cablenet, a telecommunications provider in Cyprus, took on a new project to augment links between sports venues and remote production sites, our salesperson brought Frank in as the technical expert. After a dialog with Cablenet about goals and requirements, they specified our InfinityLink and FiberLink media transport systems along with new SMART ST 2022 modules, various video-over-fiber cards, and the XView management platform.

Frank helped with product training and commissioning of our gear to be sure Cablenet was able to get up and running smoothly.

We have an outstanding lab setup that gives remote trainees the sense that they are actually managing the equipment. This allows Frank and other support team members to walk customers through training and troubleshooting remotely – which is useful in these days of  travel limitations and social distancing requirements.

A Partner in Progress

The sales and service teams at Artel work closely to meet the needs of our customers. In many cases, their collaboration not only leads to an installed system, but also to further refinement of the Artel product family. When a customer asks about functionality we don’t yet offer, that request makes it through sales to service and to engineers like Frank. With the customer’s input, we can put that request on the product roadmap and make valuable capabilities more broadly available.

We work as a partner to our customers. Through the work of Frank and his colleagues in the customer support and service department, we support each and every user — whether a new or longtime customer — in achieving their technical and business goals.