… only stupid answers, right?
How often do you stop yourself asking a question for fear of sounding silly or rude or nosey?
But the one time you should ask anything and everything is when you’re looking for a new IT support partner (or any other outsourced service, for that matter).
When you’re trusting a large element of your business to another company, you want to be certain that you’re making the right decision in choosing them.
If you’re looking for a new IT support provider, these are some of the tricky questions we suggest you ask…
Do you specialize in an industry?
Do they have the right knowledge of your sector to be able to provide you with the right solutions? If they do specialize, how will they translate their service to your business? Will it be a good match? Are they used to working with businesses the same size as yours, or do they usually work with smaller or larger companies?
What’s your retention rate?
Are they going to do what they say they’re going to do? Or do their clients soon become disillusioned and look for a better service elsewhere? What’s the main reason that clients leave them?
How much of your revenue comes from fixing issues vs preventing them?
We know things can’t always be anticipated – especially when it comes to IT problems. However, it’s really important to choose an IT service partner who will work proactively to prevent as many issues as possible. If their work is primarily reactive, they’re missing some big steps in their service.
How do you secure your own infrastructure?
You want to know who you’re working with a provider that takes their own security very seriously. If you don’t hear terms like conditional access, multifactor authentication, access controls and email threat protection you need to go into more depth with them or walk away.
What is the process if we decide to part company?
There could be a variety of answers here, but you want confidence that the process is acceptable to you. They should also give you peace of mind that the keys to your technology kingdom belong to you and that no part of your technology would ever be ‘held hostage” if you the relationship ends.
The answers to these questions can really tell you a lot about a company. So ask the difficult questions. Learn as much as you can about any new partner for your business. Because you want to make sure they’re a great fit for you.