What Is The Real Cost Of Cheap Technical Support
Companies have cut back on expenses to survive difficult economic conditions
. Even in boom times, successful companies maximize profits by reducing costs. However, managers need to keep the big picture in mind. Shopping for technical support bargains can lead to poor customer service and threaten the organization's IT infrastructure. Money saved today can mean catastrophic expenses tomorrow.
Lost Reputation
Customers have the "what have you done for me lately?" mindset. Businesses with years of reliable service can find their reputation destroyed in no time if service quality declines. No matter what industry you are in, your business depends on your IT infrastructure. When it goes down, your customers can't get what they want and will quickly become irate.
This problem is compounded in this age of instant information. A disgruntled customer doesn't complain to just a few friends. Instead, customer gripes can quickly reach millions of readers. Even if you smooth over the problem, that bad review of your company is on the Internet forever. Years from now, people can find those complaints about your service.
Lost Customers
When your IT infrastructure goes down, customers do more than complain. They find other options. Successful businesses depend on reliable customers, yet a day of system outage can cause those loyal clients to seek your competitors. How many of those clients who went elsewhere are going to return?
Once the problems are fixed, it's hard to get those customers back. In their minds, you are the company that failed them when they needed you. Even if it was a rare failure, it was your customer's most recent memory. You need responsive and experienced technical support that provides the technologies to keep your systems running, and the knowhow to get things back online should things go wrong.
Legal Implications
Effortless information access isn't just good business. It may be a legal requirement of operation. If your organization can't provide information when needed, it can lead to penalties against your business. Your network goes down during an audit and you can't produce required financial records. When researching a defense against a patent infringement lawsuit, you discover the records are corrupted and the backups are not complete. One of your corporate clients isn't able to access your company's services during a critical transaction and loses a lucrative opportunity.
Can your cheap technical support agency provide timely support? Maybe they fixed the problem, but it took days rather than minutes. Or they weren't able to fix it because they understand only 90% of your IT infrastructure, and it was the other 10% that failed. Your company carries the liability for their failure.
Lost Revenue Streams
Twenty years ago, getting an IT infrastructure problem fixed in three hours was a miracle. Today, that is an unacceptable and potentially devastating time frame. A massive amount of modern commerce depends on online transactions, and when the ecommerce servers go down you have suddenly lost a major source of revenue. What's worse is these outages are more likely to occur during high traffic periods as the strain of processing so many transactions tests your system to the limits.
You find out your site is down so you place an emergency call to your cheap technical support provider. It takes an hour to even reach a human being, and then another two before they are able to find and solve the problem. How much revenue are you going to lose in this time, especially during peak business hours?
Beware False Economies
Comparing technical support providers is not like shopping for dishwasher soap. Those extra dollars buy you better service. Today's businesses live and die on the dependability of their IT infrastructures. Customers expect nothing less than complete reliability. A major corporation suffering an hour's outage will make national or even global headlines.
Yes, cost is important. But cost is only one of many factors to consider when deciding how to best protect your IT infrastructure. The technical support provider's accountability, responsiveness and experience are other features to consider. Also, when evaluating cost don't look at only the fee for the technical support service. Consider how response time and experience are going to save or cost your company money over the months and years. You'll find that your company can't afford the real cost of cheap technical support.
by: Steve Bulmer
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