PURPOSE

With proper planning and management, providing effective after-hours technical service and support can deliver a significant competitive advantage.

Here are six recommendations from TechRepublic Premium for effectively structuring technical service and support during non-traditional work hours.

From the guide:

1. PROPERLY PRIORITIZE AFTER-HOURS SERVICE
The most important step to properly delivering effective technical service and support during non-traditional office hours is ensuring that the IT department truly prioritizes fulfilling the challenge. Paying only lip service and simply generating a calendar that lists who’s on-call and when is a recipe for failure.

When customers or end users are told after-hours service and support is available and the team fails to deliver, the results can immediately prove demoralizing for both the user seeking assistance and engaged IT professionals seeking to fulfill the department’s responsibilities.

After-hours services cannot be effectively provided, at least consistently, if the IT department isn’t fully committed to prioritizing such service. Few truly enjoy receiving time-consuming support calls on sunny Saturday afternoons over a summer holiday weekend. But such are the real-world scenarios that commonly arise. Forward-thinking organizations committed to effectively providing after-hours technical service must embrace all the ramifications a 24/7/365 service requires.