The perfect email is crafted, you attach the proposal, hit send and then nothing.  Panic starts to set in, the proposal is due in an hour, you calm your self down, pick up the phone and call your managed service provider.  After 5 rings, you are forced to leave a voicemail.  10 minutes pass, you pick the phone back up, call and they answer this time.  You explain the urgency of the issue and are told by the tech they will get to the issue soon.  20 minutes later, the tech calls you back with more questions, they are ready to start working on the issue.

Current Average Response Time: under 14 minutes

As you stare at the clock, pace and debate calling your provider again, 25 minutes pass and the issue still isn’t resolve.  Finally, your tech realizes that they cannot fix the issue and internally escalates the ticket to a level two tech that can fix what you assume is an easy problem. The last 5 minutes tick by as your deadline passes, unable to send your proposal.  Months of work are lost and the opportunity to earn the business is gone forever.  Eventually your issue is solved, and your email once again is functioning properly, but it is too late for the hard deadline your potential customer has set.

Current Average Resolution Time: under 15 minutes

The above situation happens more often than managed service professionals would like to admit.  At HubWise Technology, we guarantee that this outcome will not befall our customers.  Our response and resolution time are key performance indicators that we constantly measure.  Currently our average response time is under 14 minutes and our average resolution time is under 15 minutes.  We achieve these times because of the standard operating procedures that have been put in place and have been crafted through evaluating best practices.  This includes having the user set the priority level of the opened support ticket, ensuring that what your priority is becomes our priority. In addition to customers setting the priority level, HubWise Technology believes in maintaining a staffing level that is conducive to quick response and resolution times.  This not only means keeping enough support personnel on the support desk, but also only hiring staff that are certified as level two support and higher.  All our support personnel are enabled to and can fix your day-to-day IT problems. What might be the most important factor in keeping our response and resolution times low is the internal culture that has been crafted.  It is a point of pride within the company that these numbers are extremely low and we hold an all hands-on deck mentality if our support desk becomes inundated with calls or emails.

If you keep using your current managed service provider, are you at risk of losing potential clientele? If you would like to see how HubWise Technology focuses on doing better, please reach out to us or call Jason Moen at 402-339-7441.

Our belief was that if we could quantify the reasons that propelled the change, we could ensure that we don’t fall prey to these negative behaviors.  The results that we found weren’t unexpected, but the lack of diversity in the reasoning behind the change was surprising.  Our assumption was that there would be 10-12 common reasons why companies chose to explore a new managed service provider.  What we found is that we could classify the differing reasons into 5 basic categories; poor response and resolution time, lack of technological direction, feeling undervalued as an organization, not having or meeting set expectations and a general lack of professionalism. 

  At HubWise, we are currently averaging less than 14 minutes to respond to voicemails, emails and tickets opened through our portal.  Resolution time averages right under 15 minutes.

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Response and Resolution Time

Response and resolution time is the time that it takes for your managed service provider to acknowledge that you have an issue and the time that it takes for that issue to be solved.  This is a critical aspect to the day-to-day operations of a managed service provider.  When response and resolution time are increased, companies lose money, employees become frustrated, and critical operations can fail. With their past providers, response and resolution time could take hours and sometimes days.

At HubWise, we are currently averaging less than 14 minutes to respond to voicemails, emails and tickets opened through our portal.  Resolution time averages right under 15 minutes. That means from the time an employee realizes there is an issue, less than a ½ hour later they are up and running at full capacity. We strive to keep these numbers consistent through our growth cycle. We accomplish this in a number of different ways including hiring only level two or higher certified technician, staying fully staffed and enabling a culture that allows for easy and seamless escalation.  

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Lack of Technological Direction

Too many of our clients have utilized a past managed service provider that was only a technology company.  They either did not see the importance of or were not capable of helping their customer base create a technology roadmap. Without an IT direction, many of them had grown or changed operations and their technology was inhibiting this shift.

We want to be instrumental in the success of our customers organization and we help drive that success by conducting regular business reviews.  We discuss the future direction of the company, planned growth, and any new paths that the business is taking.  These discussions allow us to honestly assess where they are technologically today, if their current configuration can meet the new direction, and allows us to make proactive recommendations based on enabling their success instead of reacting to a change.

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Feeling undervalued

At our core, people want to feel appreciated, be it personally or professionally. As many managed service providers grow, institutional memory stagnates.  When a company signs with a new IT provider, they may have one point of contact on the help desk and one account manager.  At first these two know your configuration, the common issues, and how your employees prefer to be contacted. As more customers are brought on, this personal relationship decreases in importance to your provider.  Once this decrease happens, the personal connection is lost and the feeling of being just another number increases.  Next, you are explaining your configuration and the issues that have occurred in the past during every conversation with their help desk.

HubWise Technology creates institutional memory by allowing our employees access to all our customers pertinent data.  It takes extra time and effort to properly document interactions, preferred contact methods, common issues, and how issues were solved.  This additional energy that we spend allows our company to treat our customers as a valued partner instead of a number.  

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Not Meeting Expectations

Expectations are always set when dealing with any vendor.  Be it upfront during the planning phases or based on preconceived perception of how the relationship should work.  During our audit we found that the most common sets of expectations, stipulated or preconceived, are based on how the relationship between employee and support desk functions, response and resolution time, and timing of when a project will begin and be completed. We found that their past providers routinely failed to meet expectations.

At HubWise Technology, two of our brand promises, plan and communicate, guarantee that we set the expectations, and that a realistic timeline is set in place for any work performed.  If there are interruptions to the timeline, they are communicated to our customer setting new expectations. Because we follow our brand promises with every customer interaction, meeting timeline goals and communicating changes becomes the baseline of internal expectations that we set for ourselves. 

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Unprofessional

Lack of professionalism covers several common pain points our customers had prior to switching their managed IT services to HubWise Technology.  One of the most common issues we found was a lack of correct certifications which left a deficiency gap between the services needed and the services rendered.  Another common issue was the on-site demeanor of service techs. This could be it a lack of introduction as they walk into the building, inappropriate dress or even tears when a mistake was made.

HubWise Technology hires people first, all employees are comfortable discussing what they are doing and why they are doing it with our customers.  Communication is a brand promise, and this might be most important when we are on-site.  All our operational and support personnel are certified to work on our deployed solutions and are regularly tested internally on their personal knowledge base. We also adhere to a strict dress code for any field deployed employees which helps enhance our professional image.  

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If any of these common pain points are being felt by your organization when dealing with your current managed service provider, please reach out to see how HubWise Technology can do better.  Or call Jason Moen at 402-339-7441

We know our continued success as a customer focused managed service provider depends on it. We consistently challenge ourselves to ensure that these values are followed so they become intertwined into our daily actions. When we judge our actions based on these principles we can determine if we have taken the correct action and are following the right path.  

Say it Do it, is our first value.  This is a very simple concept, one in which all companies should follow, but in real life the execution typically lacks.  We put this value first on the list because it is so important to our success.  In practice, it means if we say we will return a call at a certain time, that call gets made.  If we tell a customer that we will on-board them on a certain date, it gets done.  As we review the interactions that we have with our own vendors and the lack of a say it do it mentality, this value and its tremendous importance is driven home further.   

Being a managed IT service provider, our second core value lines up with our day-to-day mission, Fearless Innovation.  Too many people in our industry find a technology stack that they are comfortable deploying and continue to deploy this same solution continuously without exploring other options.  The months soon become years and no discovery is done to see if there is a better solution available.  The IT world is always evolving, and HubWise Technology constantly evaluates new solutions.  Some of these new products we deploy after rigorous testing and some are shelved.  We make these decisions based on what is best for our customers not what is easiest for our support desk and network engineers.   

Do the Little Things is our third core value, when the small things are overlooked, they eventually stack up and become big issues. At HubWise Technology, we do our best to make sure that the little things are taken care of immediately.  This value starts at the office with the simple things, keep your desk clean, replace the paper towels if you use the last one and make a pot of coffee if you drink the last of it.  This value starts internally and colors all our interactions with our customer base.  It means knowing the preferred contact method of our individual customers, calling instead of emailing.  It means fixing the IT issue right the first time instead of patching it for now even if that is the easier and quicker path.   

No B.S. is our last core value, simply stated, we won’t beat around the bush.  This means that if you have an issue, we will be open and honest with what it will take to fix it, how long it will take to fix it and how the issue occurred.  This value is displayed regularly during our customer business reviews as we create a technological road map in conjunction with key staff.  If your goals can’t be met with your currently deployed technology, we won’t hide this fact, we will openly and plainly explain what needs to happen to meet your target.  

If your values align with ours and they are currently not being met by your managed service provider, please reach out to us via our contact form or call Jason at 402-339-7441 and we will show you how we do better.   

Plan

The first promise is we will Plan out all on-site deployments, on-boarding for managed service clients, procedures, practices and even how we close open tickets.  These plans are not static and while we are following standard operating procedures for all events, they are adaptable and allowed to evolve.  By pre-planning these events, this allows us to think through potential pitfalls that can be ran into during deployments. This planning allows HubWise to place ourselves in a position to succeed and exceed our customers’ expectations.

Communicate

The Second brand promise is to Communicate.  One of the pain points our customer base felt with their old provider, is that they never knew when projects would take place, if tickets were closed, and the status of orders.  This customer pain we understand.  Therefore, we promise to make sure our customer base understands our plan that we have in place.  This isn’t as simple as emailing a timeline once. This means having an open dialogue and making sure to keep engaged throughout the completion of the project.

Deliver

The third brand promise is to Deliver.  If we plan and communicate our plan but can’t deliver on the expectations that we have set with our customers, what is the point of the planning and communication.  Delivering isn’t as simple at HubWise Technology as making sure that the hardware is up and running correctly, the issue is fixed, network monitoring is running, or our agents are deployed.  It means that all exit criteria have been met, including explaining new functions, training if needed or making sure that all employees know how to access our help desk.

Recommend

Our last brand promise is Recommend.  This works both ways in fact.  We want to prove to our customers by our actions, not our words that we, HubWise Technology, is worthy of their trust.  Once this trust is established, they will feel comfortable listening to our recommendations on IT solutions.  This works both ways, we also want our customers to be able to recommend us as a preferred vendor to their network.  HubWise Technology feels strong enough about being able to be recommended that if our customers can’t do it, we let you end service with no penalty.

We would like the opportunity to speak further with you about our brand promises and the core values that we have built HubWise Technology on.  Please let us show you the HubWise difference. Contact us today or Call Jason at 402-339-7441 today.