As the coronavirus pandemic disrupts many industries and forces them to adopt a work-from-home model, managed IT service providers (MSPs) are continuing to support new needs.
Essentially, all contracts are temporarily for remote-only managed IT services for the time being, and on-site visits are reserved for emergencies.
What does this mean for managed IT services customers, though?
At The KR Group, we’ve noticed four differences since the majority of our customers started working from home.
- On-site visits only for emergencies
- Longer conversations to resolve issues
- A push for redundancy
- Coordinated call forwarding
These differences don’t impact the effectiveness of managed IT services, but they are things you may want to be aware of as contracts lean more and more on remote IT support.
On-site visits only for emergencies
The most significant change you’ll notice as your MSP adapts to the remote workforce is you won’t get to see an engineer during pre-scheduled on-site appointments.
At The KR Group, we’ve found we already solve about 80% of our customers’ problems remotely. For the other 20% of problems, you’re still entitled to on-site assistance if you need it, though.
IT emergencies, such as down servers or other mission-critical hardware, are still bound to happen. An engineer is still able to go on-premises to help you resolve those issues and get your business back up and running.
Even without on-site visits, you should continue to submit support tickets and reach out to your MSP as normal. Just know you likely won’t see your engineer in person.
Longer conversations
With on-site visits being reserved for emergencies only, you can expect longer conversations with your managed IT services engineer as they try to exhaust every option before deeming an on-site visit necessary.
Engineers will ask more questions as they attempt to find a remote solution for as many problems as possible.
Before, your MSP could go on-site if the problem wasn’t quickly solved remotely or advise you to wait until an upcoming pre-scheduled visit.
Now, your MSP engineer will try every remote solution before resorting to an on-site visit, though, and save on-site visits for problems with no remote solutions.
Push for redundancy
In an attempt to cut down on the need for on-site visits, your MSP may recommend you implement redundancy into your IT environment.
Offline or malfunctioning hardware, such as servers or other mission-critical hardware, generally requires an on-site visit to troubleshoot and then resolve or replace the hardware.
As an example, if you have redundancy, you’ll have a back-up device to fail over to if your main server stops functioning.
You don’t want to permanently rely on your back-up device, though, since you no longer have redundancy. However, it can buy you time in resolving the issue with your primary device.
Call forwarding
With both your employees and your MSP’s engineers working remotely, it’s important to make sure communication stays clear.
On the MSP side, you shouldn’t notice a difference as engineers have calls forwarded to a home desk phone or their cell phone.
On the customer side, you’ll need to do the same thing by setting up a softphone and call forwarding. Or, at the very least, update your MSP on the best number to get back to you to help you resolve your issues.
Adjusting to remote-only IT services
Hopefully, this article has helped inform and prepare you for how your IT support is shifting as the majority of companies work exclusively remotely.
While you won’t see an engineer in person for a while, you will have long phone calls with him or her.
Another change you may consider is adding redundancy to your IT stack, so you decrease the need for emergency calls.
However, as long as we know how to reach your users, you shouldn’t notice a disruption in your IT services with an MSP.
Understanding how your managed IT services might change is only one part of preparing for a remote workforce, though.
Download our free checklist of all your remote workforce technology needs to see what technology you may be missing.
