We were visiting a prospect, performing a Network Review, and the owner said he had been using Microsoft as his outside IT support. He’d found a good guy who was willing to help, although not always available. Call wait-times can be incredibly long, and not all IT-related problems have anything to do with the Microsoft products, so he’s looking for an IT company but wants to keep costs down, too.
We got back to the office and found out that our 4-week long ’issue’ with Microsoft to fix a duplicate account number was finally moving ahead. What a frustrating experience!
Watching costs is so important, but I have a question: How much does it cost for you or someone on your staff to sit on hold? How much lost work time, tasks not done, employee frustration? I’d like to suggest that if you let a qualified IT person do it— and they billed you—you’d still come out ahead; think about it!