Why Flat Fee Support Makes the Most Sense.
The Pay-By-The-Hour Computer Support Company
In the IT Industry, we call this the 'break-fix' practice. That's because this type of company makes money when stuff breaks and you pay them to fix it. These companies charge per hour for support, or perhaps offer a discount with blocks of prepaid time. Their technicians come to your office to solve a specific computer issue. These on-site technicians are expensive, and the company they work for has expectations for the amount of billable time they need to have. It is a pretty standard practice for the technician to manage their own time to an extent, and they are responsible for producing their own billing and that is reflected in their pay. In a situation like this, the tech wants to complete the task and move on to the next client to rack up enough hours to make their boss happy.
Think about it. This means there is no motivation for them run proactive maintenance on systems to minimize downtime and ensure that your entire infrastructure is running smoothly. There's no reason to show anyone in your organization how to resolve even a simple problem (rebooting a router for example) because that means one less billable call in the future. Plus, answering questions and checking into other issues might cut into the other billable visits that tech has that day. This method works well enough for residential users with computer troubles, but let's be serious, you are trying to run a business and they get paid when things break.
In the end, you end up paying for the technician to come out along with the employee(s) who couldn't work due to the issue.
The "Preventative" Maintenance Computer Company
Some tech support companies offer regular preventative maintenance when visiting their clients, or they schedule out these visits out on specific dates and times. This is so the technician can fill up their day with as many billable on-site client visits as possible. When the tech visits your office, they usually have a block of time to complete a series of proactive maintenance tasks to keep your network running well. This sounds pretty good so far, right? Unfortunately, the tech usually doesn't have the flexibility to go over the allotted time, especially without getting approval to bill you. The real kicker is that if the tech finishes the tasks early, they are often instructed to just find other things to do to fill the block of time, or even worse, just move on to the next client. You'll still pay whether you get your hour or if it only takes the tech 15 minutes.
Tech support companies love this model because it gives them guaranteed billable hours and they take no risk because if you need more help, they simply bill you by the hour.
Then, there's OUR way, with our OneStepAhead!
Network Depot does things differently. We want you to stop paying unpredictable hourly support charges. It doesn't make sense. You should be getting proactive support giving everyone in your company the help they need, when they need it, without the unpredictable bills.
We call our support philosophy OneStepAhead, and it's designed to give you and your entire organization peace of mind when it comes to your IT. We take the best aspects of hourly support and the best aspects of preventative maintenance, add a live help desk that anyone in your company can call anytime without an extra fee, and bundle it all together into an easy to budget flat rate. To keep our costs low and our clients happy, we've spent a lot of time and money investing in an infrastructure that can automatically monitor your servers and workstations, detecting problems before they cause you downtime. The flat rate includes security patches, updates for your virus protection, backups, help desk, project planning, consultation, vendor management, and much more. And, so you can sleep soundly at night, we offer all of this 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We can even include unlimited on-site support visits! Get proactive and save time, money, and stress with OneStepAhead!
