For a channel only based organisation such as Comms-care the results made an interesting read. Only 6% of resellers said that they were using a third party provider but when asked how important it is to provide IT support services from 1-10 (ten being the highest) 78% rated support services at 9+. This indicates the increasing importance of IT support services within the channel and the benefits that resellers are experiencing from offering these services.
Richard Eglon, Marketing Manager at Comms-care explains “Comms-care are experiencing an increased demand from their channel partners to provide specialist IT support services that includes maintenance cover and specialist technical projects across IP Telephony, Wireless and Security platforms. It seems that the channel have really identified the advantages of using channel only support companies as there is no conflict with the end user and they have access to a wide range of technical knowledge and experience.”
The results also showed that providing a guaranteed fix is the main factor when securing a support contract – with 46% of the votes. 29% said shorter SLA was an important element and 25% touched on lower cost. With cost being a lower priority, it was evident that service delivery, reduced downtime and a quick response is what organisations were looking for. Reputation and proven service delivery is extremely important when signing a support contract – the cost of loosing your Customers due to poor service is a big price to pay.
Other questions in the survey included what type of networking products and technology areas resellers were involved with.
Eglon adds “Up to date market research is very important in assessing the needs of the channel and I would like to thank the people who participated – we have received some valuable feedback in this exercise which we will be using to help improve our service offering to all our channel partners.”