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How Happy Are You With Your IT Support?
Like most business people, I spend time thinking about what motivates potential customers to do business with me, what are the key questions to ask, what are the key pains felt.
Marketing departments spend countless dollars on this type of research, the answer to these questions are the true Holy Grail of marketing.
Sometimes, after working almost too hard at finding the solution, you determine that the answer is far simpler than you ever imagined, and in this case, all I really had to do was be a computer user for a moment rather than a business manager.
What computing users (business owners, etc) want is to be happy with with their IT infrastructure and support. Yes, happy. But… ‘what do you mean when you say happy?’ you are surely asking. Well, ‘happy’ as in productive and supported. You just want to do you job and have your tools do what they were intended to do.
The biggest buzz-kill to a loving relationship with one’s computing environment is disruption. Wait, better yet, disruption followed by delay, topped with that feeling of desertion that goes with not knowing who to call, how to call them, or what to do at 7am when nothing is working and you are staring at a blue screen wondering what really would happen if you launched your computer out the window.
Where is this going? Well, partially I just want to let everyone know that we get it. While we may have a deep and abiding love for all things technical, you just want your computers and infrastructure to work. You want to be happy, productive and supported.
Simple enough.
What else? When bad things happen you don’t want to feel deserted. I’ve been there. I worked at a fortune 500 where the 24 hour helpdesk contact was an email address or a web form.
Truly impressive planning. I remember thinking, as I looked at my black screen and then to the piece of paper with the email contact and the web address to get at support that someone had epically failed to think things through.
I spend a bit of time writing about things I find interesting in the world of technology, things that may be of relevance. I try not to generate too much marketing noise here, but sometimes, when I look out at the broader world and think about how IT support is often offered, I recognize that computing users should have more voice, and should have the simple right to get great support. Not just great support when everything is working, but great support when something goes wrong. The job of IT is to enable productivity and ensure that computing users are indeed happy, productive and supported.
When evaluating if you are indeed happy with your IT support, or happy with your IT support costs, ask yourself a few questions:
- Do you understand how your support costs align with industry standards for a company of your type and size?
- Are your IT costs able to adjust to match variations in your business revenue?
- Do you feel confident that you have a pro-active IT plan to protect your data and extent the life of your IT infrastructure investment?
- Do you really know what you are getting for your IT investment (is there genuine transparency)?
- Do you feel that your IT provider actually works with you to understand your needs and adjusts your support to match them?
- When you have an issue do you get rapid response, and from a person with the right skills to solve your problems?
There are many more questions that could be asked, but these are great business level questions that are worthy of some thought.
At the end of the day, just remember that IT is not about hardware and software. IT is about enabling your business. When thought of that way, it makes perfect sense to think in terms of my original question – Are you happy with your IT infrastructure and support?
And that is why I say -
Happy Computing!
Richard Brunke
