Remote IT Support can be a false-economy
There are times when a quick phone call, or remoting on to check a box or run a script is sufficient. These tasks are often done by the most junior staff member an IT service provider can reasonably assign them to: in theory there is a support network to lean on if needed (but rarely is this the case in practice).
This comes at a major cost to you, the customer. Some may argue it is a perceived cost but we’ve seen this approach fail time and again when consulting for Managed Service Providers to help them keep clients. For example:
- A Technical Director needing to setup a desk on his own for troubleshooting laptop-hardware issues
- As I (the founder of Hayachi) write this, a Finance Director holding back tears because a Service Desk treated her like she was “dirt under their foot” for what a basic Windows Explorer bug
- An Associate at a top-ten law firm having headaches from different colour-schemes on her dual-screens and needed them to match model so there is no disparity
In the first instance the Technical Director spent several days worth of time to try and troubleshoot the issue he was experiencing. The actual cost of this was significantly more than an on-site visit and was dragged out over many weeks for what would normally be a straightforward hardware-issue. All due to a remote-first approach to resolution.
In the second instance, it’s always very upsetting when a service is so poor that the receiver has to hold back tears. The issue was fixed within five minutes of our remoting on, whereas the Service Desk kept her waiting a whole calendar day during their Financial Year End + an Audit with no progress, and clearly an indifferent Analyst who was far removed from how pressing and yet simple the issue was.
She worked into the late evenings, just as the above Technical Director had to, to make up for lost time.
Thirdly, small victories – because our founder was present onsite he personally used his ‘lunch break’ to carry over the relevant equipment from a another building’s stock to assist the Solicitor in question. Needless to say it made a very positive impression of a no-nonsense service!
The key takeaways are as follows
It can be cost effective on a cash basis to have an exclusively remote Service Desk but this often causes other issues such as knowledge gaps, poor/distant service and loss of productivity for your other staff. These also come at a cost that you cannot record and heavily impact profitability.
Being held accountable counts for a lot as a professional services firm; even if your on-site Desktop Support staff are somewhat junior and being supported by more senior remote staff it is better than no on-site presence at all.
On-site support can often delegate simple work and focus on the urgent work or complex projects your business needs to prioritize, whereas a Service Desk will be juggling your critical issues with other clients of the your Service Provider. The key difference here is that with the former you still have a dedicated resource to resolve an issue or communicate progress no matter how ‘busy’ the Service Provider is on any given day.
Hayachi Services considers IT to be operational in nature, and a ‘boots on the ground’ approach is the most efficient way of getting things done: it allows us to plan your projects better, deliver support with greater care and build resilience in your information systems.
We have proven since our founding in 2017 that delivering good service and IT projects is only possible with a ‘boots on the ground’ approach, delivering very complex work which other firms could never achieve even with much higher budgets.
Our customers tend to want dedicated on-site specialists, with a Service Desk that is complimentary, to ensure that perceived and actual costs align with the service you receive: know what you pay for.
