Comparing IT support providers is harder than comparing most things you buy, because the thing you are actually buying is what happens on a bad day, and nobody demonstrates that in a sales meeting.
These are the questions worth asking. They are the ones we would want asked of us.
1. Who will I actually speak to?
Ask whether you get a named team, and whether the person who answers the phone can fix things or only log them. Ask how many people work in support, and where they sit.
2. What are your response times, and what happens if you miss them?
A response target with nothing behind it is a sentence in a brochure. Ask for it in writing, ask how it is measured, and ask what the process is when it slips.
3. Who owns our documentation and passwords?
The answer should be you, without hesitation. If a provider treats your own network documentation and passwords as their property, you are looking at how difficult it will be to leave before you have even joined.
4. What is included, and what is extra?
Get specific. Are on-site visits included? Project work? Out of hours? New starter setups? Hardware procurement? The differences between quotes are usually hidden here rather than in the monthly figure.
5. What do you do proactively?
Anyone can fix things after they break. Ask what is monitored, how often patching runs, how backups are verified, and what you get told about without having to ask.
6. How do you handle backups, and when did you last test a restore?
A backup that has never been restored is an assumption. Ask how often they test restores for clients, and what the recovery process actually looks like.
7. What happens when the problem is our software rather than our IT?
Most providers stop at the boundary of the operating system. If your business runs on a line of business application, a database or a spreadsheet nobody else understands, ask what they will do when that is the thing that is broken.
This is the one that separates firms. Some will help. Some will hand it straight back to you.
8. What is the notice period, and what does leaving look like?
Ask it early and ask it plainly. A provider confident in their service will answer without discomfort. Ask what they hand over on exit and how long it takes.
9. Can I speak to a client like us?
Not the flagship reference. Somebody the same size, in a similar sector, ideally nearby. Then ask that client the only question that matters: what happens when something goes wrong.
And one for you
Before you go to market, work out what is actually wrong. Slow responses are a symptom. The cause might be that nobody has ever documented your setup, or that the same fault keeps recurring because nobody fixed the underlying problem.
Knowing that makes the conversations shorter and the comparison honest.
If you want an outside view of what you have got, our free IT review covers exactly that, including an honest answer about whether switching is worth it. Sometimes it is not, and we will tell you.
