The time when businesses could afford to work with slow, unresponsive IT support providers has passed. Modern businesses rely on a range of digital technologies to maintain peak productivity, which means that maximizing the uptime and availability of those technologies has become a top priority, which onsite support simply can’t accomplish.

Thankfully, businesses today don’t need to rely on onsite IT support anymore. The development of new IT support tools and methods has made delivering remote IT support — via phone, email, chat, and specialized software — the most effective and powerful tool for recovering from technology problems and ensuring that your team avoids IT issues altogether. 

Here are four reasons why businesses that want to maximize productivity should embrace remote IT support.

1) Remote IT Support Enables Proactivity 

Businesses without a full IT staff onsite need to wait for an IT support provider to come onsite and repair their technology, which means waiting for them to arrive, performing their repairs, and then paying by the hour for their support. That assumes they have the time to come onsite immediately, which is never a sure thing.

Throughout that entire process, you’re wasting revenue and productivity.

Remote IT support switches that paradigm by placing the focus on proactively locating and addressing network technology problems before they cause disruption. Managed IT services providers (MSPs) have two main methods of providing this proactive, remote IT support.

  • IT Help Desk Support
    The IT help desk is a team of specially trained and attentive technologists who are available 24/7 to help your team navigate their day-to-day technology problems. Designed to help recover lost files, retrieve lost passwords, resolve printer issues and other common issues, the IT help desk is a fully remote IT support function that streamlines how your team interacts with its technology. 
  • Remote Network Monitoring
    Remote network monitoring is when a seasoned team of network engineers watches over your network from a purpose-built network operations center (NOC). Armed with a specialized set of tools, the NOC team will prevent network downtime by tracking the flow of data and the health of attached servers, PCs, and devices so they can locate and fix any potential issues before disaster strikes.

Combining these two elements, MSPs can help keep your team working efficiently while minimizing the amount of time you spend waiting for network engineers to arrive onsite or “schedule you in.” What’s even better is that managed IT services pricing usually means a flat, monthly bill for all your services, which eliminates even more IT-related uncertainty. 

2) Remote IT Support Doesn’t Interrupt Your Workday

 Even small disruptions to your staff’s workday can have a negative effect on productivity. Did you know that it takes a staff member around 24 minutes to refocus after dealing with a tech problem or other interruption, for example? 

While there is still a place for engineers to come onsite to address major issues, such as hardware upgrades, server migrations, cabling problems, and other emergencies, it’s always best to avoid significant disruption whenever possible.

Not only does remote network monitoring help address issues before they cause downtime, but it also saves your team the disruption of having IT engineers coming into your office. This creates a more seamless employee experience, while keeping efficiency and morale high.

71% of millennials consider how an employer uses technology when making a career decision. (CompTIA)

3) Remote Support is Faster and More Efficient

 Even companies with in-house IT staff may find there is no silver bullet to creating a productive staff. In many cases, internal technology staff members are simply too focused on keeping the network running or managing big picture technology challenges to help employees deal with their problems. 

The remote support from a managed IT services provider provides you with streamlined processes and tools for solving day-to-day problems, freeing your internal team to focus on strategically important tasks.

But beyond speed, working with a reputable remote IT support provider also gives access to a greater variety of support as well. Being able to reach a cybersecurity expert, compliance consultant, or virtual chief information officer (vCIO) about an urgent matter gives your leadership valuable insights that they wouldn’t otherwise be able to access, which empowers them to make better business decisions.

4) Remote IT Support Creates a Happier Workforce

 MSPs like Complete Network take the quality of their remote IT support very seriously. To ensure that their service provides the responsive, streamlined user experience your team needs, reputable MSPs will track a variety of remote IT support metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs), giving both parties a detailed picture of how effective their support procedures are.

Some of the most important remote IT support metrics include:

  • Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)
    The point of any remote IT support is to help create a satisfied, efficient team, which is all top IT remote service providers will closely track overall end-user satisfaction as one of the primary ways of knowing if their solution is effective or not. If a prospective vendor isn’t tracking CSAT, or they aren’t willing to share those numbers with you, you should consider this a major red flag.
  • First Contact Resolution (FCR)
    All remote IT support providers and help desks should be trying to handle each support request immediately, on the first call. Complete Network and other MSPs use this important statistic to help measure and improve the speed and impact of our service.
  • Mean Time to Resolution (MTR)
    How long on average does it take your help desk partner to fully resolve an issue after a support request has been received? This metric is important in helping you achieve a complete picture of how helpful overall your MSP is to your staff. 

In addition to metrics, which the provider should be willing to share with you upon request, your MSP should also provide a detailed service level agreement (SLA) that provides guarantees about the type of remote support they’ll be providing and what exactly you can expect from their support personnel. 

Click here to learn more about managed IT service SLAs.

We’ve Got Your Remote (and Onsite) IT Support Covered.

Businesses in Albany, New YorkCharlotte, North Carolina, and Bluffton, South Carolina, have relied on the Complete Network team to provide high-touch, high-value IT partnerships for over two decades. You need technology experts that are committed to the security and stability of your business – that’s what we do!

Want to learn more? Contact us anytime at 877 877 1840 or [email protected].