8 vital questions to ask your current IT Support provider

The majority of IT Support companies provide websites and make claims that they are the best and can support you. Guilty as charged but do you know you’re getting the best level of support you could be by your provider now?

IT Support is a neccessity in business, whether that means dealing with it in-house or making the smart move and outsourcing to an expert with a vast amount of years of experience such as from Hamilton Group. :)

Picking the right partner can be a minefielld, lots of questions to ask to find out. One differentiator we actually found to winning new clients was our willingness to support Apple Macs, there are still a vast amount of IT companies insisting they stay Windows only.

To that I say a big thank you to our competitors.

I think we’ve all experienced terrible customer service, slow service and failure to actually get things done. This can cause your customers to leave or just become angry and this can then pass down to your staff.

We get it, for someone who isn’t into IT or really cares it can be hard to know what your provider should be delivering and you 100% should always challenge the people providing your IT Support.

Can you afford downtime in your business? Say your systems are down for 2..4… or 6 hours, how much would that cost you? Working that out you have to factor in how much you pay each staff member per hour. How long before lost productivity could have a major impact on your work?

If the time it takes to respond fills you with regret rather than comfort then they aren’t providing adequate support to you. Some of this could be judged by the size of your provider or their ability to problem solve and get to the bottom of issues quickly.

Fix times should be a major consideration when considering your IT partner. For instance, years ago I worked for an IT firm which had a first-time fix rate of 96%

A fairly impressive figure, we often smashed this percentage as well. But there were times when it wasn’t possible. If you are unsure what the first-time fix is, basically it means the person who handles it fixes it, without passing off or requiring a callback.

I then met my good lady wife and decided to move and work closer to her, on doing so I joined a company that had a first-time fix rate of 4%

Initially, I thought I misheard them but they re-iterated that it was 4% so immediately I assumed in my head it was a great opportunity to bring the skills I’d gained maintaining the previous targets and help improve the company and our customer’s perception.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t possible, the company was set up to log and if you’re unable to deal with it quickly within Level 1 or Level 2 it would be passed to either a specialist Networking or Telephony engineer.

However, often it was very much fixable up front but required a little information gathering but this almost infuriated them and I quickly realised it wasn’t the company for me and soon left.

Don’t be like them, aspire to resolve and keep customers happy and that is exactly what we do.

IT issues can and will occur, even with the best IT Support partner it isn’t possible to prevent them. But what happens if things do go wrong?

Let’s imagine your server, file storage or backup device fails, heck even the Internet. You then have to rely on the response times that your provider gave you. They did give you response times, right?

Consider a few things:

• Can they quickly swap out equipment and have everything back up and running within the same day or next best?
• How quickly can they prioritise travelling to your office to replace equipment?
• Do they have suppliers that can replace equipment fast or parts for a quick repair?
• Are they experienced, would you hire a company ran by someone fresh out of school or college to look after your business?

Your IT partner should be looking to resolve most issues before it becomes a problem that affects you. They should be achieving this by monitoring your network 24/7 and providing remote monitoring tools that maintain, performs health checks and keeps the systems updated to minimise any risks of Cyber Security issues occurring down the line.

Patch management of both Operating System updates and third-party patching is something that can be done in a proactive nature to fix any vulnerabilities and should be setup as part of an agreement between your business and the IT provider.

This goes together with number 4, but do you know what impact a holiday or sickness could have on your business if your IT partner wasn’t available?

If your IT partner has no staff available or should the worse thing happen and your IT partner is hit by a bus, what does that mean for you? I am not saying that you need to go out and pick an IT partnet that is huge, on the contrary I think a large team can also be detrimental to how you are treated as a business too.

Your IT partner needs to have systems and procedures in place for situations such as sickness and holidays. Hamilton Group is classed a small company, however when we need to service larger clients we can quickly scale up and down as needed.

This is only possible due to the way we’ve structured our proactive business, but is your current IT Support able to achieve the same?

Your IT partner should be ready to grow when you do, as your business scales up and adding or taking away new users shouldn’t phase your IT partner.

However, they should also be asking questions about your future and if there is any need for technology that could help manage this better or allow future growth by putting this solution in the business.

Any solution your IT partner implements with you should be future-proofed and adaptable to any situation. They should also not roll over to easy requests to support older systems.

I know placing an SSD in a machine can make the world of difference, but we really shouldn’t be doing this to a machine with 4GB Ram that isn’t upgradable, it is time to move on to new equipment. 3-5 years at the most for older equipment.

Cyber Crime is a form of organised crime used by terrorists and hackers that are unlikely to be caught or punished. Should your business be affected by a cyber attack it can often mean the closure of the business, and a financial loss great enough could mean never recovering.

This has happened to companies with something as simple as phishing, check out our book is your email friend or foe to find out a little more on how this could happen.

Your IT provider needs to consider network security and Cyber Essentials an essential feature in your infrastructure, if they don’t you should be severing your contract and moving on.

Every organisation must take appropriate measures to be secure, protecting their data and mitigating any risks. A lot of businesses we come across don’t appreciate our heavy approach to Cyber Security but cybercrime is only getting worse and whether you are a one-person business or a small medium or large business, anyone is a target.

Is your IT provider prepared?

Your IT partner isn’t there just to answer a technical question and wish you on your way. Maybe you aren’t feeling so good and suddenly you have an issue with your email or you can’t get onto a vital business application you are using.

Your provider should be there to reassure you every step of the way, answer any questions while you fix the issue and develop a relationship and understand the priorities you have and what your business values.

IT expenditure continues to grow due to the growing Cyber Security threats, which means to trust in your IT provider is essential.

If they are unable to answer some of these questions or are more sheepish and clearly don’t have the necessary skills to service your business then it is time to move on.

It may seem harsh but you have to protect your business and without the right IT Support you won’t be making the money you should be now or in the future.

If you are still not sure, talk to us, call us on 01423 438953 or fill out our form.

You can also check out our IT buyer’s guide for our most recent guide to switching suppliers.