We regularly have conversations with companies around our next generation Cyber Security Solutions, and we commonly discuss their concerns about managing complex and mixed IT environments while ensuring costs remain low and technology is utilised effectively to increase overall productivity and margins. However, one of the most common frustrations we are hearing in the current market is that companies are silently extremely unhappy with their current IT services providers.
Companies commonly outsource their IT Support to effectively manage infrastructure and provide support for their employees when required. Organisations do this to take advantage of a cost-effective solutions that includes fast, friendly and frustration free service delivered by skilled technicians who communicate effectively and resolve issues at the first point of contact. The following are some of the most common frustrations that business owners express to us on a regular basis.
Failure at First Point of Contact
Users are put on extended hold or are passed around to different people and departments. Forget unresolved problems, the quality of support they receive or the personnel they speak to isn’t particularly friendly or helpful.
Failure beyond the First Point of Contact
The user experience continues to go downhill with technicians that don’t seem to have the technical expertise to solve anything but the most basic issues, despite multiple tickets and visits. All the while issues still go unresolved.
Reactive vs Proactive
We’ve all heard this before, not just in IT but in any type of business – prevention is better than the cure. Instead of proactively monitoring the customer’s infrastructure, providers are content with waiting for things to go wrong and then fix them, which can cause sever downtime and disruption to the customers bottom line.
Lack of Scalability
Business owners tell us their IT provider lacks the depth of skills required for rapid growth. Providers cannot handle complex billing, vendor management, or licensing support. Apart from day-to-day tasks, many providers offer very little in the area of strategic planning for the company.
Staying under Budget
Providers often sell companies expensive software and/or hardware that they don’t necessarily need or once implemented they go unused. Critical business needs are left unaddressed while the customer ends up paying out the contract wholly or the renowned early contract termination fees.
What does an ideal Next Generation IT Services provider look like?
An IT solution provider in 2021 and beyond should aim to offer the right combination of people, technology and process to ensure your businesses technology needs are met.
IT providers should be agile to offer support to their customers in ways the customers wants to receive support – Live Chat, SMS, Phone, WhatsApp, Twitter etc. (not just old fashioned tickets via email that disappear into the ether). IT solutions provider should be cloud first and focused not solely on the nuts and bolts (servers, switches, access points, backup software etc.) but rather what these can do for the business to drive their profitability higher.
IT providers should refrain from migrating customer preferred platforms in order to suit their own preference. I see this a lot, users losing documents when migrating from Google Workspace to Office 365 or vice versa. Customers being switched to an all Windows solution when they are comfortable and presently working in a Mac environment. Rather IT providers should embrace their customers technology preference and understand that they would be more productive when they utilise a platform of their choice.
In summary, you should not settle for an IT solution provider that is consistently failing your organisation and its goals. I would personally be happy to answer questions that you might have and provide technical expertise, strategic guidance and responsiveness you deserve.
Schedule a Consultation with me and see first hand how an agile and switched on IT Solution provider can make a significant improvement to your business.
