Just as your clients’ IT infrastructures have become more complex, as have the problems these infrastructures now address, likewise the technical support needed by your clients’ users has also become more complex.
In fact, for a while now IT infrastructures have been moving beyond complicated to address wicked problems that, in turn, trigger new problems and conflicts between people, processes, and technologies.
For instance, mobile devices deliver instant access to a panoply of services, but they’re easily hacked, so now your clients have to worry about securing employee smartphones and tablets — and the company data they can access. Which means dealing with new vulnerabilities, additional costs, et cetera.
And that et cetera matters. It hides layers of wickedly complex problems nested one within another as the new technologies your clients need to stay competitive are introduced. Adapting to the resulting environment — which tends to upend previous norms, rules, and processes — spawns conflicting, even contradictory needs that generate problems which cannot be solved, only mitigated.
IT support for wickedly complex IT infrastructures
That means your clients need the kind of technical support that can handle not only simple problems (tame in the lexicon of wicked problem experts) and complicated problems, but also a diversity of complex problems.
Of course, for all but the largest enterprises, building and staffing an in-house technical support operation able to cope with such a range of needs is beyond reach, since such an effort requires that your clients acquire and keep a support staff with quite costly expertise.
But you can help your clients with the best alternative — engaging the right third-party technical support services provider that can offer your clients direct, uncomplicated access to leading-edge IT expertise whenever they need it.
Four IT support capabilities to look for
I’m pointing to four capabilities — though actually the first one isn’t about support at all, at least not directly. Instead, it’s about expertise and experience with the quickly-evolving technologies to address wicked problems.
Such expertise and experience is best found with an IT support provider with a range of IT infrastructure capabilities that derive from longtime success running complex data centers and offering a broad range of complex cloud and managed services.
That same provider’s technical support services should include these three service capabilities…
- An umbrella support plan with two distinct elements: (1) an initial period of IT support for your clients’ infrastructures and (2) an assessment conducted during the initial support period that determines how your clients’ infrastructures can be improved so they can then decide what’s best for their business;
- A 24 x 7 x 365 technical on-call support service that onboards your clients up front to become familiar with their IT operations — so when they need help, the appropriate experts already understand their issues and respond accordingly; and
- A U.S.-managed technical help desk service that adheres to Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) best practices and is committed to sustaining high service-level metrics as it provides access to vetted, certified frontline-support technicians either 8 x 5 or 24 x 7 x 365, as your clients require, and can be configured to provide additional troubleshooting assistance.
Partner well, perform better.
Adam
