Running a Computer Support Contract: A Guide to Client Reporting

When you're running a computer support contract, it’s important to provide regular reports to your clients for a number of key reasons: 

1. To justify the existence of your contract and show exactly what work you are doing.

2. To make your clients’ management aware of how well their systems are performing.

3. To ensure clients are aware of system issues they may otherwise be ignorant of.

4. To show you are meeting your agreed obligations.

Exactly what reports you provide to your clients is up to you to decide. But in this article we detail a selection of report types that you may wish to consider producing. 

It’s worth noting that, in some cases, you can automate the production of client reports. For example, if you use a call ticketing system, there’s probably built-in functionality to run reports and add your company branding. 

1. Call Logs - Of all the reports you should provide under a computer support contract, a comprehensive call log is probably the most important. A call log will show the “powers that be” exactly what work you and your team have been doing – and, much of the time, you’ll find that they are unaware of most of it. While management will remember the issues that you have helped them with individually, they’ll probably have no idea how much their staff have been making use of your service. As such, a thorough call log helps you justify your existence, and the cost of your contract. 

2. Performance against SLAs - Assuming you have SLAs (Service Level Agreements) in place with your customers, you should periodically report on how you are performing against them. Clearly, your aim should always be to show that you are exceeding your agreed targets, so it helps if you always ensure that your SLA targets are achievable. 

3. Incident Reports – Even with the best resolve in the world, sometimes things will go wrong on client infrastructures. In these cases, clients will often want to understand what happened and what has been done to reduce the chances of the problems reoccurring. For this reason, having an incident report template is useful. When the worst does happen, you can then document the problem and your rectification steps, along with any advice you provided to the client. Having these reports is of benefit to you too, as if a client fails to act on your advice, only for the problem to reoccur, you can go back to the report to defend yourself! 

4. Meeting Minutes - Presumably, you periodically hold meetings with your clients where you discuss their computer support contract and make plans for the future development of their IT systems. If you don’t hold these meetings now, you really should begin to, as they are an invaluable way of maintaining a strong customer relationship, and of generating revenue from new projects. When you hold these meetings, you should always make a point of producing minutes, complete with details of agreed actions – this ensures that everyone remains proactive and takes forward plans agreed during your discussions. 

5. Warranty and license details - It’s always wise to maintain registers of software licences and hardware warranties. Failure to do so can result in some unpleasant situations. For example, nobody wants to experience a server hard drive failure, only to find that the manufacturer’s onsite warranty expired a few weeks prior. So, make it part of the computer support contract to maintain this documentation, and periodically supply written details to your customer. This way, they always have a report to refer back to when they need to gain a general idea of their licensing and warranty situation.

While no client will appreciate being flooded with unnecessary information, providing professional and regular reports always presents a positive impression of your company and the way you do things.

What reports do you provide to customers with a computer support contract? Share your practices in the Comments box below. 

And to follow-through on the tips introduced in this short article, be sure to download your free copy of the special report on IT Service Contract Secrets for Getting More Repeat Clients and Recurring Service Revenue.