Whilst running an IT services business I have grown used to our ‘bread and butter’ service being labelled ‘IT Support’. It’s an accepted term used throughout the industry and recognised by all our clients and prospective clients. But does it really describe what we do? Personally I think not – in fact I believe it is an incredibly misleading term which is why last year I banned its use in our office.
My main issue is that the term ‘support’ is that as a service it is often interpreted as having the purpose of fixing problems – so describing our service as support to me implies it is acceptable for them to happen. In fact, a core principle of our service is to avoid problems happening in the first place. Add to that the fact that technology is in general far more reliable than say 10 years ago, I feel it is outdated description.
Managing systems reliability and uptime is now only an element of the basic service customers expect us to provide. Of equal or perhaps more importance is looking at ways to save time and cost, preventing security breaches, business continuity planning to name but a few.
Of course being such a familiar term we can’t remove the word ‘support’ completely – for example it remains on our website to register in searches. But we are certainly proud of the fact that we don’t offer support – just expertly managed IT.
