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When your technology fails, how long can your business wait? The answer directly impacts your bottom line and employee morale.
Every minute of downtime costs money:
Direct Costs:
- -Lost productivity (employee wages during downtime)
- -Lost revenue (if customer-facing systems)
- -Recovery costs (overtime, emergency services)
Indirect Costs:
- -Employee frustration and morale
- -Customer dissatisfaction
- -Missed deadlines
- -Reputation damage
Doing the Math
A simple calculation for your business:
Hourly cost of downtime = (Affected employees × Average hourly wage) + Lost revenue per hour
- -20 employees × $30/hour = $600/hour in wages
- -Add any lost sales or missed opportunities
- -A 4-hour outage = $2,400+ in direct costs alone
Multiply this across all IT incidents per year. The number gets big fast.
Different issues require different response speeds.
Critical Issues (System Down) Expected Response: 15-30 minutes
- -Server crash affecting all users
- -Network outage
- -Security breach in progress
- -Email system down
These require immediate attention. Every minute matters.
High Priority (Significant Impact) Expected Response: 1-2 hours
- -Key application not working
- -Multiple users affected
- -VPN issues preventing remote work
- -Printing system down
Important but not company-wide emergency.
Medium Priority (Limited Impact) Expected Response: 4-8 hours
- -Single user workstation issues
- -Software installation requests
- -Non-critical application problems
- -Minor performance issues
Annoying but work can continue.
Low Priority (Minimal Impact) Expected Response: 24-48 hours
- -General questions
- -Feature requests
- -Training needs
- -Non-urgent changes
Can wait for normal business flow.
When evaluating IT support, ask:
About Response Times
- What are your guaranteed response times by priority?
- How do you define each priority level?
- What are your actual average response times? (Ask for data)
- Do you have 24/7 support? After-hours rates?
- How do I reach you for emergencies?
About Resolution Times
Response time isn't resolution time. Also ask:
- What's your average time to resolution by priority?
- How do you handle issues requiring vendor support?
- What's your escalation process?
- Do you track and report on these metrics?
About Communication
- How will I know you received my request?
- How often will you update me during an incident?
- Do you have a customer portal for tracking?
- Will I have a dedicated point of contact?
Red flags to watch for:
- -No defined SLAs or response commitments
- -Can't provide actual response time data
- -Difficult to reach during business hours
- -No after-hours emergency support
- -Poor communication during incidents
- -Same issues recurring repeatedly
- -Blaming users or other vendors
- -Resistance to documentation
At KaselTech, we believe response time is fundamental:
Our Commitments:
- -Critical issues: Response within 30 minutes
- -High priority: Response within 2 hours
- -All requests acknowledged within 4 hours
- -24/7 emergency support for critical issues
- -Real-time visibility into ticket status
- -Regular performance reporting
We track and share our metrics because we believe in accountability.
Fast response times are important, but the relationship matters too.
What makes IT support work well:
- Clear communication - Both ways
- Proactive monitoring - Catch issues before users notice
- Documentation - So anyone on the team can help
- Regular reviews - Discuss trends and improvements
- Strategic planning - Not just break-fix
Quick assessment questions:
- -How long do you wait for IT help on average?
- -Do urgent issues get treated urgently?
- -Are the same problems happening repeatedly?
- -Do you know when issues are resolved?
- -Is your IT provider proactive or reactive?
- -Do you trust your IT team?
If you're not happy with the answers, it might be time for a change.
We'd love to show you what responsive, reliable IT support looks like. Contact us for a free assessment of your current IT environment and learn how we can help your business thrive.