Nobody likes getting a bill. Even less 1000 bills. We engage with customers all the time that work with our competition that do hourly IT support. Every time they pick up the phone to talk about anything, the client gets a bill. They call us because they are fed up. Death by 1000 papercuts. Luckily, there is a solution.
Motivation Matters
What we’re motivated by in this life makes a big difference in our behavior. What is your IT providers motivation? If you’re currently working with an IT provider that charges you hourly, their motivation is to bill as many hours as possible.
Is that the best scenario for your business? Does that motivate your IT provider to be proactive and prevent problems? Does it motivate them to solve root cause instead of band aid fix problems? Does that motivate them to look out for your best interest?
Unfortunately, it doesn’t. Shops that are paid strictly hourly to deliver IT service are motivated to bill hours. That means they may not be concerned with long term fixes. If it breaks again, they get paid again. If they aren’t proactive to prevent disasters, well that’s ok too. They get paid to fix disasters when they happen later.
Are they fast? You want to get back to work quickly and have solutions to your technology problems. Your provider gets paid hourly to fix them. The longer it takes them to solve your issue the more money they make. Oh, and they bill by the half hour or the hour, so that 5 min phone call is going to cost you at least 30 min of time.
It’s not good for your business, but it is good for your provider. They win no matter the state of your network, or number of outages. You need to change their motivation.
Flat Rate IT Support
i.t.NOW gives our clients options for flat rate IT support. This flips the whole equation upside down. We’re motivated to proactively maintain our client’s networks and prevent problems from happening. Why? Simple. We’re more profitable that way. If we let things go until they blow up and we must spend a ton of time fixing them it comes out of our flat rate fee. It doesn’t cost the client anymore.
Our motivation is to build the network the best way possible to prevent problems and downtime. The less things we must fix later, the more profitable we will be.
We get to the root of the problems the first time. If we don’t, the client doesn’t pay, and we make less money. We like money, so we’re properly motivated to do it right.
Flat rate IT makes your provider plan as well. The more they can effectively plan for the success of the network and continuous improvement, the more profitable they will be.
It also makes them fast. We’re motivated to solve problems quickly so you can get back to work. The faster we can put a quality fix in place the more profitable we are. That speed benefits your business as well. Less downtime and frustration equal more productivity and profits.
Aligned Interests
We feel like flat rate IT support is the best way to align your interests and that of your provider. Essentially it makes them have skin in the game. They’re on your team.
We’ve also found that when you take away the fear of death by 1000 papercuts in the forms of a bill it helps build trust. It helps us to build real partnerships where we can share ideas. Those relationships allow us to help use technology to take businesses to the next level.
We love doing that. When our clients grow, we grow. When they succeed, we succeed. Our interests are completely aligned with our clients and that’s when we’ve found a lot of good things start to happen.
If you’re tired of hourly billing and everything that goes along with it, it’s time to give us a call. We’ll give you real talk about your network and how we can make things better for a flat rate fee that aligns our interests. We’ll also solve that pesky death by 1000 papercuts problem. Call us today!
