Last Updated: 01/04/2020
We will use this page to communicate to clients any changes and likely disruption to our business operations which may affect you. We would encourage you to check back here regularly, particularly before placing orders, and as part of your own continuity planning for your business.
Impact on Telephony, Broadband and Ethernet services
Computercentric are heavily dependent on our relationships with key providers, Openreach being one of the big ones. If you would like to know more about how Openreach are reacting to the situation, please refer to their statement here.
The key take-away message for our clients, is that installation of new, non-critical services will be heavily delayed, and that resolution of faults on broadband, ethernet and telephone lines will be handled on a priority basis, and delays are to be expected.
Impact on Computercentric IT Support Provision
Essentially it's business as usual on the support front. However with the bulk of our staff now home-working and dealing with an unprecedented number of calls, we strongly encourage clients to submit all support requests by email through our normal support channels. This frees up our time to better handle the increased demand on our services, at the expense of an immediate response of course. Despite the massive surge in demand for our support services, I am happy to report that we are still handling issues well-within the terms of our our own Service Level Agreement, with most clients getting a response within 15-20 minutes, and 99% of cases being resolved in the same timescales that we'd normally expect.
Impact on Availability of Products
There has been massive surge in purchasing (panic buying?!) of all the typical hardware that we would normally source for clients, coupled with massive disruption to supply chain and delivery systems. This has resulted in almost all of our main distributors and partners being out of stock for most of the standard desktop PCs and laptops which we would class as bread-and-butter hardware. Prices have increased too. If you need us to quote for new hardware, we'll do our best to quote for equipment that there is a reasonable chance of us being able to procure, but please bear in mind this will not always be possible.
We continue to offer short-term lease of laptop hardware for clients that need it, this is through our relationship with a dedicated provider of short-term hire IT equipment.
Impact on Work Requiring Site Visits from Computercentric
Any work which requires attendance of a support technician is now limited, and the management at Computercentric will assess risks involved with site visits on a case by case basis before deciding what work we are happy for ou staff to undertake. We ask our customers to be prepared to make alternative arrangements in the case where we are unable to complete remedial work or new installations to our normal standards and timescales as a result of this disruption.
Where possible, we will engage courier services to transfer equipment to our premises for work in our repair lab, this may incur costs additional to anything previously quoted or agreed.
Where on site working has been approved by management at Computercentric, we kindly ask clients to support our arrangements which minimise any risk to our staff or contractors.
Requirement specific to your job will be communicated to you prior to any work being undertake, but they will typically include:
- Providing an isolated room in which our staff or contractors can work alone.
- Providing an antibacterial spray / wipes and hand sanitiser in the room.
- Communicating with staff or contractors over the phone where possible when on site.
- Limiting our staff or contractors to the job which has been previously been approved.
- Minimising any interaction with staff or contractors.
- Adhering to “social distance” guidelines.
In practice this will mean we are not able to do some types of work on site and will severely limit our ability to deliver our normal standards of work. Please note these requirements are subject to change at any time, by us or our suppliers and contractors. Any changes will be published here.
We thank you for your cooperation during these times and hope for a positive outcome for all our clients.
Kind regards
Ross and the team at CC Ltd
