Proactive Customer Services Are Keeping Business Running Fluidly

proactive customer service

2020 has been filled with challenges and many small and medium-sized businesses have been put through the ringer. With everything going on, and many things causing obstructions to business-as-usual, getting out in front of the things you can control can pay great dividends for your business. Today, we’ll take a look at how the managed service provider can help you stay on top of everything.

What It Means to Be Proactive

A lot of business is preventing major swaths of downtime. Seriously, the more downtime you have, the less you get done. There are plenty of risks inherent in doing business, so being more proactive allows you to mitigate them more effectively. Think about it, a problem pops up in your business, you immediately stop what you are doing to fix the problem, which takes you away from the productive endeavor you were working on. By being proactive, however, you ensure that no problem exists, making certain that your time is used productively. If the effectiveness of your business comes down to the amount of time you can focus on it, being interrupted with constant problems to fix destroys that focus.

Avoiding Downtime

Your business isn’t some publicly-traded, multi-national company. If the most lucrative businesses faced even an hour of downtime, they are wasting six, sometimes, seven figures worth of capital. That’s why they routinely write proactive measures into their processes.

For your business, the amount of wasted capital will be substantially less, but it might just be a larger percentage of revenue lost or capital spent. This can sink your business; and, it doesn’t just come from having to stop what you are doing. Downtime can be problematic in these ways as well:

  • Customer frustration – Your relationships are extremely important. Too much downtime can have a major negative impact on your customer relations. Not only will customers be inconvenienced, they will let you know it. This time spent smoothing everything over can get extremely expensive, especially for the small business that needs their people to be productive, not engaging in costly support roles.
  • Staff frustration – As hinted at in the previous paragraph, many small businesses rely on their staff to do more than one job. One of those jobs isn’t always fun. That is a customer service representative. Many employees–especially if they were hired for a specific purpose–tend to get fed up when they have to spend a large chunk of their work life supporting a faulty product.
  • Exorbitant cost – Cost will always come with downtime. If you are paying people who should be building your product or service to sit around dealing with downtime, you are wasting valuable capital.

By being proactive you are effectively controlling the amount of downtime your organization has to deal with.

Being Proactive!

At AE Technology Group, we offer a couple proactive services that could really make a difference in the profitability and efficiency of your business. They include.

  • Remote monitoring – Your hardware and network need to be in tip-top shape for your staff to be as productive as they can be. By remotely monitoring your entire IT infrastructure, our knowledgeable technicians can find even the smallest incongruency. Doing so before downtime has a chance to rear its head and affect your business works to keep downtime to a minimum and productivity high.
  • Cloud computing – Moving some of your IT to the cloud is a proactive move as public cloud resources are typically managed by the provider. Having a cloud provider take on the comprehensive management of your IT, while also gaining anytime, anywhere access, is a sound strategy for any-sized business.
  • Patch management – Software vulnerabilities can be a major problem for your business if the wrong people find out about them. Our team keeps your software patched and up to date.

Building a proactive business strategy can help you get out in front of some really difficult problems. Call our IT experts today to learn more at (877) 771-2384.

Why Use Managed Services in NYC?

managed services nyc

Managed Services are becoming a more popular option for NYC-based businesses that require IT support, security, and Cloud computing outcomes. With so many companies in this busy market securing these services, one has to ask why it has become such a popular offering. A brief overview of the situation reveals that Managed Services in NYC provide low-cost and local services that mitigate damage from downtime in one of the busiest places in the business world.

Managed Services Offer Expert Workers Without Onboarding

A popular reason for businesses to utilize Managed Services is that there is no need for a lengthy and expensive onboarding process for new workers. In fact, many companies that utilize IT services in their company are not hiring full-time staff at all. These businesses rely on companies like AE Technology Group, a WheelHouse IT company, to provide world-class IT services without having to keep someone on the payroll. By doing so, any business will reduce its costs, increase the effectiveness of the work completed, and have a much better chance of having any niche requirements fulfilled by the workers. Instead of hiring staff for IT solutions and more, it’s quicker, easier, and cheaper to hire a Managed Services team.

Our Location Reduces Costs

AE Technology Group has the benefit of being close to NYC while being far enough away to avoid the costs of operating in the city. AE Technology Group has branches on Long Island and in Fort Lauderdale, well outside of the five boroughs of New York City. As a result, the costs of doing business with this Managed Services Provider is often much lower than one would find in the city itself. Any company seeking Managed Services can save money on costs and still receive local business solutions by working with the Long Island branch.

Reduced Downtime Means You Lose Less

The word “downtime” strikes fear into every business manager that is operating in New York City. Every minute that your computers are not processing orders or helping workers get the information they need it means they’re losing money. The only way to stay on top of the busiest city on the planet is by having the best support available. Managed Services can help get your systems back online so that business can resume. AE Technology Group has years of expertise in IT, security, Cloud systems, and backups, meaning that the workers have seen and done it all. Many situations can be resolved off-site, too, reducing the time that it would take to have another business come into the city and diagnose the issue. Safeguard your business against lost time and work with local professionals.

AE Technology Group has Managed Services that provide fast, local, and inexpensive solutions to your everyday business problems. Your small or medium-sized company can feel confident not having an in-house IT department, saving the business time and money while ensuring that the work is completed by experts. Working with a third-party does not mean you are outsourcing the work to a faraway country that doesn’t mind your work hours. AE Technology Group is less than an hour away and poised to help at any time.

Give us a call at (516) 536-5006 or click here to request a quote.

Astute CEOs Understand the Significance of Disaster Recovery

astute ceos understand the significance of disaster recovery

The pandemic has forced many companies to make significant changes in the way they conduct their business — especially the way in which their employees use corporate technology systems. While many companies adroitly managed a multitude of drastic changes within a short span of time, others organizations may have unknowingly left some gaps that could leave them vulnerable to significant issues — especially if they should experience a catastrophic event. This article will review four key areas that highlight the significance of disaster recovery should one occur in the middle of the pandemic.

Offsite Data Backup 

Even if a company had a solid plan in place regarding their offsite data backup before the pandemic, it’s still a good idea to determine if that plan will still be just as effective under current working conditions. Staff members responsible for data restoration after a disaster should verify that their plan to obtain and restore offsite data is still a smooth, functioning operation.

The Threat of Network Downtime

Since the pandemic, many companies shifted the bulk of their workforce to remote locations, and this has not gone unnoticed by data hackers and thieves. This shift noticeably increased the risk that criminals may gain access to critical apps and data on networks. While in the best of circumstances, it’s difficult to maintain continuity if a single app and its data has been compromised, in the worst case scenario, if hackers manage to bring down an entire network, or if a network is down from some type of natural disaster, companies can take a significant hit in lost revenue for every hour of downtime. 

Fortunately, there are BCDR products now available that will allow organizations to continue to run operations by way of backup instances of virtual servers — and in some instances they can extend this service to the cloud.

Increased Risk of Disaster  

While many companies and their employees are grateful they are still in business due to the fact they can operate remotely, having a dispersed workforce located in many different physical settings, does open up the increased possibility of a security attack. Hackers have long since taken note of the huge influx of remote workers and have increasingly focused their efforts on looking for any vulnerabilities that will allow them to gain access to systems that were formerly heavily secured.

Companies must make sure they have thoroughly trained their employees on the do’s and don’t of good computing practices, including using strong passwords, not sharing computer equipment with family members, keeping any paper trails of confidential information under physical lock and key within the home, and not using their own smart phones or personal email to conduct work-related tasks. 

Other potential disasters which can disrupt business continuity include the use of unsecured Wi-Fi either within the home, or out in public. In addition, some employees may feel somewhat disconnected from their employment in general, and may dismiss a suspicious email or the look of a questionable website, when under normal circumstances they would have called the tech team working down the hall to come and investigate. Companies must train their employees to remain vigilant against attacks even though their physical surroundings and access to others within the company may be very different.  

Do you Have a Plan? 

Not only is it critical to have a plan for disaster recovery efforts during the pandemic, it’s also critical to know how effectively it works. In the rush to ensure that a company’s workforce was up and running as quickly as possible, the effect of all the changes this required upon an organization’s disaster recovery plan, may have been overlooked. 

Unfortunately, the threat of a natural disaster such as a hurricane, flood, or fire do not necessarily subside just because the world is experiencing a pandemic. Just as companies were required to make significant changes in the way they operate, they must also secure their ability to maintain business continuity even in the event of a natural disaster.

If you want to know how to determine if you’re ready for a disaster even during a pandemic, please contact us.