Top 5 questions you should ask an IT company
Five questions that reveal how an IT support company really works, and the answers you should expect to hear.
Every IT support website makes the same promises, so most businesses end up comparing on price. Knowing the right questions to ask changes that. This guide gives you five, each with the answer you should listen for. The whole guide is on this page, with nothing to download and no details to hand over.
Ask us the five questions
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Why the right questions matter
From the outside, good IT support and bad IT support look the same. A confident website, a list of managed services, a row of certification badges. You cannot see whether they hit their response times, patch software on schedule or test their backups, so price ends up as the only thing left to compare.
The five questions below surface the differences that matter: how fast help arrives, who answers the phone, how easy it is to leave, the level of support and security included in the price, and what the company can prove. Ask them on every sales call and write the answers down. These are the questions to ask when choosing an IT support company, whether it is your first provider or you are replacing one that has drifted, and a good one will enjoy answering them.
The five questions, with the answers to expect
1. How quickly will you respond when something breaks, and is that written into the contract?
Every IT support company says it responds quickly, and the faster the response, the shorter the downtime. The number that matters is the response time written into the support contract, known as a service level agreement (SLA), and whether it applies to every request or only the ones the support provider decides are urgent. Averages hide bad days: an average of ten minutes can still mean an hour when you are busiest. Ask for the committed time, what it covers, and how often they hit it.
A good answer sounds like: a fixed response time for every ticket, in writing, with regular reports that show how often it is met.
2. Who answers when we call: an engineer or a message-taker?
Good communication starts with who picks up the phone. In many IT support companies the person who answers can only log a ticket and pass you down the line, so the fixing starts much later. In others you reach a qualified engineer who starts work on the problem during the call. Ask where the service desk sits, whether calls go to an outsourced call centre, and whether the person answering can start fixing things remotely, there and then, or come to you on-site when a problem needs it.
A good answer sounds like: our own engineers answer the phone, they start on the fix straight away, and the support team is in-house.
3. How easy is it to leave you if this does not work out?
This question tells you how confident a provider is in its own service. Listen for the notice period, any exit fees, and what happens to your passwords, licences and documentation when you go. Everything about your systems belongs to you and should be handed over cleanly to whoever comes next. Long lock-ins and vague answers about handover are warning signs.
A good answer sounds like: a clear notice period, no penalty for leaving, and a documented handover of your systems, passwords and licences.
4. Exactly which security essentials are included in the monthly price?
This is where cheap quotes fall apart. Some providers include the basics that keep a business safe: multi-factor authentication (MFA) set up properly, security updates applied on schedule, data backups that are monitored and tested, and security training for your team. Others sell each one back to you as an add-on, quietly leave them out to keep the quote low, or bury them in hidden fees. Ask for the list in writing and compare quotes on what is actually in them.
A good answer sounds like: here is the written list of what is included, here is what costs extra, and here is why.
5. Can you prove any of this, or do we have to take your word for it?
Anyone can claim fast responses and solid security. Very few can show independent evidence. Ask whether anything they have told you is checked by someone outside the company: independent certification, live service reports, published customer reviews, case studies, a track record you can check. This one question separates providers who do the invisible work, the patching, the proactive monitoring of your network, the tested backups, the tidy leaver processes, from those who only talk about it.
A good answer sounds like: here is independent verification you can check yourself, without asking us.
Our answers, on the record
It would be odd to publish these questions and dodge them ourselves, so here is how we answer each one.
Assurix is an independent certification that checks more than 60 security and operational controls continuously, rather than auditing once a year. It exists so that businesses do not have to take an IT company’s word for anything. We were the first provider in Sussex and the South East to be verified, and question five is the reason we did it.
Put the five questions to us
If you are comparing IT support companies, ask us all five and see how the answers stack up. Fill in the form at the top of this page to book a consultation, or send us a message and we will call you back to talk through each answer and how we would support your business.
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