We’re going to explore the benefits of remote IT support and the pivotal role they play in ensuring unhindered productivity from those who choose or are forced to work from home. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has ushered in an unprecedented era of remote and hybrid working. Its forcing businesses to re-think how they operate.  

Business leaders are asking whether they need:  

• Their entire workforce on-site every day 
• As much commercial space as they had pre-COVID 
• New ways to support remote workers 
• To adapt management styles to facilitate remote working 
• To find new ways to share company culture with a dispersed team 

Even after shelter-in-place, quarantine, and travel restrictions have lifted, it’s unlikely that all businesses will return to traditional workplaces given the tools they have at hand and the comfortability it offers workers.  

In fact, in a recent survey, “57% of SMB owners said they are likely to continue increased remote working options for employees in the long term. What’s more, SMB owners have observed that employee availability has increased by 19% by shifting to remote work.” 

 

Remote IT Support Benefits 

There are significant benefits of getting remote IT support for your business – even without part of your workforce working from home. Here are 10 remote IT support benefits that your organization can leverage to maintain productivity, grow your business, and reduce barriers to success. 

 

Empowering ‘Work From Home’ and Remote Workers 

Your employees who work from the head office, satellite offices, factories, home or other locations should all be getting a consistent level of support. One of the primary benefits of remote IT support is that regardless of where you submit a ticket from, the response and resolution process is standardized. Team members can submit support tickets through a self-service portal, by phone, or email and get a solution to their problem. 

When working from home, running into technology problems can feel defeating, especially if you don’t have anyone you can contact to resolve it. The benefit of remote IT support is that there is always a resource available to work through any tech problem your team encounters and within a consistent time frame. In fact, as we are quoted in 16 IT Experts Reveal What Are The Most Popular IT Services, “Many teams have grown dramatically through remote hiring but now require IT support and services for a distributed team. This can be challenging for internal IT staff in small companies as it involves logistical complications of remote onboarding, delivering hardware, and supporting varying time zones of remote team members.”

If devices or connections can’t be restored remotely, couriers can be sent to collect the hardware and drop ship a newly configured device to get you back online. 

Secure Remote Working 

One of the downsides of remote working is that home networks and devices aren’t necessarily as secure as hardware set up professionally in an office setting. Leverage remote IT support to ensure that updates and patches are applied, antivirus is configured correctly, and employees have somewhere to turn if they come across suspicious emails or other possible threats. 

If you’re looking for additional security and risk management, invest in vulnerability assessment services. This allows you to scan your network, connected devices, websites, firewall configuration, and other possible weak points cyber criminals may try to leverage to access data and compromise systems. 

 

Expertise Matched to Your Problem 

With on-site IT support, you may be limited to whoever is available when you make your request. Whereas with the benefit of remote IT support, users typically send tickets into a larger team with a variety of skill sets. This means you’re more likely to have access to a resource with direct knowledge of the hardware or software that is causing problems. Based on the severity and complexity of the problem, it may be escalated to a more senior or specialized member of the remote support team.  

 

Remote IT Support is Scalable 

Another upside to remote IT support is that it scales with companies as they grow or evolve. When organizations undertake mass hiring and growth, they don’t need to hire IT talent at the same time. All they need to do is increase their retainer to match support usage. There is no hiring, onboarding, or training required to provide support for more users. The remote support partner already understands the environment and typical user issues that occur within it.  

Plus, with standardized procedures in place for new user onboarding, user exits, and other routine tasks, remote IT support gets new users up to speed with the right technology assets in place for them to get started. 

 

Reduce Downtime and Increase Productivity 

If your workforce is remote and they get locked out of their system or lose access to key applications, there needs to be processes in place to get them back online quickly. A major client benefit of remote IT support is the ability to engage a team remotely to investigate issues as soon as they happen. Without remote support in place, users may just live with the hindrance and be less productive. Or they may try to resolve the issue on their own causing more problems or wasting valuable time. 

Successful remote working requires a specific set of digital workplace solutions that can be quite complicated to maintain without the right expertise. Workers often need to leverage tools like Microsoft Teams, VPNs, cloud file storage, and other key applications to connect with their team securely. 

 

Visibility into the Resolution Process 

When submitting a support ticket into your remote support team, you’ll get notifications throughout the process. You’ll see when a resource is assigned to your ticket, when notes are added to it, and when the issue is resolved. These portals give you the option to ask questions, provide updates, and check in on the status of your support query as it moves through the resolution process. 

Costs Matched to Usage 

Unlike an in-house support team, businesses don’t need to hire and train IT support resources when they choose a remote support partner. Typically, companies will pay a consistent monthly retainer based on the amount of support required within a month. This allows firms to budget accordingly without any surprises if the number of support tickets and the effort to resolve falls within the remote support retainer. 

For many companies, this style of IT support can be less expensive than having their own under-utilized IT team. Having proactive monitoring and remote resolution processes in place, can also lead to heading off issues before they become bigger problems. 

 

Faster Response and Resolution Times on a 24/7 Basis 

With remote monitoring and resources at the ready, IT problems are responded to and resolved faster. Another one of the major benefits of a remote IT tech support arrangement is businesses can choose their allocation for how much support resources they have through their regular hours and during after-hours support.    

Remote support is typically more responsive than an onsite resource due to: 

• Wide range of options for outreach including phone, email, portal, and live chat 
• Accessing a whole team of available agents versus relying on one support person 
• Remote connection and takeovers for quick resolution in place of onsite visits 

 

Proactive Monitoring and Maintenance 

As part of a typical managed IT services partnership, monitoring is installed on key technology assets like servers, firewalls, networks, core applications, and more to send alerts when problems occur. Thresholds are established for key resources (disk space, memory, network bandwidth, etc) and monitoring will send an alert to the support team. This allows specialists to intervene and resolve budding problems before they impact the business.  

Benefits of getting remote IT support don’t necessarily include all these components. Ensure you ask the IT support providers you approach what level of monitoring and proactive maintenance they provide. 

 

Get Expert Guidance on Technology Upgrades 

Beyond just support, having an IT partner who understands your business and IT environment means you’ll get guidance on when you should patch, upgrade, or replace your technology assets. Client benefits of remote IT support can extend to getting strategic planning advice like technology road mapping, reviewing disaster recovery plans, assessing IT security measures, and more if you pick a partner with those skill sets. 

 

Remote IT Support Benefits 

As listed above, there are many benefits of a remote IT tech support service, for both remote and office-bound teams. Cloud solutions allow users to connect and work from anywhere. Remote IT support ensures they can continue working and surpass any technological obstacle that comes there way.  

Contact us to learn what remote IT support might look like for your organization.