Managing Direct Scott Yates says his company agrees that the quality of service that certain service providers provide can be damaging to resellers and highlights what he thinks the main issues are.
“First of all VAR’s need to make sure that the provider is channel focused. There are many companies that call themselves a nationwide channel service organisation but sell to both resellers and end users and you find that very few have enough engineers to deliver a 24/7 service.
Quality of service is shown by the service provider’s ability to invest in new products and services to improve service. Comms-care are currently working towards ISO 20000 which they aim to complete this year, an elite accreditation that covers support in general and is not manufacture specific. We feel that it is an important step forward. Resellers should look at the service providers current commitments; it says a lot about the company.
Lastly, I feel it is very important to look at the financial stability of the company and strongly recommend resellers to look deeper into the history of their channel service organisation on both financials and channel positioning.”
Yates concludes, “All these points lead to one thing – reputation in the market. Resellers are recommended to look closely at the service provider’s performance, renewal rates, average response times and fix times.”