After listening to a few hours of sales and support calls for NaviSite Dedicated Server prospects and customers it became clear to me that SMB’s are looking for technical support as much as they were looking for hardware, software and networking equipment! Information technology technical support /server support/application support/networking support are all problems around which that Web hosting providers receive calls and tickets. A combination of a difficult economy and an increasing reliance on employee’s access to applications, servers, email and more, SMBs are now no longer satisfied with the level of support full-time employees can provide.
We recently ran a survey on our landing pages and social media sites to understand the current satisfaction level that SMBs have with IT support providers. The survey was titled “24/7/365 – Myth or Reality”. Interestingly while 68% of respondents said they expect their Website and application servers will run without an issue this holiday season, over 73% said that their IT personnel would not be available at midnight on New Year’s Eve. The survey indicated that CEO’s seem to know that downtime costs money with 53% of respondents indicating that the first person to know about downtime is the CEO/owner. The survey results also showed that 43% of the time in-house IT support personnel do not answer their phone when at 3am an issue with the IT infrastructure is reported.
This survey indicates that outsourcing of managed dedicated servers, application servers, Exchange email and more to a hosting provider promises to provide SMBs with 24/7/365 support for IT infrastructure.
The support that hosting providers give is more than a bullet in the list of features – it is a defining benefit that we provide to the customers. While the level of support and managed services differs between hosting providers, it’s clear that many SMBs can get more responsive support than in-house from hosting providers.
