Why Companies Choose HubWise Technology
Recently, HubWise Technology, audited our client base looking for commonalities of why they chose us and what drove them away from their past IT services provider. Our founding principle is Do Better and we constantly strive to put this principle into action.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.