IT support plays a vital role in modern business, with the need to get equipment fixed and employees up and running again as soon as possible being essential to keeping up with today’s 24/7 mobile business environment.
Despite this, IT support can be a painfully slow and expensive experience for businesses and individual users alike, with the average resolution time sitting just below the three-day mark, says Anthony Lamoureux, strategy and development director at Velocity.
With so many business processes being streamlined through the use of technology and connected devices it is time to look at how IT support solutions can also be improved and brought more in line with the consumer “click and collect” model enjoyed by so many people.
Speed of resolution
For any support team, resolving a user problem as quickly as possible must always be the goal. While IT support tickets currently take three days to resolve, cloud-based smart locker solutions enable users to simply replace their broken equipment with a working replacement within a minute of raising a problem.
Rather than waiting days, the user could be back up and running quickly – and back to being productive – with immediate access to all their cloud-based applications. Doing this means the user gets instant access to their files and can continue working, all while their machine is fixed behind the scenes.
Streamline your desk-side support model
Simple requests for new equipment typically take up about one third of all the demands placed on desk-side support teams. Being able to order items and pick them up quickly can cut the amount of time and workload placed on teams just dealing with new equipment orders and give them the time to focus on more complex and important tasks.
Being able to minimise the administration of desk side support, automatically manage stock and improve asset management through cloud systems and solutions like smart lockers cuts the bureaucracy out of this process, streamlining support, allowing workers to take more control of their IT support, and freeing support teams.
This kind of automated, cloud-based support service extends IT desk side support beyond the conventional 9-5 and turns it into a 24/7 service at a much-reduced financial cost to businesses.
Self-Service IT support solution
Having 24/7 access to replacement equipment is not only beneficial to individual users – who will no longer have to wait days for an IT issue to be fixed – but also for businesses by removing much of the IT support costs and enabling users to self-serve their IT solution needs.
The self-service model removes both the cost of delivery and improves the user experience; it reduces non-productive time and improves business agility. The key to realising the full value of this model is adoption. Simply placing equipment in lockers is not enough: users have to be actively encouraged and empowered to adopt this self-service model at the point that they need it.
In a 24×7 economy, IT desk-side support change is long overdue. It is time to stop paying twice for an inadequate service and embrace a model that delivers equipment on demand.
The author of this blog is Anthony Lamoureux, strategy and development director at Velocity
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