Bad IT Support During Lockdown? Here’s What It Should Have Been Like…

You might go days (even weeks) without needing really critical IT support.

That’s cool. But what about when you need it most? What if something happens that means your IT support issues are far more crucial?

A pesky global pandemic, for instance.

If COVID-19 and the subsequent lockdown has proven anything, it’s that having great IT support is vitally important. With more people than ever working from home and relying on technology to get work done, lazy or non-existent tech help is unthinkable.

Just think how bad it could be

“For us, the prospect of lockdown came just as our office internet provider (and backup service) suffered a major fail,” explained Janet Newbold, a Compex IT customer. “It couldn’t have been a more difficult situation.”

Imagine having no internet and being unable to go anywhere else to work. Your potential backup of coffee shops or pubs or other people’s homes is not happening. Your business might have experienced something similar during lockdown, and the consequences of zero help in such a scenario just don’t bear thinking about.

Had Janet not been with us for IT support, her ability to keep the business going during the most challenging of times would have been severely tested.

“Fortunately, we had our ‘4th emergency service’ on hand to help,” Janet continues. “The Compex IT team solved every problem we sent their way. They procured new devices, solved our internet issues with some creative thinking and taught us all to be Microsoft Teams experts.”

Janet wasn’t lucky to have had this kind of thorough help during lockdown – she simply chose the right IT company long before this happened.

If you experienced bad IT support during the pandemic, here’s what it should have been like.

There should be an immediate call-to-arms

Lockdown was sudden and it took many businesses by surprise. As a result, we had our busiest fortnight in the company’s history.

This wasn’t through reactive support alone, either; we proactively provided immediate IT support, even when people didn’t realise they needed it.

Your IT support company should do the same by contacting you during a crisis to ensure everything is OK. They need to put you first and provide an all-hands-on-deck service to assist with the things you never thought you’d have to do. Yes, that means we worked harder and longer hours for a while. Because we needed to.

The phrase “we’re all in this together” should be apparent straight away.

Office? Who needs an office?

One of the first things we did for several clients was ensure they had the right technology to work effectively from home. This included setting up additional laptops and installing new phone systems to enable unhindered remote working.

It’s at times like this that you really need to feel like you’re in the office, even if, in reality, you’re sat at a makeshift desk in your spare bedroom. The best IT support companies will make this a breeze by introducing you to platforms like Microsoft Teams.

Teams is one of the best ways for remote workers to communicate with one another as though they were in the same office, from text chats to file sharing, and video conferencing.

Did your IT support get you up and running with Teams and provide personalised training to get the most out of it? Or did they leave you to work out how to use video conferencing software on your own?

Security should never be a concern

One of the first things you’ll lose when transitioning from an office environment to home working is network security.

Sure, you’ll have a home broadband router with a firewall and password access for WiFi, but it doesn’t beat what you (should) have in the office when it comes to cyber defences.

Thankfully, with the right IT support in place, security won’t be a concern if you’re working from home. They’ll find the right balance between ease of use and safety in order to keep your business’ information away from prying eyes.

Support should always be there

Beyond keeping in regular contact with clients during the lockdown, we also made sure our team was constantly available. We can do that, because we’re masters of remote working ourselves, but not every IT company will follow that lead.

In March, just before lockdown, we developed a 5-point vision for Compex IT for the following 3 months. Two of those points proved particularly reassuring for clients during the lockdown.

The first, was the desire to constantly educate and protect our clients so that they can work self-sufficiently and safely remotely. The second took into account that it isn’t always possible to be self-sufficient with IT, which is why we promised ourselves that we’d double down as our clients’ most trusted partner.

If your IT company didn’t demonstrate value during the lockdown (or any other time, for that matter), they’re probably not worth their fee.

Our customers’ experiences

Here are just a few of the comments we received about the Compex IT support provided during lockdown.

• “All the work that you guys have done to set us up on the cloud and Teams, and the helpline is brilliant.”
• “I’m not sure where we would be at the moment had you guys not sorted us out and moved us out of the dark ages!”
• “During the COVID-19 outbreak, Compex thought of solutions before I even thought of the challenge!”
• “From day one, Compex ensured my whole team were up and running to work at home in probably less than a couple of hours. It was almost seamless and we lost zero work time because of this crisis.”

If you’d like to find out more about how we helped our clients during the pandemic or would just like to let off a bit of steam about your recent IT support experiences, let’s chat.

You can read some more of what our clients are saying about us during the lockdown period by clicking here