What should you expect from your IT Support in 2023?

Since the beginning of the digital revolution in the 1980s, IT has become more and more important to how businesses operate, communicate, and provide goods and services to their customers. The digital revolution is currently moving into a new phase, one in which automation is expected to become more and more essential, enabling businesses to achieve previously unheard-of levels of efficiency and competitiveness.

Businesses and organisations who are ready to adopt tomorrow’s technology today will rule this new era, yet we recognise that change can be a frightening concept.

The move can be facilitated by bringing on board an enthusiastic, active, and committed IT partner who can assist you navigate the bewildering number of available technology options and deploy best-fit solutions with care and accuracy. However, how can you tell if your present service provider is up to the task? IT assistance is a service whose quality is difficult to quantify.

We’ve compiled a list of the top 5 indicators of a subpar IT support provider to assist you evaluate the calibre of the IT service you now receive.

Their communication skills are lacking

Some people have a persistent misconception that because IT is about technical outputs, good customer service comes second. This couldn’t be further from the truth; having a personal, engaging IT partner is essential to making sure you get the most out of any new investments and to aiding your staff in comprehending current or upcoming developments.

Your healthcare professional needs to be cooperative, friendly, patient, and helpful. Their enthusiasm for their profession need to be evident in the way they conduct themselves, and they ought to be ready to interact with you and your team in order to make sure you’re happy with the assistance you’re receiving. They should serve as a consulting presence for your company, constantly there to help with big and small issues and eager to steer you toward the best goods and services.

Your provider is unlikely to be the strategic IT partner your company needs as it navigates substantial changes if they are conspicuously silent, only communicate in perplexing jargon, and never offer guidance on their own.

The service standard is determined by service level agreements

Wait, isn’t it a positive development? Don’t you want an IT company that honours its commitments? Of course, a reputable IT supplier would strive to perform far better and will view a service level agreement as a minimal quality baseline.

A solid IT support SLA won’t outline intangible components. For instance, your provider should be a wealth of technical expertise and should explain changes and decisions in terms of how they will benefit your company in quantifiable ways. They should be aware of financial and regulatory restrictions and create solutions with these stipulations in mind. A strong IT provider would also put a lot of emphasis on service components like proactive network maintenance that may be less constrained by contractual performance obligations.

Contractual duties are essential for defining the limits of service delivery, but if all you receive from your supplier is those obligations, you should question if the partnership offers a fair value.

Your network is being crippled by recurring problems.

An essential part of IT assistance is remote monitoring and upkeep. To preserve the overall integrity of your environment, your IT provider should be handling software/operating system upgrades, checking the health of your network, and remotely implementing security fixes. Minimizing downtime (a period of system unavailability) and making sure your environment is protected against cyber threats are the goals of all of this.

If your company experiences frequent network outages or the same issues keep cropping up, your provider is probably taking a casual attitude toward preventative maintenance. They might also be applying band-aid solutions while ignoring deeper, more complicated problems.

There is too much promised

Businesses frequently outsource their IT in order to access a wide range of knowledge and experience that would be prohibitively expensive to develop internally. Naturally, having a provider with a variety of talents and specialisations is really helpful, but it’s also a good idea to be wary of providers that claim to “do it all,” especially if they’re working with a very small team. Without a team of experts, maintaining technical proficiency in every imaginable subject in the large, complicated world of business technology is a severe task. Ask about accreditations, vendor alliances, and even case study samples if your provider promises to be able to accomplish everything and anything to find out whether the big claims are true.

Conversations are overly centred on products.

In the end, technology exists to support your business; your company does not exist merely as a technology consumer. Smart IT service providers are aware of this and begin a conversation with their clients to learn about the demands, limitations, and issues they are dealing with. They then work backwards from these business concerns to find or create solutions that best address these problems.

Unfortunately, some providers use the incorrect strategy. They always begin a conversation with a sales pitch about a product they sell, promoting nonsensical goods and services that don’t cater to the needs of their customers.

Although your IT provider will never fully comprehend the inner workings of your company, they should have taken the time to get a general understanding of how you operate, any commercial and regulatory pressures you may be subject to, any logistical challenges you may be facing, and the team’s working arrangements. Your provider won’t likely be able to serve as your strategic technology partner if they have shown little interest in your company.

It may be time to reassess your provider’s performance on several of the aforementioned fronts to see if they can still be the reliable tech partner for your company going forward. Keep reading to learn about the five essential qualities you should look for in an IT supplier.

Do you need better IT Support?

If after reading this article you think that you may need to switch IT Support provider then please get in contact with us here at CloudHost. Our team of experts can help you with any technical issues or ideas you may have.