IT Support in Edinburgh

At Excellimore, we aim to make our clients’ working lives easier with effective use of technology.

Clearly, part of that mission is solving technology problems. The problems might be technical when something doesn’t work as expected, but problems can also be personal and we’ll be helping your staff with guidance and suggestions.

The Excellimore IT Support Process

Having a documented process for our IT Support service helps us deliver effective and consistent results every time. Here’s a summary of how it works…

Typically, one of your colleagues runs up against a problem and decides they need help with it. They’ll call or email our Helpdesk team, and once we’ve got the best picture of the problem we’ll create a “ticket” in our system. From there we’ll assign the ticket to the most appropriate of our team of technicians, and he or she will work on the problem until your colleague is able to proceed.

And in a little more detail:

You call us with the issue, or email us at a dedicated Helpdesk address
If you’ve phoned in, our Helpdesk Dispatcher creates a ticket in our system and allocates the issue to the Helpdesk Technician who’s best placed to help
If you’ve emailed, your email automatically creates a ticket in our system; our Helpdesk Dispatcher will check this, perhaps call you back for more information, and then allocate the issue to the Helpdesk Technician who’s best placed to help
Our Helpdesk Technician will call you to work through the matter
If the issue can’t be resolved there and then – perhaps we need to take the problem to one of your other suppliers – we’ll tell you what we’re going to do and when we expect to resolve the issue for you
We’ll keep in touch as we work on your issue – we’ll tell you what we’re doing and when we expect to have the matter fixed
When we believe the issue is resolved, we’ll check that you’re happy
If you’re happy that we’ve made things work the way you need them to work, we’ll mark your ticket complete

The Excellimore Commitment to Supporting your IT

So far so typical. There are lots of people claiming to support your IT like this. There are no requirements before someone sets up in business to offer IT services. Technology is not a regulated profession like accountancy, surveying, or architecture so anyone can hang out their shingle and start looking for business. Sometimes these companies might be a Single Person Firm – an SPF, which might also stand for “Single Point of Failure”. Too often their approach is computer-centered, in that a search for solutions to customers’ problems starts with the hardware, rather than the people and the needs of the business.

This approach to IT Support is successful for some people. Some organisations want only the cheapest service possible. This gives their staff a call-centre approach where the technicians‘ main objective is to get the caller – the person with the technology problem – off the phone as quickly as possible.

If this is the service model you’re looking for, we can point you to IT Support companies in Edinburgh who will deliver it. We can also suggest companies based abroad, in India and elsewhere, who will provide a distant voice on a helpline for around $7 an hour.

What you don’t get from this kind of IT support is the personal involvement of an IT team who know you and your colleagues, know your business, and will help with your plans. Unless attention is given to the bigger picture and the underlying reasons for IT problems, your colleagues are going to remain frustrated with issues which take their time and focus away from the work you’re paying them to do.

Closing the Loop on IT Support

We have a different approach at Excellimore. We believe that a good business relationship is the most important part of delivering effective IT Support.

Given that close partnership with you we’ll close the loop from IT Support by feeding back what might need to happen to remove the IT frustrations for your colleagues.

We build our great working relationships by:

Working with local clients who we can meet in person – pandemics and plagues permitting of course!
Getting to know you and your business and your colleagues
Delivering our effective IT Support Helpdesk for all of you
Recording the issues which your colleagues are bringing to our attention
Reviewing how your technology compares to the ideal best practice
Understanding your technology needs, giving you pro-active advice on appropriate solutions for your challenges, and helping you prepare technology budgets for the next two or three years
Gently holding you accountable for keeping your business secure from the bad guys and resilient in the event of disasters
Meeting you a couple of times a year to keep technology at the priority you decide is appropriate for your business

This Excellimore Technology Review and Planning Process is how we close the loop. We take note of your issues and frustrations, we offer our advice on best practice for your organisation, and we work together to make things better for the future.

The Two Most Common Complaints about IT Companies

In more than twenty years of speaking to clients and others in business, I’ve heard the same two complaints about IT Support companies again and again.

The first complaint is “their response is very slow”, and the second is “they never give us any advice”. The words might be a little different sometimes, but these are roughly the remarks I hear.

The Most Common Complaint about IT Support

This is all interesting stuff when you’re in a people business like IT Support, so I’ll dig in and ask the complainer to explain a little more. (And by the way, IT Support IS a people business; the tech is what we do, but people are who we work for and who we work with).

As our conversation develops it often turns out that “slow response” really means “no communications”. An IT issue might get sent or called in to the IT Support company, and then… silence.

The customer doesn’t know if their issue has been received, or understood, or is receiving any attention. From the customer’s point of view the most important thing is often “when” and that doesn’t get discussed either.

At Excellimore we deliver effective IT Support. This means that, in business hours, we’ll respond to your initial call within one hour. We’ll tell you who’s going to be working with you to fix the issue and when they’ll be doing it. The Technician working on your issue will then be in touch directly if they need more information, or if they need to set a time to work with you on the issue. In any case, when our Technician believes the issue is resolved they’ll be in touch to make sure you’re happy with the outcome.

The Second Most Common Complaint about IT Support Companies

So often I hear “our IT company never give us any advice”. Sometimes I might hear the same thing put more strongly – “they only get in touch when they want to sell us something”.

At Excellimore we aim to make your working life easier through technology. This means more than just addressing your day-to-day IT issues; we need to close the IT Support loop and actually make changes so that things do get better.

We’ve learned over the past 22 years that our valued clients, bless your cotton socks, have many things on your mind and IT is usually not one of them. That’s fine, we get it – your business is to advise your clients, invest funds wisely, manage construction costs, design buildings and structures, or build a business at many locations. But we have a duty to make your business secure to keep the bad guys out and make your business resilient for when something goes wrong.

That’s why we will call you to an IT Review Meeting twice a year. We make IT a housekeeping item just like your HR policies; we bring it out, give it good airing, and put it away again. At our IT Review meetings we’ll have an open and frank discussion about plans and budgets. We’ll discuss what you might want to proceed with and what needs more thought, and when a plan’s been agreed we aim get on with it unobtrusively.

There are two more important matters for the meeting. The first item on our agenda is always “how are we doing?” – we need to know that you’re happy with our services and you’re getting what you need from Excellimore. The other important item is of course pro-active advice. The IT Review meetings are how we bring our wide knowledge of IT in the UK SME sector to your business. We know what works and what you might find useful. We also have a sceptical view of the IT world and will tell you what won’t work.