When you run a small business, it is often the case that whoever is available or has a bit of technical know-how is usually the one who deals with issues with your computer systems. Although that will work in the short term, it’s not usually that sustainable. Your team members should be fully focused on meeting the goals and targets of your company and not dealing with any technical issues you have. That’s why you should consider looking at hiring one of the many IT support companies out there.
There are quite a lot out there though, so we are not surprised if the prospect of trying to find the best one is daunting, to say the least. To help you out, we’ve put together a guide highlighting some of the most important things you need to look for.
No Time-Specific Contracts
You will find that some IT support companies will offer you two or even three-year contracts. Although this is good for them, it’s not so good for you. Do you want to be stuck with the same company no matter what? What happens if you are no longer happy with the deal, they offer you? Having the option to change to a different company whenever you need to is ideal. It’s best to find one that offers a month-to-month-style contract.
Company That Takes a Proactive Preventative Approach
Many IT support companies just work on fix services and reactive break tickets such as sorting issues with email and repairing printers. While there is nothing wrong with this, a better kind of IT support company is one that will not only help with problems but identify ways to prevent them from happening again and again.
Proactive management of your systems involves more than just analyzing it, as they need to be familiar with your industry and environment and help you to pick out the very best tools to reduce company downtime and improve the productivity of your team.
They Are Fully Certified and Experienced
You must choose an IT support company that is not only fully experienced and certified to work on computer and IT systems in general, but also specifically on the systems you use in your business. Make sure they are not going to try and just learn as they go while using your equipment. All the major technology vendors, like Microsoft, tend to offer certification programs for IT companies.
Clear and Accurate Response Times
Any contract you start with an IT support company should come with clear and accurate response times. These are often referred to as SLAs or service level agreements. The details of the SLAs should be fully outlined in the contract (alongside details of what happens when they don’t meet their SLAs for whatever reason). There is no justification for you being left not knowing when an issue with your computer systems will be sorted or not.
