Tech Support Providers: The Rodney Dangerfields of the IT Channel

You’ll probably remember the disheveled comedian, Rodney Dangerfield, and his litany of “I get no respect” jokes.  One of my favorites – “My parents gave me no respect;  my bath toys were a toaster and a radio.” Or, “I haven’t spoken with my wife in years. I didn’t want to interrupt her.” In the world of channel partners and functions, solution providers offering tier 1 technical support are not only under-valued, but increasingly rare. And, cloud services and applications are just furthering that “get no respect” situation.

I know I’m dating myself with this comment, but in the mid 80’s, authorized resellers did it all. They found the deal, they scoped and configured it, they transacted it, they performed whatever post-sale implementation services were required and they often also provided first-line technical support. That’s just what the software publishers, and to a lesser degree the hardware manufacturers, of that decade required. There weren’t 50,000 VARs in the average channel program, and the ones in the program were expected to provide end-to-end services and acts as the face of the IT vendor to their customers. If you didn’t provide adequate services and weren’t driving “net-new” business to a large degree, you were de-authorized from the vendor’s program.  It was that simple.

Today’s IT Channel Reality

Fast-forward 25 years. Today, there are IT solution providers of a wide variety of business models becoming more and more specialized in their roles. Some only provide sales influence. Others only offer managed services. And many only deliver professional services, uninterested in the mechanics (and sometime profitability drains) of transacting the gear or license. In that functional flow, the basic business proposition of providing first and sometimes second-line technical support seems to have become passé. Granted, the technologies have become infinitely more complex and technically interdependent with other parts of the vendor’s portfolios. And, the degree to which APIs and development code have become standardized allows a high degree of technology customization, making it harder to provide standard technical support.

Challenging Times

It’s a little depressing to me, however, that the average solution provider/vendor relationship doesn’t focus much anymore on the partners’ ability to provide a level of personalized, accessible first line support. There are three things driving that change:

1. The technical complexity and breadth of products on the market from the major platform vendors;
2. the need to scale a consistent level of technical support across a much broader IT global user community; and
3. the intense cost-containment and efficiency metrics driving the operations of many vendors.

Accelerating costs is a market reality, but the degree to which vendors have outsourced their technical support to a central call center, often somewhere in India, is creating a fragmented and less personal customer experience. In our 2011 study entitled “Engaging the Services Partner” we found it interesting that although both the vendor and partner had end-user satisfaction as their #1 metric for service delivery success, solution providers wanted it more. Some 89% of solution providers ranked happy customers as their first objective, while only 55% of vendors did. Which his ironic, because increasingly vendors are insisting on providing all levels of technical support directly to customers and are not interested in spending their enablement resources or service contract discounts on partners to help scale their support.

From the many solution providers we talk to, they are more interested than ever in maintaining customer insights, control and satisfaction by providing support. And, they’re willing to adhere to the vendor’s standards and infrastructure investments to do so (within reason). However, the vendors, other than by exception, would rather the partners nearly exclusively focus on sales activity – new customers, new projects, new cross-sell of technologies – than be focused on support satisfaction.

All I know is that I’d still prefer to call my solution provider when I have support needs for Office 365, rather than sitting on hold with Microsoft. And, we’re willing to pay more to our solution provider for that very high-touch, quick-access support.

Aren’t’ you?

So, if you’re a solution provider feeling like your leading vendors have left a business opportunity for you and a customer service opportunity for the end-user on the table by not encouraging you to provide support services, just remember what Rodney Dangerfield said. “If you think you’re crazy, just tell your psychiatrist you need a second opinion.  He’ll tell you you’re ugly too!”

For more information on the exclusive channel research focused on engaging the services-based partner, visit our Resource Center at www.partner-path.com.

Beth Vanni is VP of PartnerPath, which helps IT vendors elevate the impact of their partnering efforts. For more information on PartnerPath’s research or partnering development services, contact Beth at bvanni@partner-path.com.