“It was one of the most positive tech experiences I’ve ever had with an outside agency. And I will tell literally anyone who will listen. I’ve worked with so many tech teams in my career and eMazzanti’s team was truly spectacular!” Audrey Franklin, Director of Creative and Marketing, Callisto
The way you are supported to tell your story can make all the difference. So reads projectcallisto.org the website of Callisto, a nonprofit organization that aids survivors of sexual assault. Currently on 40 college campuses, Callisto helps to empower survivors by giving them resources through technology.
If a survivor is assaulted on a college campus, he, she, or they can go to the Callisto website to document what happened and learn their legal options, with their privacy preserved.
Tasked with updating the Callisto website design in preparation for re-launch, Audrey Franklin, Director of Creative and Marketing for Callisto, outlined the challenge. “The last agency that was contracted to redesign Callisto’s branding and launch a new website really left a mess,” she related. “It was not well designed and executed. So, I have been the one cleaning up.”
Unfortunately, in preparation for the launch of the new projectcallisto.org the following day, the website, app, and email went completely down. “It’s 5:30 am and I needed someone to help me like now, because this is Callisto’s online capability,” explained Franklin.
She looked at several of her contacts, not thrilled with what they had to offer. “So, I did a Google search,” she continued. “And because I’m in New York, and eMazzanti is based out of New Jersey, they came up.”
By 6:30 am, Franklin was scanning eMazzanti.net. She appreciated the clarity of the website and liked that a 24/7 team member could respond. “So, because I cited my situation as an emergency, Nirvan responded immediately when he saw the message.”
By 7:00 am, Franklin had Nirvan Ramoutar, Account Manager, on the phone. “I was thrilled because as I explained the situation, he was like, yes, happy to help,” she related. “By 7:10, we were on a call with the CEO and developer, and they were putting it back together.”
“There’s a lot of places on call. But what happened in the hours and days to come truly showed me that I’d made the right choice. They were fantastic and incredibly responsive!”
Franklin expressed simple goals for the eMazzanti engagement. “First, we had so much back-end cleanup,” she stated. “Then we wanted to seamlessly launch the website and the redesigned app along with our email with very minimal downtime.”
“On the back end, between GoDaddy, Squarespace, and Cloudflare it was a mess,” she continued. “We needed someone to walk us through the DNS entries. There was so much historical data that I couldn’t sort through it on my own. It was an absolute disaster.”
Franklin stayed on a call with the eMazzanti Tech Team for about six hours as they cleaned up the enormous mess. “There were always several of us on the call from Callisto and several eMazzanti team members,” she explained. “We worked as if we had been working together for years. And that’s something that’s intensely hard to find from anyone’s perspective.”
With the mess cleaned up, Franklin felt confident in launching the website, app, and email. “We launched the following week with eMazzanti’s help,” she related. “Every launch happened with extremely minimal downtime. I’ve never seen anything launch with that little downtime before, ever.”
While working through the issues, if the eMazzanti Team didn’t know the answer, they figured it out. “They were able to roll with it better than any team I’ve ever worked with,” confirmed Franklin. “But they did so by asking questions and utilizing our team knowledge. That’s why we’ll continue working with them because they were an absolute pleasure to work with.”
The eMazzanti Tech Team included Nirvan Ramoutar, Account Manager, Susan Chait, and Tech/Developers Gizer Gedik and Kmil. Nirvan did the majority of the project managing while Gizer Gedik and Kmil handled most of the tech side.
“But it was very clear that Nirvan also had a deep tech background,” added Franklin. “That really helps. I can’t say enough about those four. They were fantastic.”
As a designer, Franklin has worked with many IT teams during website and app launches. “What stood out in the week of working with eMazzanti was that the developers were just superior in both attitude and knowledge.”
Within a week, the eMazzanti tech team helped Callisto successfully migrate their outdated backend, integrate their new forward-facing URLs, and launch their website and app with minimal downtime.
“They increased the productivity and speed of our launch, decreased downtime to the most minimal possible, and cleaned up a lot of mess on the back end that was created by another agency,” summarized Franklin.
Every day since the launch, Callisto received incredible testimonials about Franklin’s website and app redesign. “That just couldn’t have been possible without eMazzanti’s help,” reported Franklin. “There was so much to sort out on the back end.”
“Right now, we’re fundraising,” she continued. “Donors and fundraisers are looking at our website every day. And they are getting back to us saying how much the new website means to them.”
The Callisto organization really appreciated the decreased downtime during this crucial fundraising period. “It means that the services that Callisto provides to sexual assault survivors will continue,” reported Franklin. “And hopefully for quite some time, because we rely solely on donations.”
How well the eMazzanti Tech Team functions impressed Franklin, not only as a unit within eMazzanti, but with her team as well, not knowing them beforehand. “They met our Lead Engineer on the day of launch, yet they handled everything just so well,” she confirmed.
“I’ve worked with so many tech teams and this one was truly spectacular! You just don’t find teams like that. In my career I have not ever seen a team function that well.”
“Just having them as a resource, someone I can reach out to and trust, is enormous. There’s been so many developers and tech people over the years that I have not been able to continue working with for a variety of reasons, but mostly to do with customer service.”
“You must be able to interface with the client,” Franklin explains. “Sometimes, the tech is saying one thing and the client is receiving it in a different way. And you need someone in between to explain, from the tech side to a layman side. And it just doesn’t always work.”
“eMazzanti’s team was able to function highly, and all while the CEO, my client, was present on the calls,” she concluded. “They could not have functioned better. If another organization was considering working with eMazzanti, I would say, I haven’t found better. You should hire them.”
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