IT reselling has always been an intensely competitive market, but with the growing popularity of cloud computing technology, an increase of resellers that differentiate themselves solely on price may drive down the quality of service to end customers. This is the view of Craig Joseph, COO at intY, who believes that resellers must resist the temptation of the ‘race to the bottom’ and prioritise the quality of their support services when putting their proposition to prospective clients.
“There is a real risk that in 2018, as the cloud market consolidates and Google, Amazon and Microsoft continue to assert their dominance, resellers will come into the market and lower their prices to the point where they completely undercut their competitors. We know that the IT reseller market is competitive, but our concern is that the resellers that sell on price alone will not offer the service levels required to support customers as they transition to the cloud.
Service comes at a cost and of course resellers and partners need to make margin, but we may come to a point when less service-focused resellers can just sell on price alone and not deliver the end customer what they need.
“This may include neglecting after-sales assistance and technical support. Customers are of course price-conscious, so if resellers start selling cheap and ignore dedicated customer services, tit may become increasingly challenging for those who prioritise top-quality customer support to compete. Resellers must ensure that their customers understand the value of good customer service and build it into their proposition, as focusing on customer service can reap dividends in repeat business and further business development.”
To help them deliver the most effective customer service, resellers need to build strategic relationships with distributors who can not only connect them to the very best vendors, but also deliver the IT solutions that they are selling with ease, so that resellers can focus on providing customers with a proactive and efficiency service. intY’s award winning self-service portal CASCADE enables partners to browse, order and manage services on behalf of their customers 24/7/365, giving them more time to help their customers with any potential issues.
