This is one of the most frustrating things a company can go through regarding I.T.
I have a friend who owns a restaurant. When his email got hacked, all he had to do was change the password for his email account, and the immediate problem would be resolved. It took him 8 hours to find his I.T. person. Wow.
If you can’t find your I.T. person, you need to spend some time to find a new I.T. person. In the cases of an I.T. emergency, being able to reach your I.T. team and know that the problem is being worked on is critical.
When your clinic or small business is having a technical emergency, every second counts. If a virus or other malware is corrupting your data, an hour can be the difference between saving your data and having everything destroyed. Getting immediate support for a server crash on a day booked full of patients or clients can be the difference between making a profit and showing a loss—between helping patients and being unable to help them. If some of those patients are new patients, they might never come back.
During a technical emergency, you must be able to reach your I.T. service quickly.
Most good I.T. firms have three or four ways to get a hold of them—phone, email, web portal, and/or text messages.
Let me also say that it’s the I.T. company’s responsibility to clearly communicate the best way to get a hold of them.
At Nonlinear Tech, we have a company phone number, a support email address, and a support web portal. We have clear specific procedures for handling I.T. emergencies, and our customers are clear on what to do when they need to reach us immediately. The phone, email, and web methods all create a support ticket automatically. That way, either I or one of my technicians can act on it immediately.
As a business or clinic owner, you need to have clearly spelled out methods from your I.T. firm for contacting them. When you do, you should also receive some feedback from the I.T. firm that the message was received and that they will attend to an emergency quickly.