The war for support is heating up, and surprise, surprise many of the companies who are providing personal IT support are now offering it to businesses. These services are definitely not 'cheap' but they do in many instances provide PAYG (pay as you go services) so if there's nothing to fix there's no fee.
Strangely enough - one of our major retail customers is leading the pack in the UK. Tesco's recent purchase of 'The IT Guys' demonstrates how serious and competitive this market is becoming.
Interested to know what services are out there in Asia and Americas - has any experienced them first hand? If so how do costs and service quality compare?
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An intermediate step could also be to turn the help-desk and end-user support into an internal "billable" service - pay per use. It would drive self-help and peer-help up (although, my perception is that this has already increased for reasons better not mentioned here ....) and would make people aware that there is a cost to everything. Challenge, apart from the inevitable discussions, is in making sure that the "fixed costs" are getting recovered.
ReplyDeleteFYI, in the UK, BT have started advertising their service on mainstream, prime-time TV. This is clearly seen as a growth area.
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