BRITECITY has been in the Orange County IT Support circle for quite a while. We definitely know the industry, and we know our clients. We know all the users on your network, we know the ins and outs of your server room, and we know what happens on your computers on a daily basis.
Sometimes we wish our clients knew us better as well. There are some things we would love if our clients knew or understood about our business.
We put our heads together and came up with our 7 favorite things we wish our clients knew:
1. How to Get Support
We love to take care of your technical issues however you would like to notify us of them. But we do try to implement systems in our business. If all tickets came in the same way, we can take care of them in a more efficient manner, as they get routed to the appropriate places in the priority necessary for the issue.
For many IT support companies, that method is through a ticketing system. When all clients submit help requests through the ticketing system, items can be dealt with more quickly. It may seem like you get support quicker when you call it in, but the reality is it can throw off the entire system.
2. How to Communicate With Us
In the same vein as getting support when needed, you also need to communicate things with us from time to time. Whether it is an issue you are having with one of our employees, or questions about your invoice.
Everyone prefers to communicate over certain methods. Just ask your provider what they would prefer. Some respond to voicemails quickly and others could be so on top of their email that you will get a response in seconds. If you match your communication to their preferred method, you will see response times improve drastically.
3. Don’t Utilize Personal Contact Information
Sure, the support person was trying to be helpful and get you a solution to the current problem faster and gave you their personal contact information. The next time you are having an issue, it can be extremely tempting to use that contact information to get a hold of the same person. Doing so can really backfire though.
Maybe the employee is on vacation that week or is extremely busy on another issue and they aren’t able to get back to you right away. It is not that they don’t care about you as a client, it’s merely the fact that before they were actively working on the issue already, and in this new scenario things could prevent them from responding. You then may get frustrated by the lack of response.
The best idea is to just use the regular helpdesk line or ticketing system to get help for your problem much more quickly.
4. What Constitutes an Emergency
While we definitely understand that your issue is urgent and important, we may be dealing with several urgent and important issues at the same time. Since we know your network, and we know the programs and tools you need to get your job done, we can determine the urgency of the situation pretty quickly.
When dealing with limited manpower we sometimes need to make decisions on who will get support first. We usually will determine this based on how many users are currently affected, and whether or not there is a suitable workaround you can use until we can get to the problem.
When the shoe is on the other foot, and we come to your rescue when your entire business is offline, you will be grateful we didn’t prioritize one user that couldn’t use the printer that was closest to them.
5. Don’t Expect Us to Assist with Illegal or Outdated Software
When Microsoft terminates support for an operating system it means there will no longer be security updates for those systems. Failing to upgrade at that point leaves your entire network open to attack (WannaCry anyone?) We will recommend you update to help secure your network, and we will be unable to support those systems if you ignore our warnings.
This also goes for hacked or cracked software. If we were to install an illegally obtained software package on your network, our company would be liable for the licensing violation and could pay some serious consequences. So please don’t ask us to do that.
6. Include Us in Technology Decisions
We aren’t only here to fix issues on your network when they break down. We want to be your partner in IT decision making. Many IT installations, changes, and upgrades can take significant planning, and need to be done in a correct order so your business can stay up and running.
If you decide to change your entire email platform without informing us, and then call us the next day when mail is no longer flowing, it will be extremely difficult for us to clean up the mess. Often too much damage has already been done. It can also be a significant cost to fix everything and get it back to the way it was.
Use the benefit of our knowledge of the industry, products, and services to help inform your decisions, and then definitely let us help you implement them.
7. Give Us Advance Warning
When you hire someone, and then call us or put in a help desk request the morning they arrive for their first day, we may not be available to set everything up for them right away.
Letting us know about a new hire as soon as they have a start date is the best practice. Advance notice of terminations or other time sensitive tasks can be extremely helpful in allowing us to assist you as quickly and efficiently as possible.
We also recommend keeping us informed on things like, your office building is planning a power outage or if you’ve ordered a new piece of equipment that will need to be set up the day it is delivered.
Essentially, anything that is technology related that you know about in advance, let us know about in advance, too.
What this really boils down to: we want you to consider us a partner to your company. When we work together, we can help your business accomplish amazing things!
BRITECITY offers local businesses support in areas like Cyber Security, Cloud Services, Strategic IT, and Managed IT Services in Orange County.