“24/7 support” appears on virtually every telecoms brochure in Jamaica. It means wildly different things depending on who printed it.
At one end, an engineer who can actually diagnose and fix your problem at two in the morning. At the other, an answering service that logs your call and passes it to someone on Monday. Both are described identically on the website.
Questions that reveal the difference
“Who picks up at 2am — and what can they actually do?”
The important half is the second. Can the person answering access your configuration and change it, or only take a message? Ask directly.
“What is the target response time, and what happens if you miss it?”
A response target with no consequence is an aspiration. Ask what the service credit is when they miss it. Providers confident in their support answer this comfortably.
“Is support local?”
Someone who knows that a particular area loses power in heavy rain, or which exchange serves your parish, resolves faults faster than an offshore desk reading a script.
“Can you send someone?”
Some faults are physical. A cut cable or dead switch cannot be fixed remotely. If nobody can attend, your support ends where the software ends.
Test it before you need it. Two weeks after going live, call the support line at an awkward hour with a genuine but non-urgent question. What happens tells you far more than any service level agreement. Do it while you are still early enough in the relationship to change your mind.
What you should prepare
Support works far better when you meet it halfway. Keep a single page somewhere findable with:
- Your account number and main billing contact
- The support number, saved in more than one phone
- Who on your team is authorised to request changes
- Your internet provider and their support number
- Where the router, switch and phone equipment physically sit
- Which staff mobiles calls should divert to in an outage
That last line is the one that saves you. If failover destinations are agreed in advance, restoring service during an outage is a single request rather than a conversation while the phones are dead.
The measure that matters
Not how quickly they answer — how quickly you are working again. A provider who answers in thirty seconds and resolves in six hours is worse than one who answers in three minutes and resolves in twenty.
Ask about resolution time, not response time. The difference is the whole point.
About WOCOM
WOCOM is Jamaica’s next generation business phone service — cloud voice, internet, data and AI-powered reception, built and supported locally.