There are six Help Desk plans to choose from, all listed here. You’ll never be in a position where External IT cannot provide you with the level of support you need. If your business demands it, we even have a plan that provides unlimited support tickets, telephone calls and screen-sharing support from our Help Desk. Our Help Desk resolves problems, provides training, answers questions and gives technical advice.
You can have support 24 hours per day, 365 days per year. The typical response time for a technician is under 30 minutes. For high priority issues, the response time is under 15 minutes.
Full Business FlexSupport
This is the Support plan that, years ago, raised the service bar in the IT outsourcing industry, and as you research support options across the country you'll discover that it still sets the standard today. Not surprisingly, Full Business FlexSupport continues to be our most popular choice.
Full Business FlexSupport gives your staff the option of posting a Held Desk ticket online, or calling us directly if the problem is particularly urgent. On those rare occasion when the challenge requires a deeper level of expertise the ticket can be escalated to our Level Two .
You'll see from the table that we give you three ways to work. You can have Full Business Flex Support during Standard hours. Extended hours support. Or support 24 x 7.
Maybe one day, miraculously, IT issues will conform to whatever schedule is most convenient for your business. Until then, it's a great idea to have as much flexibility in how you're supported, as possible.
| Full Business Flexsupport Plans | |
|---|---|
| Standard |
Complete end user helpdesk support from 7am-7pm CST, Monday through Friday. |
| Extended |
Complete end user helpdesk support from 6am-10pm CST, 7 days per week including all holidays. |
| 24 x 7 x 365 |
Complete end user helpdesk support 24 hours per day, 365 days per year. |
Escalation FlexSupport
This is the plan for companies that have an in-house Help Desk or an IT Director who can be on immediate call. When an issue arises that can't be resolved, our Escalation FlexSupport is waiting in the wings to quickly resolve your issues.
If this is your choice you'll be happy to learn that this option also gives you the flexibility of handing off the baton and having External IT support your company during the hours when your internal Help Desk is closed.
Support in the cloud is not the same as traditional IT support. It's a highly skilled, and largely specialized field. For this reason, the Support people at External IT are all seasoned. Some of our Level II and III Engineers have been working in a hosted application environment for over seven years. It's unlikely you'll encounter any challenge that they haven't solved many times.
Automatic Ticket Routing is also an option if you have an in-house Help Desk. You can elect to have your Help Desk tickets routed to us if they're not addressed within 15 minutes. Some companies use this option during normal business hours. Some, simply during lunch time.
| Escalation Flexsupport Plans | |
|---|---|
| Extended |
Escalation support for your end user helpdesk from 6am-10pm CST, 7 days per week including all holidays. |
| 24 x 7 x 365 |
Escalation support for your end user helpdesk 24 hours per day, 365 days per year. |
Afterhours FlexSupport
You have your own Help Desk staff, or someone on call who can respond immediately, but after hours you need support. Easily done.
| Afterhours Only Flexsupport | |
|---|---|
| Overnight | 7pm to 7am, per week, 7 days per week including all holidays. |
Dedicated FlexSupport
This is our highest level of service. Your company will have a full-time Support Engineer, or Engineers, dedicated to your specific needs. They'll know your users, their applications. They'll know your IT inside an out. This service includes a direct dial option to an engineer, and without ever parking you in a hold pattern behind anyone else.
To further ensure you always have the help you need, during any hours where your direct Support Engineer is not on call you can opt for support coverage by a very experienced, general Help Desk staff.
Our Custom Dedicated Engineer Plan matches you to specific Support Engineers. They're people who will know your IT very well, and because they're specifically dedicated to your business, they'll develop a particularly strong working relationship with the people in your company.
| Dedicated EngineerFlexsupport Plans | |
|---|---|
| Standard |
Similar to a virtual staff augmentation, specific, dedicated Support Engineers provide support in addition to standard FlexSupport™ services. Available for a customer-defined 8 hour workday, Monday through Friday (excluding sick, holiday and vacation time) |
| Custom |
Specific, dedicated Support Engineers provide exclusive support. The team is designed around a custom schedule per customer requirements and call volume. Enhanced support options: white glove executive support, subject matter cross training, application specialization, etc. |
Limited FlexSupport
This is end user support for email and web applications only. You will have assistance with your Portal Desktop, local Outlook configuration, Blackberry, browser-based email and Office Web Apps.
| Email/Web Apps OnlyFlexsupport Plan | |
|---|---|
| Standard | End user helpdesk support from 7am-7pm CST, Monday through Friday. |
Adhoc FlexSupport (per incident)
If you need to call for support outside of your FlexSupport plan hours, or if you are a user not enrolled in any of our FlexSupport programs, we can still provide support on a fixed-price, per-incident basis. As always, if the root cause of the problem is an External IT issue, the incident is waived.
