Choosing an IT support provider: 10 questions UK SMEs should ask before signing
Most UK SMEs only change IT support provider every few years, which means the conversation you have before signing matters more than the sales deck. A polished pitch tells you very little about what a Monday morning ticket actually looks like once you're a customer.
Below are the ten questions we'd want any UK business to ask a prospective managed IT provider, based on the objections and horror stories we hear most often from businesses switching to us.
1. Where is the helpdesk based, and who picks up the phone?
Ask specifically: is the helpdesk in the UK, is it staffed by employed engineers rather than a rotating pool of contractors, and what happens if you ring the main number at 9:15 on a Monday. The answer tells you whether you're buying support or a ticket portal.
At LeapIT our helpdesk is UK-based, employed, and the average answer time sits around eleven seconds. That's the sort of number worth asking any provider to prove with real data.
2. What's the response time SLA, and how is it actually measured?
"We aim to respond quickly" is not an SLA. Ask for the written response and fix targets by priority, how they're measured (first human response, not an auto-reply), and what happens when they're missed. If the provider can't send you a one-page SLA document during the sales process, that's your answer.
3. What's included in the monthly fee, and what's charged extra?
The single biggest source of surprise invoices is scope. Get a clear list of what the per-user fee covers and what falls outside it: project work, out-of-hours, on-site visits, new starter setup, hardware procurement margin, third-party licence management.
We deliberately keep the managed IT support scope wide and predictable so finance teams aren't chasing variance every month.
4. How do you handle cyber security within the contract?
Security should be baked in, not sold as an upsell after the first incident. Ask what's included as standard: endpoint protection, patching, MFA enforcement, phishing simulation, dark web monitoring, backup for Microsoft 365. If the answer is "we can quote for that separately", you're buying reactive IT support with a security invoice waiting to happen.
For anything beyond the standard managed baseline, our cyber security consultancy covers assessments, roadmaps and Cyber Essentials work as a separate advisory engagement.
5. What monitoring and proactive work happens in the background?
Good managed IT is mostly invisible. Ask what's being monitored on servers, endpoints, backups and cloud tenants, how alerts are triaged, and how often you'll see a report. A provider who can't describe their monitoring stack is running a break-fix business with a monthly retainer bolted on.
6. How do you handle on-site visits and how quickly can an engineer be there?
Even with remote-first tooling, some things need hands on kit: a failed switch, a new office fit-out, a cabling issue, a director whose laptop won't boot before a board meeting. Ask about geographic coverage, engineer availability, and whether on-site is included or billed per visit.
Our engineers cover Birmingham, Solihull, Worcester and the wider West Midlands from Hockley Heath, so on-site is normally same-day when it needs to be.
7. How do you onboard a new customer, and how long does it take?
The onboarding phase sets the tone for the entire relationship. Ask for a written onboarding plan: discovery, documentation, tooling rollout, security baseline, staff introductions. If they can't articulate a repeatable process, you'll be the process.
Our standard four-step approach runs from planning and strategy, into a customised IT plan, then seamless implementation, followed by ongoing support. Nothing exotic, but it means nothing is skipped.
8. What's the exit process if it doesn't work out?
This is the fastest way to spot a provider who's confident in their service versus one who relies on lock-in. Ask about notice periods, offboarding documentation, admin handover, tenant ownership, and any exit fees. A confident provider offers rolling terms with a sensible notice period and hands over cleanly.
Contracts that quietly tie you in for three years with no exit clause are a red flag, not a discount.
9. Who owns the documentation, credentials and tenants?
This is the one that catches businesses out mid-switch. Every admin credential, every tenant, every domain and every third-party portal should be owned by your business, not by the provider. Ask exactly that, in writing. If the answer is fuzzy, assume the worst and plan accordingly.
10. Can I speak to a customer of a similar size and sector?
Any provider worth signing with will happily introduce you to a reference customer without a heavily rehearsed script. Ask specifically for someone in a comparable industry and size band. What that customer says in the first five minutes is worth more than any brochure.
What a good answer sounds like
Across all ten questions, you're really testing three things:
- Substance over slogans. Specific answers, specific numbers, specific processes.
- Predictability. You can forecast what a month with them looks like on paper.
- No lock-in tricks. Ownership, exit and pricing are clear from day one.
If you get vague answers to more than a couple of these, keep looking.
Ready to compare us against your current provider?
If you're weighing up managed IT providers in the West Midlands, we're happy to sit down and answer every one of the questions above in writing, no hard sell attached. Get in touch via the contact page or read more about our managed IT support and outsourced IT options.
