When your business has an issue with services like telephony or service providers such as Comcast or Verizon, who manages that for you?

Is it you, or is it your Managed Services Provider (MSP)?

Although your MSP isn’t directly responsible for an issue with 3rd-party services, they should be the tip of the spear when it comes to resolving an outage, especially if they’re the ones who vetted the services and recommended them to you.

When I tell clients holistic managed services include the management of everything from your internet connection to the end-user—and all that lies between, that includes vendor management.

I’ve mentioned to clients that we relish the position of being the bulldog standing at the door between typical salespeople and the decision-makers.

In certain circumstances, vendor management eliminates finger-pointing and identifies the party responsible.

Who wants to call Verizon or Comcast?

How much time does it take to get through all the automated responses before speaking to a human being?

It’s even worse when you don’t know your account information, circuit ID, or the original phone number or email address the services were set up under.

Not only is it important for your MSP to manage these kinds of vendors, but it’s also important that your MSP doesn’t recommend only one.

A good MSP will give you options and inform you about each of them. They won’t pigeonhole you into a solution they’ve sold to everyone else just to make a buck.

I remember having to deal with an issue involving a piece of carrier-services equipment brought in by a prior MSP. When I questioned the need for it, they shared that the former MSP was one of their largest sellers.

That’s exactly why options matter.

The primary benefit of having an MSP capable of managing third-party services—telephony, internet, television, specialized circuits, and more is that they have support connections a traditional call to a publicly available phone number simply won’t achieve.

This accomplishes two important things:

1. It minimizes downtime.
2. It provides relief.

Nobody in your organization has to spend their time addressing the issue.

And there are benefits beyond outage management.

When was the last time you reviewed your carrier services?

They should be reviewed annually, whether your business is under an agreement or not. Service offerings change often.