By Suzana How To Choose Your Desktop Support Provider
Outsourcing your desktop support tasks to an external service provider is certainly a logical business decision in these times of economic recession. Most desktop support providers try to deliver as flawless service as possible to their clients, but undoubtedly, their capabilities vary. That’s why it is essential to screen your prospective service providers before handing over the service contract to them. Here is how you can verify whether your chosen organisation is the right one for you.
1. Ask about qualifications of support staff: When you are approaching a service provider organisation, be sure to inquire about the qualifications of the members of their support teams. In order to be able to provide the best possible service, these organisations must have personnel with sufficient technical qualification. Do not be embarrassed to ask this directly. If they are being defensive about this enquiry, reconsider hiring them at all.
2. Inquire about response time: Ask them how fast they will be able to attend to your problems. For example, a 4 hour response SLA means that they will respond to your problem within a time period of four hours, counted from the time you make the call for support.
3. Ask for a long term personal contact: Ask whether they will be able to spare at least one person to be a dedicated resource working on your systems. It is even better if that person is a senior employee. That way, you will always have someone at hand who knows everything about your systems, and who can also guide other junior employees when they work on your systems. This will ensure that problems get fixed faster, with minimum downtime.
4. Find out about outsourcing helpdesk / remote support services: Ask whether they have a helpdesk to attend to problems and they have industry standard software that can gain remote access to your servers and network. If the outsource provider has a good helpdesk with technically qualified employees, it will ensure that they can solve your problems from their offices. This will improve your business’ efficiency and save time as they will not have to send someone down to your business facilities every time a problem arises.
5. Do a background check: Always ask for references, and follow up on those leads. Ask the provider whether they have provided service to any major business organisation that is still operational. Visit the offices of that organisation or send someone over to verify the provider’s claims.
