Our 6 Tips to Choose the Best IT Support Provider
With over 20+ years of experience delivering IT support and business telecoms services to 1,700+ nationwide businesses, we’ve seen the many different challenges that businesses have faced before switching to us.
We’ve put together our 6 top tips on how to choose the best IT support provider to ensure you get the service you need.
1. Quick Response & Resolution Times
Business downtime can be caused by a range of IT issues, from software crashes and human error to connectivity issues and cyber attacks. No matter the problem, a slow response from your IT provider just keeps you in limbo.
A good IT provider will have options for 24/7 monitoring to catch issues early, and IT support help desks to ensure fast response times. Many problems can be resolved remotely, but sometimes on-site visits will be required. Look for an IT provider that can offer both, and be able to respond to and resolve problems in a matter of hours, not days.
2. Wide Service Coverage
There’s nothing worse than facing an IT problem, and contacting your IT provider only to be told there’s nothing they can do. Or, you might be looking to scale up IT support to meet the new demands of business growth, but your provider can’t scale services alongside your requirements.
Seek out an IT support provider that offers a wide range of services. These should include the main duties like cyber security, proactive monitoring and onsite support, but also make sure they provide solutions like strategy and planning, vendor and license management, hardware procurement, regular audits and disaster recovery.
3. Proactive Support
You may think it’s all well and good choosing IT support that works on a break/fix model, but this doesn’t prevent issues from occurring in the first place. Inevitably, the reactive way of doing things typically leads to lengthy downtime and disruption.
These problems can be avoided by picking an IT support provider that works proactively. They can monitor systems 24/7, conduct regular audits and tech reviews, as well as perform crucial updates and patches. Proactive IT support enhances security, mitigates downtime and lets your teams concentrate on core business workloads.
4. Experienced Team
Your IT partner should be experienced in a range of different IT services, in addition to providing support for different sectors. This means they have a true understanding of the best solutions for your business, and can plan ahead for any changes your sector may face.
5. Up-to-Date Knowledge
Everything from apps, software, hardware and cyber threats move fast in the IT world, so a good provider should consistently keep up to date with regulations, certifications, licenses and emerging risks.
This is why so many companies seek outsourced IT support, rather than handling everything in house. An outsourced team of dedicated IT professionals can concentrate on the evolving IT world full time. Compare this to a small business with the budget and resources to only provide tech support, and the difference in productivity and security is staggering.
6. Reputable & Trusted
Finally, choose an IT support provider with a solid reputation and a long-track record of success, which can be verified by testimonials and reviews. Reading reviews from the provider’s client base can help give you a true understanding of how they’ve helped businesses with their IT.
You should also look for statistics from the provider on the number of years they’ve been in service, how many customers they serve and things like the percentage of call fix rates.
