Can Your Computer Support Consultant Answer These 3 Questions Correctly?

There is a massive difference between being able to fix a broken computer and managing the IT for an entire business. It’s critical that the person/people/company managing your IT understands the reason you have IT in the first place.

If you are shopping around for a new IT consultant, you want to make sure you are asking these questions!

What Have You Done to Prevent ______ from Happening Again?

How often do you want to call tech support about the same problem over and over again? How often do you want to pay for the same issue to get fixed? Once is enough, right?

While not all problems can be completely avoided, many certainly can be. At the very least, issues can be detected before they cause major downtime or interruptions to your business. It should be IT’s responsibility to prevent issues and limit the impact they have.

For the vast majority of our clients, we set up an agreement where we cover all of your users and all of your devices so any support is covered. That means it is in our best interest to prevent problems from recurring, or else we’re the ones losing money.

It’s something to ask your IT provider, as you definitely want them to always take a proactive approach to your technology.

Are You Absolutely Sure My Data is Backed Up?

As IT people, we’re obsessed with data redundancy. Ask some of our techs; they have cold-sweat nightmares where they are working on a computer only to discover that the files aren’t backed up.

As it turns out, however, it isn’t as important to everyone else. Here’s why it NEEDS to be:

If something goes wrong, and let’s face it, a lot can go wrong, you want to be absolutely sure you don’t lose data. Your documents, your email, your database of contacts, your line of business application—you’ve put a lot of expensive time and effort into that data, and to lose it would be more than just a huge waste of effort.

Losing data can be catastrophic for a business. It can hurt your reputation or set you back by years. At the very least, it will cost a lot of time and money to replace.

You owe it to yourself to make sure that the technical people you work with understand this and care about your data. They should be making sure your data is backed up before they do anything.

Is That Covered Under Warranty?

This is a bit of a general question, and something that we feel really shouldn’t be your responsibility to be asking, if you are trusting your technology to someone else.

That being said, your IT person should have thorough documentation on every device on your network, including when it was purchased, how long support for it lasts, and how long it is covered under warranty.

Of course, if your network is a hodgepodge of devices and work done by a lot of people over the past several years, that becomes increasingly harder to manage. That does leave the responsibility to you.

Here’s how we handle it. Everything we touch gets documented. Our ticketing system lets us track every single time a technician works on a device, and lets us sort all service requests and issues based on a particular device on your network. We can look at a router or a laptop and see its full-service history from day one. This is huge, strategically. It tells us how much time goes into a particular piece of equipment and how much of a hassle it may be to deal with. We also track installation dates, who installed it, warranty, account information, and other configuration details. This means we’re much more efficient when working on something, and you are never dependent on a single person keeping track of everything in their head.

If you feel like your current IT infrastructure is a bit of a chaotic mess, we can certainly help make sense of it for you.

Reach out to us to set up a free, no-obligation consultation, and we’ll be happy to show you just how much more effective your technology can make you. Give us a call today at 607.433.2200.