Your IT Provider Doesn’t Deserve Your Absolute Trust… Nor Should They Want It
From the moment we opened our doors until now, the team at ArchIT has always fully believed in transparency above all else. We not only want to educate our clients about what we do, but we also want to make sure they’re totally clear on WHY that is the right move to make at this particular time.
Not too long ago, I got a frantic call from a client who was experiencing issues with his computer ahead of an incredibly important presentation. Once I was able to get him to calm down, I learned as much about the problem as possible and quickly discovered that the fix was a lot more straightforward than the client was probably expecting.
This client was dealing with the process of opening a model in Revit BIM 360, and unfortunately, he hadn’t properly logged into the application. In truth, it’s so easy that it can happen to anyone – and luckily, the solution is so simple that virtually anyone can avoid it, too. I explained all of this to him in great detail guaranteeing that next time, he could make sure he properly logged in before he even had to think about calling us.
I was able to fix the problem in just a few minutes, getting everything back up and running again. In an effort to make sure that the client wouldn’t run into the same issue again in the future, I also explained WHY it was happening – and what he could do to avoid it.
“I’m shocked that my previous provider never explained that to me,” he said. “They always just fixed the problem and that was that. Then they’d fix the problem again the next time I called, too.”
That was all I needed to hear before I started shaking my head.
“I’m actually not shocked by that,” I replied.
This client’s last provider clearly operated on blind faith from their clients and, at ArchIT, we do things a bit differently. Instead, we’re empowered by creating a sense of TRUST in our clients and, today, I’d like to take some time to explain WHY.
In the last fifteen years, I’ve nearly lost track of the number of business owners that we’ve worked with on all of their technology needs. Over that time, I’ve come to realize that there are really two types of entrepreneurs out there:
The first is the one who wants to know EVERYTHING about what is going on with their IT. They call me all the time and they send emails just as frequently. We don’t do anything without fielding a barrage of questions about “why this? Why now? What does it get me? What about X or Y or Z?”
The second is the kind who quickly says to me “eh, you know what you’re doing. I’ll let you handle it from here.”
Now, you may think that as someone with this much experience as a managed services provider, I’d vastly prefer the latter to the former.
That’s why it may surprise you to learn that you’re wrong.
The Trouble With Blind Faith
If you truly want to be seen as a business leader, in my humble opinion that means you need to lead – in this case, that involves knowing EXACTLY what is going on with the IT in your business at any given moment. How can you be expected to make the best and most informed decisions possible – which is a large part of what a leader does – if you lack those critical pieces of information about something so important?
Think about it this way: whether you’re a “technology business” or not, IT is at the heart of everything you’re doing. It represents the tools you’re giving your employees to allow them to do excellent work every day. It’s what they rely on to communicate and collaborate with one another. It’s one of the core components that you use to foster relationships with your own clients.
Why would you not want to know everything you possibly could about such an essential element?
In my opinion, you should never, under any circumstances, just put your blind faith in your IT provider. Doing so not only makes it harder to make those business decisions you need, but it also leaves you vulnerable to receiving poor support from an MSP of lesser integrity, too.
At ArchIT, for example, we don’t actually want your blind faith to begin with. I believe the same is true for every other high-quality MSP out there. Whenever I encounter a client like that second example I mentioned above, I always try to (politely) get them to see the value of being more involved. That’s because we want to be collaborators in every sense of the term.
Nobody knows IT like we do, but nobody knows your business better than you do. Both of those areas of expertise need to come together to form something more efficient than either one could be on its own.
When you put your blind faith in your IT provider, one of two things happens pretty immediately:
We essentially start taking orders from you, which is not how a true collaboration happens. Or worse…
… you start taking orders from us.
If your IT company uses technical jargon that you don’t understand, you deserve to have your IT situation explained in a way that makes sense to a regular human being. If your IT company insists on selling services but can’t explain the value, you’re setting yourself up to buy into resources that aren’t actually getting you anything in return. If your IT company isn’t actually interested in your point of view, they’re not working for you.
They’re working in service of their own bottom line.
You would never put your blind faith in a mechanic you’ve never heard of to fix your car just because they’re an “expert,” or a general contractor to put that new addition on your house just because “they’ve been doing this for years and are still around, so they must be good.”
You would ask questions. You would have concerns. You would want updates and information and would insist on being kept in the loop.
The same thing should absolutely be true of your business’ technology and any provider who tells you otherwise isn’t one deserving of your faith OR your respect.
Faith is Never a Given. Faith is Earned
At every business review meeting, we share all the critical data with our clients. This includes not only ticket counts but also outstanding issues, performance metrics, backup statuses and so on.
We also try to help the user understand WHY they had a particular problem so that the next time it happens, they can quickly fix it themselves if they so wish.
This is just a part of what we do – it always has been and it always will be.
Because to me, blind faith is ultimately hollow. It doesn’t get you nearly as much as you think it does. But trust? That’s the fuel that will power a mutually beneficial relationship for years to come.
If you’d like to start trusting your IT provider again, the good news is that this is exactly what we want, too. Contact ArchIT today for your free introductory phone call. After getting to know your business better, we’ll know exactly what we need to do to start helping you succeed… all while earning your trust and NOT your blind faith along the way.