How to Evaluate Your IT Provider: 7 Questions That Reveal the Truth
The average company stays with an MSP for 5-7 years, even when service quality has declined. Whether you’re evaluating your current provider or shopping for a new one, these seven questions cut through the sales pitch.
1. What’s Our Current Security Posture?
A good provider can show patch compliance rates, MFA adoption, last vulnerability scan results, and open findings with remediation timelines. Red flag: Can’t produce a security report within 24 hours.
2. What Happened on Our Network Last Month?
Expect monthly reports covering tickets, resolution times, uptime, security events, and backup success rates. Red flag: You only hear from them when something breaks.
3. When Was Disaster Recovery Last Tested?
Ask specifically: “When did you last restore a full system from backup?” Red flag: Backups exist but have never been test-restored.
4. What’s Our Technology Roadmap?
A good provider presents quarterly technology roadmaps with lifecycle events, recommended improvements, budget projections, and industry-specific opportunities. Red flag: No proactive recommendations — every conversation is about current problems.
5. How Do You Handle After-Hours Emergencies?
Understand: Is there a dedicated on-call team? What’s the guaranteed response time? Is after-hours included or billed extra? Red flag: No defined after-hours SLA.
6. What’s Our Total IT Spend?
A strategic provider tracks your total technology investment and benchmarks it (typically 3-6% of revenue for SMBs). They should identify overspending and underspending. Red flag: They can’t tell you your total IT spend.
7. What’s Your Client Retention Rate?
Good providers retain 90%+ of clients annually. Ask for references from 3+ year clients. Red flag: Won’t share retention metrics or provide references.
What Good Looks Like
At CLIMB IT Solutions, we publish SLAs, share monthly performance reports, conduct quarterly business reviews, and maintain a 98% client retention rate. Our managed IT is a strategic advantage, not just a cost center.
Book a free IT assessment and see the difference a proactive partner makes.