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Mithi has provided email services and solutions to 200+ corporate companies spread across 30 cities in India and abroad. Mithi has been providing the delivery and support service on-site and/or via the Internet.

On analyzing the delivery and support processes and the turn-around times for all, we found that the most efficient and speedy way to deploy a solution or provide support is via the Internet.

The support for all it's customers is provided from the Mithi Customer Care center at the HO in Pune. The advantages of remote delivery and support are as follows:

• The preparation and execution of the delivery can start immediately since travel-led delays are avoided
• Deployment can be scheduled at the customers convenience.
• Enforces proper preparation, which ensures timely delivery.
• Mithi,s HO in Pune has a team of people with different expertise such as networking, Linux, Open Source Software (OSS) components, Mithi Connect Server applications etc., which ensures that the delivery or support does not get delayed/stretched due to lack of expertise.
• Mithi team can provide the service at a lower cost since the overheads are minimized.
• The customers IT team is involved in delivery, which gives them added confidence to handle future technical support issues
• Cleanly define the roles of various people involved

• Immediate action can be initiated in case of a critical incidence such as a server crash
• Support can be delivered at a lower cost
• Mithi’s HO team has people with different expertise such as networking, Linux, Open source Software (OSS), Mithi Connect Server applications etc., which ensures that the incident is resolved in the fastest possible time.
• Effective support is not dependant on a few individuals who are aware of the setup

• Tasks that require physical access to the server, for example, to install the OS, restart the servers, etc.
• End user support.

• Help Desk to track incidents:
  Mithi has commissioned an incident tracking system to track all the incidences reported. This system is updated and referred to by the customers, support manager and support engineers to ensure that incidences are resolved within the specified times.
• Online Knowledge Base (Service manual):
  An exhaustive service manual, which is being constantly updated by the support manager, aids the Mithi Customer Care engineers to provide effective and quick remedies to known issues. This also ensures that the quality of support is maintained as does not depend on the individual providing the support. This support manual is available online to customers and support staff alike.
• Tools:
  The Mithi Customer Care team has a set of tools that automate repetitive tasks to avoid human error.
• Round the clock support:
  Mithi has set-up a 12/6 support facility. Currently support for outages outside normal support hours and on public holidays can be availed by the customers by contacting the support engineers on a hotline (only for Priority support subscriptions).
• Use of the Remote management console: The Remote management console in Mithi Connect Server enables secure access to the customers’ server from any PC connected to the Internet. This is the most often used tool to provide support in case of outages outside normal support hours and on public holidays.
• Internet infrastructure:
  Mithi has multiple Internet connections to the Internet from its HO in Pune, to ensure continuity in support in case of loss of connectivity on any one link.
• Customer database
  The Mithi Customer Care team maintains a database of all customer related problems and a detail document with diagrams about their setup to enable any customer care engineer to give high level of support.
• Structured approach to customer support
  As explained in the section, How does Mithi provide support?
• Regular Server and Usage audits:
  These are proactive analysis of the server and usage to preempt overloads, misuse, cleanups in order to keep the system running smoothly.

Mithi is geared to deliver and support Mithi Connect Server over the Internet using an e-delivery and e-support infrastructure. The entire infrastructure is accessible over the Internet to the following types of people with appropriate levels of access controlled by an authentication and authorization framework.

• Administrators of the Infrastructure, who create and manage the content.
• Employees of Mithi who use and maintain the content.
• Partners who sell and support Mithi Connect Server.
• Administrators of our customers.
• End users of our customers.
• Anybody else not directly connected to the company.

The sections below describe the basic components of this infrastructure and how they work.

Besides the sales and marketing literature, it carries support and other polices, news, blogs, release notes and other such product related information to keep our associates up to date on the happenings. This is a good resource to locate white papers, case studies, product progress and the latest happenings reported from the Mithi desk.

An access controlled software download center, which is organized by the version of the software and includes the full builds, service packs and patches. Our associates can use this from remote locations to access the latest updates/upgrades, improving efficiencies by a large factor. It also supports installation of the OS to a remote location with minimal knowledge by the operator there.

This collaborative knowledge repository is based on the wiki technology. It promotes group authoring, which greatly speed up high quality content creation due the reviews by so many stakeholders. The knowledge base has 3 major sections:

This is a comprehensive section for reference by the server administrators, and has documents on how to setup the software, upgrade the software, configure it for different situations, monitor the working, regular maintenance work, troubleshoot problems and frequently asked questions. Our team in real time frequently updates this section as they encounter new challenges and situations.

Mithi is working on deploying an integrated tool to help Mithi track information about customers, their contacts, their subscription details, connect them via email campaigns, run projects for specific customers, etc.

Whenever you have any question / problem about Mithi Connect Server, follow this procedure to get the quickest possible response.

For any problem/request reported by the customer, the Mithi customer care team provides support at 3 levels as shown below .

This involves those issues (how do I), which typically relate to the inability to find relevant information about the product. Mithi has created a comprehensive post-deployment training program that prepares your administrators for locating information and using the system effectively. Despite this, in case you need some assistance, our customer care engineers will point you to the correct resource in the online wiki knowledge base.

An issue is escalated to this level, in case it cant be tackled at your end via instructions. In this case our customer care engineers may suggest the execution of certain commands or as a last resort request for remote access to be able to diagnose and fix the problem.

If the solution to the problem involves a certain amount of research and testing, it is escalated to this level and handed over to the Solutions research team. Once the solution is ready our customer care engineers will help you deploy the solution on your server. As a last resort, if the solution to your problem requires a code change in the product, it is escalated to this level and handed over to the product development team. This team may release an emergency patch or provide this solution as part of a future upgrade, depending on the severity of the issue.

One of our customers in Delhi, Tecumseh India recently faced a server crash issue. The crash was caused due to a failure in the UPS system. The problem was diagnosed at the operating system level, which would not boot. The system administrator called up Mithi Customer Care and spoke to the engineer at Level 1. She immediately escalated the issue to Level 2. The Level 2 engineers then assessed the situation and evaluated all the options, gathering information from the system administrator over online chat. Based on the available data, the engineer decided to reboot the server in maintenance mode and try a recovery. Though such a mode requires high level of expertise and knowledge of the Linux operating system, the system administrator of Tecumseh could recover from the crash using the support and step-by-step guidance provided by the Mithi Customer Care team.

The Level 2 engineer of the Mithi Customer Care team used a combination of the service manual and consultation of other experts at Mithi to resolve the issues. An actual crash situation was also simulated on one of the servers in its test lab and a parallel recovery was attempted, to build a complete understanding of the situation and provide accurate and high quality support for the recovery process.

The server was recovered and services restored within 3 hours,significantly lower than what would have been required if an engineer had to physically travel to the location.

In Dec 2004, Mithi Customer Care had been receiving reports of junk messages from a few customers. As the team was diagnosing the problem, the number of complaints increased. The mail servers providing Mithis Managed Messaging service at the VSNL IDC in Pune also starting receiving the junk messages.

Within a few hours, the Customer Care team diagnosed the problem as a new virus variant. This virus was sending mail with .zip attachments to any address in the address book. The team looked up the ClamAV site but did not find any update for this new virus. To get control of the situation, Mithi Customer Care team decided to quarantine all in-coming mail having .zip files as attachments. The configuration to quarantine such mails was tested on the in-house servers. Using the documentation developed to test the same, the engineers then quarantined such mails on Mithis servers at the VSNL IDC. The effect was immediate. The malicious traffic stopped.

The customer care team was in contact with the customers who were affected by the same virus, via online chat and mail. The system administrators were aided by the Customer Care team to configure the Virus scanner of Mithi Connect Server to quarantine the mail. Though the steps involved login into the Linux prompt and executing scripts, the system administrators could configure the same thanks to the detail and precise steps provided by the customer care team. For customers with Enterprise support, the configuration was done by the Mithi Customer Care team via remote logging into the affected servers.

Having got the virus under control, the Customer Care team could focus on avoiding quarantine for valid messages having .zip attachments. Within a couple of days, the team had a solution and the new rule applied on all the affected servers. This ensured that valid mails were not getting quarantined.

Shortly thereafter, Clamav announced a new version to tackle the new virus. The Mithi solution team downloaded the new version and sent the patch to all the customers and guided them through the upgrade process via chat and phone.