When it comes to IT support, most people have high expectations. And that’s for good reason – you rely on your technology to help you, not hinder your productivity. When you experience a slow workstation, an application that isn’t working properly, a server issue or an e-mail problem, you expect to hear back pretty quickly after you submit your ticket. Waiting too long can mean frustration on your part, on the part of your executives and even your customers. But what would happen if I told you that you might be delaying your own support tickets? Don’t hate me, but if your IT provider hasn’t helped you understand support ticketing processes, odds are that a portion of your long ticket wait times might be able to be resolved sooner. Here are a few things that you can do to help your IT provider help you and ensure that your support team is doing everything they can for you.
Take time to learn about the process for support requests.
The most frustrating part of long support ticket waits is that you generally have no idea what’s going on. Your managed services provider should give you some idea of the process that each support ticket undergoes from submission to response. Having transparency on this process will not only help you understand the length of time behind a ticket response, but also what’s happening behind the scenes are you wait and how efficient (or inefficient) that process is.
Communicate the priority of the ticket from the get go.
One of the most important things to remember when it comes to support tickets is that some issues are more important than others. Some issues completely handicap a user from working while some are minor inconveniences (like not being able to print to a certain printer and having another available printer to print to). While your Managed Services provider should have the necessary documentation to understand your business processes and which applications are important to each department, communicating the priority of your issue is crucial. This will help the technician prioritize it relative to his other tickets.
Any good support team’s manager sends out surveys on a regular basis. We do them for every ticket at Entech and have compiled some amazing stats that we love to share with our clients. For example, we have a 99% satisfaction rating and our average response time is less than 15 minutes. These are things that any quality managed services provider should know. Take the time to carefully interview any potential provider’s service department to understand the quality of service that they’re delivering for their clients.
We’ve been through this discussion plenty. You can’t afford to have sub-par support for your employees. It hampers productivity and can downright upset your customers. We’re of the opinion that support isn’t something to skimp on, that’s why we say that companies should triple their IT support budget. Make sure you’re getting what you deserve from your IT company by taking the time to understand their processes, asking them for surveys from their customers and communicating with technicians properly. Your business depends on it.