Approach
IT Support, ultimately is about knowing your business (both IT and not) and providing answers to questions posed, being able to fix problems, recommend solutions (and implement them) all while recognizing that your business information is your most important asset.
In your business of 1 to 5 Windows PCs an IT consultant or vendor should:
Question
Ask questions about your business.
Understand your business processes (both using IT and not).
Align your business goals with IT solutions.
Never
Never make you feel stupid.
Never speak in technobabble (plain English thank you) and explain things clearly, using terms you understand.
Never offer ‘one shop solutions’; a single IT ‘product’ rarely fixes everything.
Offer
Offer services after hours when updates do not impact staff.
Offer a remote access solution to your IT equipment that you control access to.
Not be pushing a single vendor (ask for affiliations) or be keen to ‘make a sale’.
If a large project, stage the work involved to see how each stage functions before moving forward.
Be Cautious
Be both cautious and up front.
Recognise that they don’t know everything.
Keep in mind that your business information is precious.
What we do at cpnwork
To be any good at support, we need to know more than just the IT stuff; we need to know a bit (or a lot) about your business processes.
So we document both your business processes and IT equipment.
Business Processes
What happens from the moment you acquire a new customer (or deal with existing ones); the service / product you provide all the way to billing and ongoing customer communication.
IT Audit
Documents all your IT equipment (PCs, printers, scanners, network equipment, software, online services / storage), your Internet / email supplier/s, backup and disaster recovery options and financial record keeping.
This allows the tracking of faults and helps make informed decisions about changes / improvements to your IT for your particular business needs.
