Would you describe calling IT support as a relaxing experience? Probably not, especially if you own a business. You call a number, get a ticket, wait for a call back… and the whole time, your business stands still. Bram Maerevoet, our System Administrator with more than 10 years of experience in end user support, explains why more companies are trading the call centre for a personal partner.
“We’ll be fine, my cousin knows computers”
Every small business starts the same way. You only have a few employees, so IT is something you do on the side. Maybe you know a thing or two about the basics, or you have a family member who can set things up for you.
Helpful when you’re just starting out, but in time, this leads to some dangerous scenarios. Especially when you start growing. Things like:
- Your passwords being stored on Post-it notes
- Everyone having administrator rights
- Your backup strategy being “hope for the best”
And as Bram points out, realising that this isn’t good enough usually happens too late. “It works until it doesn’t. The wake-up call usually comes from the news. A business owner sees a report on cyberattacks. They suddenly think: ‘Oh shit, how is my security actually organised?’ That is often the moment they call us.”
Lost in the ticketing machine
Once you start growing and realising your weaknesses, you might be tempted to get professional support from large IT providers. If they’re that big, they have to know what they are doing, right?
Well, we won’t claim that they don’t know their stuff, but their sheer size does lead to another problem. As Bram explains, you will probably be too small to matter.
“You call the service desk and get lost in the process. You explain your problem to an agent. They log a ticket. Three hours later, a different person calls back. Then you’ll have to explain it all again. There is no relationship, no context. And perhaps most importantly, there is no sense of urgency for your specific problem.”
Obviously, this is frustrating. You don’t want a ticket number; you want a solution. So, what’s the difference between this kind of support and what you get at GroupWave?
How we do things differently
When companies switch to GroupWave, they often notice the silence first. The constant noise of small IT problems dies down.
The difference is accessibility. As Bram puts it: “I will not claim I can fix every complex issue in five minutes. But when you email or call, you’ll get an answer on the same day. Usually within hours.”
That’s because when you call GroupWave, you won’t be talking to a generic first-line support agent reading off a script. You’ll talk to the person who built your server, who helped develop your applications, who knows your business and systems.
Our personal approach to IT support relies on three main pillars, which we’ll explain below.
We share our knowledge
Many IT providers hoard important information. They keep the admin passwords and the procedures to themselves, because that’s just how their business works. If you depend on them for every small change, their revenue increases.
As Bram points out, we do the opposite.
“I write manuals and procedures for my clients. I give them the keys. If a client wants to save costs by adding a new user themselves, I teach them how. I do not hoard knowledge to keep my billable hours up. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be a partnership.”
We are honest (even if it costs us)
You might think you need expensive Enterprise licenses because a previous vendor sold them to you as the best possible thing for your business. But if you only have ten employees, you probably don’t need them.
As part of our intake procedure, we’ll look at your setup with a critical eye. If we see you overpaying, we tell you to downgrade. And if you ask for a specific solution that isn’t our speciality, we tell you that too.
“Clients appreciate that honesty more than a sales pitch,” Bram points out. “We look at your budget like it is our own.”
We know your context
A call centre agent just sees a ticket with an error code. We see the business impact.
We know that for one client, the sales process cannot fail during the day. For another, the warehouse is the absolute priority. We know this because we took the time to learn your business before we touched your servers.
“You never have to explain who you are,” says Bram. “We already know. That context saves time and frustration.”
From bullets to peace of mind
We’ve helped plenty of companies transition to professional IT support, so we know it can feel like a hurdle. You’ll have to let us audit your licenses, secure accounts, and get rid of those sticky notes with passwords.
“It’s true, you’ll have to bite the bullet first,” Bram admits. “We have to fix the foundations first, before we can help you build. That takes a bit of work and budget. But once you are through that, you can relax and let us handle everything else.”
In other words: the result is more than just “better computers”. It is the absence of stress. You know that if the server goes down or a file disappears, you will not face a call centre menu.
You just pick up the phone. You call the person who knows you. And it gets sorted. That’s the GroupWave way.
Tired of being just a ticket number?
If you want IT support that comes with a name and a face, we should talk.
Contact us for a free advice session.
