How long on average would you say it takes your current IT Provider to respond to a service request, or deal with a problem?
If it is often taking longer than one hour to fix serious problems then you need to be thinking about how these continual delays impact the productivity of your business.
Downtime can affect your business through:
- Loss of sales
- Lower employee productivity
- Client frustration/ impact on reputation
- Staff frustration – damaging overall business health
Gartner recently estimated the average cost of IT downtime to businesses to be £258,000 per hour.
Not only can downtime impact your business productivity and profits, it can also damage your reputation. As any impact passed on to customers, such as missed deadlines or slow service, can have long lasting effects on the wider perception of your brand.
Taking a proactive approach will reduce the level of downtime your business is likely to suffer from. An excellent IT Support Partner will monitor your computer systems remotely to ensure they run effectively.
Downtime issues such as slow application loading times, and hardware repairs can all add up over time. There are also cases where a fast response is critical such as during a flood or fire when having the right backup and disaster recovery plan in place is crucial. Reducing recovery time is vital in the case of a total loss.
Tiered Response Levels
By tiering their response rate, an IT Support Company can set clear expectations to you as the user. This clarity ensures that there is no gap between your expectations and the reality of service delivery. IT Department uses standard response times as part of our Service Level Agreements (SLAs). These are as follows:
Priority 1 – Critical
A problem which prevents more than one user from working, for example, if email isn’t working across the company.
Response Time: 10 minutes (30 minutes outside of office hours)
Priority 2 – Standard
A technical business IT support query relating to malfunction, such as one person is unable to print.
Response Time: 30 minutes
Priority 3 – Enhancement
A request for user guidance or administrative notifications, for example setting up an out of office for a user.
Response Time: 1 hour
Priority 4 – New Request
A new request such as a new user setup or new printer installation.
Response Time: 4 hours
For more detail on our response times and processes click here.
Be Proactive
In addition to responding to your problems quickly a good IT Provider will manage your IT proactively; making suggestions for changes which stop recurring problems, and can prevent new issues arising in the first place.
Thinking strategically and taking a long-term approach to IT also means that good providers will consult with you on your business needs, and develop project plans to implement new solutions which can help you improve efficiency, increase client and staff satisfaction and ultimately help your business grow.
Take the headache out of IT by switching to a faster, more reliable IT support partner. Although switching may seem like a hassle it will be worth it in the long term; potentially saving you money, decreasing downtime and improving staff satisfaction.
