STANDING OUT FROM THE IT CROWD
Cornerstone managing director Chris Petty on why Teesside brand names such Middlesbrough FC, TTE and the Butterwick Hospice put their trust in the Stocktonbased firm
Cornerstone is 10 years old this year. No prizes for guessing for anyone that knows us if you correctly predicted we’ ll be having a party!
We’ ve enjoyed a fantastic growth story over the past decade but that success has been built on solid foundations.
We’ re often asked what makes us different and stand out from our competitors in terms of our bread and butter, award-winning IT support, so I’ d like to cover the five main points.
1. Service IT support is a service. To be number one IT firm you have to offer exceptional customer service. This is from the first telephone call right through the customer experience to any IT issues being rectified.
We’ re confident we can’ t be beaten on service. To put that to the test, just phone the Cornerstone office and listen to how your call is answered. Our staff are friendly, helpful and calming every time.
When people call us it’ s normally because they have an IT issue and are understandably frustrated. We understand how important it is to let them know they are in safe hands and that their issue will be rectified as quickly as possible.
2. Expertise The expertise of the Cornerstone team is vast. Networks now have multiple different hardware, software and connectivity options. For one engineer to be an expert in all of these areas is pretty much impossible.
That’ s why we employ a number of engineers who specialise their expertise in different areas of a network.
For instance, we have a tech focus team who meet weekly to discuss new technology, updates and other issues. We also have go-to experts in fields such as
Microsoft, VMware, cyber security, remote management, Cloud and now Apple.
We’ re incredibly proud to say that we’ re the only company on Teesside to have fully accredited Apple engineers.
3. Global Brands Partner At Cornerstone, we only work with the world’ s leading brands including Microsoft, Apple, IBM, HP, Dell, Lenovo, Vmware, ESET and Cisco.
As partners with these global brands, we have direct access to support and product managers. As partners, we also have to keep up-to-date with changes, take training courses and pass exams to keep working with these leading brands.
This knowledge and expertise is passed through the support team to the end user – our customers.
4. First Class Call Management System At first glance, how good our call management system is might not seem particularly important but a huge number of the calls we handle on a daily basis relate to ongoing issues.
We therefore log all calls from our customers, keeping detailed call notes on every case. This creates a history of the network and the issues that occur.
This information is key to our engineers when working on that network to be able to look back through the call history and understand the history of the issue.
5. Account Management Cornerstone strongly believes in looking after our customers in everything we do.
We assign an account manager to all of our customers who is there for any issues, queries or advice they may need.
We believe this is a partnership and friendship that grows over time. We want to be more than just an ordinary supplier but someone our customers trust and value.
We also give the best advice going forward for installations, network future proofing, security, legislation and the latest tech.
Ultimately, Cornerstone’ s core values are customer service and making sure our customers are happy.
It’ s no coincidence that over the years we’ ve won multiple awards for our customer service and our IT offerings. Each day we’ re always looking at ways in which we can further improve our customer experience and make sure we never rest on our laurels.
So if you’ re looking at your IT support( or need help with connectivity, phones or photocopiers) and come to the conclusion that you’ re just not getting the love your business deserves, please do get in touch because we’ d love to talk.
And we might even invite you to our birthday celebrations!