Salient IT Support › IT Support Lodi
Even though your managed IT services partner is probably going to be the IT services partner you speak to most often, your IT support partner will also have an important role to play in your business. That being so, it’s important to choose the right IT support partner for your organization. With that in mind, here is a quick guide to choosing the right IT support partner in Lodi.
Be prepared to be ruthless on “hard” criteria
Most of your selection process is going to be based on “hard” (objective and factual) criteria, such as location, services offered (and the service model) and price (and the pricing model and payment terms). If you’ve done an effective job of defining your needs and wants then you should have a very clear idea of what your ideal IT support partner in Lodi needs to offer (and if not then you need to go back to the drawing board and try again), so be prepared to be ruthless about sticking to that and only compromise if there is a really good reason to do so.
Make sure you are clear on a vendor’s legal and physical location(s)
A reputable IT support services will never deliberately mislead you, but they may see a situation differently from you. For example, if you just search on the term “IT support in Lodi”, the chances are that your results will contain a mixture of IT support companies in Lodi (or in the near vicinity of Lodi) and IT support companies which offer services in Lodi, but which are legally and/or physically based elsewhere.
This is highly unlikely to be a deliberate attempt at deception, in fact, at first glance, you may not even see it as important, but in actual fact, it does have a couple of major implications. First of all, if an IT support partner is in Lodi (or at least near Lodi), then it is relatively easy for them to get out to your site and this could prove very handy not just for developing professional relationships, but also for getting on-site support either with projects or in an emergency.
Secondly, vendors of all descriptions usually put a clause in their contracts which says that the parties agree to operate under the local laws in the vendor’s location and that any disputes will come under the jurisdiction of the vendor’s local courts. If you work with an IT support partner who is legally and physically located in Lodi (or at least in that area) then you will both have the same local laws and courts, but if you choose an IT support partner from further afield then you will have to work by their rules and you may not find that at all convenient.
Remember that you have the right to expect high-quality customer service
The best way to get a feel for an IT support partner’s attitude to customer service is to have a personal meeting with one of their representatives. You can learn a lot from how they present themselves to you. As an absolute minimum, they should have taken the time to inform themselves about your business and be able to adapt their language to their audience. Many SMBs have minimal in-house technical skills and so are looking for simple explanations, but if you are technically competent then a representative should be able to match you.
They should also be able to explain, clearly, how their company can demonstrate that they offer a reliable service and ideally one which is both flexible and scalable. As is generally the case in these situations, the more information you can give them about your future plans, the more they will be able to think about how they could fit into them and the better they will be able to explain this to you.
In other words, remember that these days “IT support” means a whole lot more than the “break/fix” support, which was once the core function (perhaps the only function) of the average IT support team (or company). This is still a key part of any IT support vendor’s work, in fact, it could easily be the most visible part of their work, especially for end-users. These days, however, IT support companies are often much more focused on project work. This is often where they deliver their real value.
Quite bluntly, a high-quality IT support partner in Lodi will understand your business and have the expertise to guide you through technology transitions so that you gain maximum benefit with minimum expense and inconvenience.
If you’d like to speak to a reputable and experienced IT support partner in Lodi, please click here now to contact Salient IT.
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