When it comes to running a business online, there are many considerations that companies need to consider. From offering the best possible user experience (UX), to easy-to-understand navigation, engaging content and a series of calls-to-actions, which will lead to a conversion or purchase.  

Something that is often neglected, however, is the need for 24/7 support. If your customers are accessing your site from around the world, in different time zones then it could be that they are doing so outside of your normal working hours or when internal capacity is low. 

If your site can’t scale to meet peak demand or goes down when your customers are trying to access it, then it could lead to a loss of both trust (customers) and revenue (sales). Some businesses rely on the need to ‘keep the lights on’ more than others and the losses they face if they suffer an outage can be business critical.  

There is an expectation in today’s online-first world that users will be able to perform tasks such as booking an appointment, logging in to portals, finding answers and making purchases when they so desire. This shift from the 9-5 of yesteryear means that businesses have to act now and invest in support services. 

Tasks such as backing up your data and proactive monitoring of your domain and environments may not sound like the most glamourous business considerations but I’m sure we’ve all felt the pain of losing an unsaved document or not backing up our files. 24/7 365 support helps alleviate the pain in these areas. 

Ask yourself the following questions and see how you hold up compared to user expectations: 

  • Have you invested in 24-7/365 support and how business-critical could it be if not? 
  • What are the financial implications of your website going down? 
  • Are customers able to self-serve and therefore reduce your costs? 
  • Are you set up in such a way that your first response time and average resolution time can be reduced, and communications and updates can be implemented quickly? 
  • Do you fully understand your website traffic in a way that allows you to roll out new features and upgrades with minimal interruptions? 
  • Are your servers secure? 
  • Do you have your site’s code backed up properly? 
  • Can you communicate changes or downtime efficiently and with enough notice to not erode trust or sales? 
  • Do you offer alternative solutions if your site were to go down and can customers still contact you? 
  • Can you prioritise your backlog and deal with issues in order of customer needs and business KPIs? 
  • Are your vulnerable customers or those with accessibility needs able to access what they need when they need it?
A support strategy is also important as you scale your offering. As new products are released to market there needs to be a delivery method that will not affect the day-to-day running and functionality of the site. An effective release management process helps identify and manage functional changes through build and test environments to a production environment successfully and in a scheduled, predicted manner.  

 

This process is beneficial as it:  

  • Delivers improvements whilst decreasing risk  
  • Improves productivity, communication, and coordination  
  • Reduces quality issues by increasing the number of successful releases  

We have long advocated for enterprise-sized businesses to incorporate this as part of their strategy, especially when you consider the impact of a website or app that goes down or ceases to function in the correct way.  

In terms of how we work, we see the main benefits of 24/7 365 as:  

  • Well-established response and SLA (Service Level Agreement) management 
  • Email updates following incident status changes  
  • Increased end-user customer satisfaction  
  • Offering a self-service portal where clients can log and track their tickets  
  • Automated ticket routing and incident closure 
  • Meeting the requirements for IT service availability

If you have looked at the questions above and can see areas that you may not have covered, then why not get in touch. Our proven track record of supporting some of the largest brands in the UK speaks for itself. You can read some of our case studies here.

Our ‘ways of working’ mean that we have dedicated team members working directly with clients on their support projects. These studio members understand the business criticality of 24/7 support and give reassurance that we have your interests front of mind. 

At Mando Group, we are fully ISO accredited and ITIL aligned in our practices and processes. We pride ourselves on supporting businesses to deliver better, faster, and cheaper solutions which are secure and fully backed up by our team of experts. If you need help with your support offering or want to talk then we’re happy to help. Why not book a consultation with one of our experts or request a ‘Digital MOT’ today? 

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