IT support: Areas of Responsibility with your Clients

IT support must cover areas including: training, security, disaster recovery, software testing and proactive maintenance. Developing a comprehensive strategic plan for your clients is the key to providing successful IT support.
Many different responsibilities are included in providing IT support to your clients. In this article, you'll learn which areas need to be a part of your comprehensive services.

Coordinating Telecommunications Solutions

With sweet spot clients, you'll probably end up coordinating your IT support with the local telephone company, whether it's a CLEC (competitive local exchange carrier) or ILEC (incumbent local exchange carrier), to get a leased line. You'll research what kinds of connections are needed and even basic dial-up networking recommendations. Most IT support departments also end up coordinating tech support with ISPs for Internet access.

Testing, 1, 2, 3

Inevitably, your firm is going to get involved in vertical industry-niched applications, whether you bring the vertical applications in, or your clients ask you to test the application out before they make a major IT investment. Your client will want your IT support firm to evaluate how the vertical application fits into their network.

Training the Guru or the Masses

Like it or not, your firm will get involved in training. Sometimes that training may be more formal end-user training where you take small groups aside and show the users a new application. Other times the training may be more informal with the internal guru-the one that everyone comes to with questions. By training the “guru”, the guru will be able to “train” others on the more routine matters (such as how to recover a lost toolbar or taskbar).

Count on the Inevitable Disaster

Your firm will also need to get involved in disaster recovery planning, checking out the data backup system, the antivirus software, the power protection and the security. Also don't forget proactive maintenance.

The Bottom Line about IT support
Your biggest value to your customers is in your problem solving and the strategic planning. You must be able to take everything clients have that's IT-related, put it down on paper, get it organized, figure out what needs to be done immediately and what can wait, how the immediate IT needs fit into the budget and other needs of the business.