Seven signs your current IT support is failing you.

Poor support is rarely one big failure. It is a slow build-up of small ones until the business has quietly learned to work around IT.

The signs

1. The same fault keeps returning. Fixes treat the symptom. Nobody records the cause or looks for patterns.
2. Nobody can say what you own. There is no current list of devices, licences, warranties and renewal dates.
3. Staff stop raising tickets. They ask a colleague, or buy their own tools, because it is faster.
4. There is no monthly report. Without one, you cannot tell whether things are improving.
5. Only one person knows the setup. Passwords, configurations and decisions live in one head.
6. Backups are assumed, not tested. Nobody has restored anything lately.
7. Renewals arrive as surprises. Licences, certificates and warranties lapse, usually at a bad moment.

What this usually means

Often the engineers are capable, but the model around them is thin: no agreed procedures, no priorities, no reporting. Replacing a person rarely fixes that. Agreeing a service level, a documented procedure and a regular review usually does.

A first step

Ask for an asset list, the last three months of tickets grouped by cause, and the date of the last backup restore test. If these take more than a few days to produce, you have found the real problem.