Every IT service provider has a story to tell you. Maybe they focus on their technical pedigree. Or, maybe they promise to provide better service than any competitor could.
But if you’ve ever thought about outsourcing IT and looked at a few potential providers, you’ve probably noticed one thing—they all start to sound the same after a while. When everyone is telling a similar story, it’s tough to figure out what’s different and why it matters.
Don’t get lost in the stories. First and foremost, your goal should be to avoid signing up for average service. You wouldn’t want an average surgeon or average dental work, and you shouldn’t settle for mediocre IT service, either.
Average service is just that. It’s only one step above poor service, and it constantly leaves you wishing for more.
It’s time to Refuse Mediocre IT.
But how? To get the service you deserve, you need to know why mediocre IT is so costly, the warning signs to look for, and how to choose a quality provider.
Why Should You Care About Mediocre IT?
“Knowing what you don’t know is more useful than being brilliant.”—Charlie Munger
Many small and medium-sized businesses don’t have the resources to hire a full in-house team of IT experts. That’s why it makes sense to outsource to a managed services provider. You can control costs, benefit from experienced IT pros, increase efficiency, reduce overhead, and mitigate risk across your business.
But you only get those benefits if you find an IT Service provider that offers more than average service. When you accept mediocre IT services, your business suffers—especially when you consider how vital technology is to your operations.
With mediocre IT services, you risk experiencing:
- Lost Productivity: IT is complicated, so it’s unreasonable to expect you’ll never experience a problem. But when mediocre IT services allow the same problems to occur over and over again, your workforce will suffer the consequences. Internal timelines get delayed, and quality of work decreases, causing your bottom line to take a hit.
- Unexpected Delays and Downtime: Delays & downtime force people to rearrange their schedules and work late into the night or push other projects into the weekend. The Time-Money-Resource costs start to add up quick. Just one hour of unplanned downtime can cost small and medium-sized businesses hundreds of dollars. Even if a mediocre IT provider identifies a problem quickly, they may not be able to resolve the issue before it impacts your workforce.
- Increased Security Risk: Mediocre IT providers will only do the bare minimum to check the boxes of your service agreement. That might seem like enough to keep the lights on—but not when security solutions like firewalls and antivirus aren’t proactively updated. When your systems aren’t proactively patched, attackers can target your business more easily. Studies show that 85% of SMB ransomware victims had antivirus installed. And at an average cost of $46,000 per incident, you can’t afford to leave your systems unpatched.
Your business relies on IT to maintain operations. Anyone of these issues could lead to costly consequences that force you to shut your doors for good.
The problem is that mediocre IT doesn’t just announce itself. It’s your job to spot the warning signs and get out of a bad service provider relationship as quickly as possible.
TRUE STORY - 4 Questions for the Local Law Firm that Refused Mediocrely IT
First of all, we believe in transparency. We’ve been fighting against mediocre IT for decades. But we understand that our story can get lost in the noise of all the other providers promising you great service. So, instead of preaching about our services, we like to let our customers speak for us.
When a local law firm was experiencing mediocre IT, they decided to look for new solutions to their old problems. One of the promises we at MicroTech Systems promise to provide is exceptional, 5-Star service. But to say you can provide that level of service is not the same as delivering it. So, we asked their team to answers these four quick questions. And we hope that you will be inspired to refuse mediocre IT, too.
1. What IT challenges did you have that led you to seek out a new IT partner? How were they impacting your business?
We had very limited (meaningful) communication with our previous provider. Written communication was short and rude. And sometimes we would go weeks or even months without speaking to the provider.
It was challenging for our business to grow in that kind of environment. As the number of our employees and clients grew, we were unable to keep up. The problem really came to a head when we realized that we couldn’t change our user profiles or phone protocols to accommodate our business growth because our "mediocre" IT provider was unable (or unwilling) to give us the time to work through our issues as our business grew.
2. What has been your experience with MicroTech?
MicroTech is very attentive to our IT needs. That statement is in the current tense. They follow up very quickly on every service request and carve out time to have conversations about our particular business requirements whenever we need them. They are proactive about the way we leverage IT to do our jobs and to stay ahead of potential challenges. We consider that excellent.
3. What has been your experience with MicroTech as it relates to promises made and fulfilled?
MicroTech always follows through with our requests in a timely manner and regularly checks in on our overall business needs.
4. What traits distinguish MicroTech from your previous IT experience?
Building trust over time through creative problem solving and communication is a strength for MicroTech.
From the beginning, MicroTech has been very open with us. They introduced their staff, showed us their headquarters, and have regularly communicated with us about issues in our environment.
MicroTech’s local Service manager, in particular, has shown extreme patience with us and our phone system. He has enabled us to manage some of it on our own, giving us a certain level of control over how our business grows. We’re very grateful for the over-the-top support team at MicroTech!
Ready for Better? Refuse Mediocre IT Today
We’ve helped that local law firm and many other SMBs refuse mediocre IT by providing our 5-Star Promise.
5-Star service isn’t an award—it’s a declaration that our team will go out of its way to deliver the technology, service, and experience promised from the outset. We’ve challenged our team to go the extra mile and meet a set of standards that we believe, if delivered to you, constitute a 5-Star service rating. More than anything, it’s a mindset and a healthy disdain for all-things mediocre.
We challenge mediocre IT service by relentlessly focusing on serving you with this 5-Star Promise:
- Integrity at the Core of Our Service
- A Never Give Up Attitude
- Owning the Work, We Do
- Focusing on Building Trust
- Backing Up the 5-Star Promise with a Guarantee
We’re so confident in our 5-Star Promise that we’ll discount your bill if you don’t feel we’ve lived up to the service standard. It’s time to get the service your business deserves.
