OKTO remote assistance The phone
For what is blocking someone right now. On the phone we aim to answer in under 2 minutes, with no voice menu to fight through.
IT support
IT support for SMBs in Quebec: help desk, remote and on-site service
When a workstation, a printer or a mailbox stops working, an employee loses the morning to it. OKTO Solutions runs the IT support for your teams, remotely and on site, in English or in French, with every request tracked and documented until it is closed.
IT support for a small business is a single point of contact where employees report a problem with a workstation, an account, email, a printer or an access issue. The request becomes a ticket, it is triaged by impact, resolved remotely in the vast majority of cases, then documented through to closing.
The channels
How your employees ask for help
Good IT support starts with a plain question: who do we call? At our clients, the answer fits on a card taped up near the coffee machine. Three channels lead to the same place, and a fourth one works without anybody having to write anything at all. Whichever route the request takes, it opens a ticket, it gets sorted by real impact, and it is followed until it closes. Staff stop patching each other up with workarounds picked off the internet, and nobody gets told to call back later. That last part sounds small until you have been the person told to call back later.
For requests that can wait until the afternoon. One address opens the ticket, and the employee gets the tracking number back.
The client portal
To see the status of every request in the company, attach a file and follow the history without pinging anyone for an update.
Monitoring
Plenty of problems get solved before the call. A failing disk, a failed backup or a patch falling behind raises an alert on our side. Included from the Base plan on.
OKTO builds its own monitoring and ticketing tools, OKTO RMM and OKTO PSA, rather than reselling someone else’s. The history of your requests and the state of your workstations live in the same place, so you never have to tell the same story twice.
Opening a ticket
How does an employee open a support ticket?
Four routes lead to the same ticket: the OKTO assistant on the workstation, the client portal, the support email address and the phone. The first two are the ones people notice, because nothing has to be looked up. The ticket arrives with the machine and its diagnostics already attached, and what happens next is the same either way.
On every workstation we manage, an OKTO button sits in the notification area, next to the clock. The employee clicks, writes the problem in one sentence, and that is the whole task. No address buried in an old email, no number to dial, no account to create first. The same menu shows the state of the machine, the approved applications the employee can install without administrator rights, and the updates waiting to be applied.
The assistant on the workstation
- A request written in one sentence, without leaving the screen where the problem happened
- The machine and its diagnostics travel with the ticket, so there is nothing to describe
- Approved software installs itself on demand, with no administrator rights handed out
- Pending updates install when the employee decides, not in the middle of a meeting
- The state of the machine stays visible: disk space, backup, protection
The client portal
- Open a request on behalf of a colleague or a whole team
- Follow every open ticket in the company without chasing anybody
- Read back what was done on a request that closed last month
- Find the documents and reports our team has handed over
- Attach a screenshot or a file to a ticket that is already open
The two classic routes stay open. An email to the support address creates the ticket on its own and the employee gets a tracking number back. A call to 450 231-3836 and the technician opens the ticket during the conversation, without making anyone repeat the story. From there, whichever door was used, the request follows the same path: triage by impact, pickup, fix, closing note.
Two ways to get help
What gets fixed remotely, and what needs someone on site?
The vast majority of requests are handled remotely, and that is good news for you: nobody is waiting on a truck. A technician takes control of the workstation with the employee’s consent, fixes the issue, explains it in plain language and writes down what was done. Your workstations are already connected to our monitoring tool, so there is nothing to install at the moment of the call. A visit earns its place when the job needs hands on the equipment. We are not going to bill a trip for something that takes twelve minutes from Trois-Rivières, and we will say so on the phone.
Fixed remotely
- Slow workstations, crashes, stalled updates, corrupted profiles
- Passwords, locked accounts, multifactor authentication
- Mailboxes, distribution lists and Microsoft 365 sharing
- Creating, changing and closing user accounts
- Access, groups and permissions on shared folders
- Installing and updating business software
- Teams, telephony and collaboration tools
- Mobile devices, personal devices and remote access
Needs a visit
- Replacing a workstation or a monitor, commissioning a laptop
- Network outage, a switch or a wireless access point to swap out
- Cabling trouble, or a printer that has stopped answering entirely
- Physically setting up a new employee
- An office move or the opening of a second site
- Work on a server that no longer boots
- Scheduled visits to clear out the small things that have been lingering
Travel terms are agreed in the contract, based on your region. We do not publish an on-site arrival time we have not measured.
Our targets
What are the response times by plan?
A request that blocks the business and a question about page layout do not travel the same road. The targets below apply to the plans that include user support. The Base plan is a monitoring net: it protects the fleet, it does not answer employees.
| Situation | Base plan | Standard plan | Complet plan |
|---|---|---|---|
| P1, everything is down: server or site out of service, ransomware | Monitoring alert, no help desk | Pickup target 15 minutes, resolution target 4 hours | Same targets, guaranteed by the service level agreement |
| P2, a group is blocked or a service is degraded | Not covered | Pickup target 1 hour, resolution target 8 business hours | Same targets, guaranteed by the service level agreement |
| P3, one user is blocked | Not covered | Pickup target 4 hours, resolution target 1 business day | Same targets, guaranteed by the service level agreement |
| P4, a request or a question | Not covered | Pickup target 8 hours, resolution target 3 business days | Same targets, guaranteed by the service level agreement |
| Answering the phone | Not applicable | Under 2 minutes | Under 2 minutes |
| Outside business hours | Optional | Optional | 24/7 emergency service included |
Regular support runs Monday to Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern. The emergency line is for outages that stop the organization, not for everyday requests: a password forgotten at 2 a.m. is not an emergency. No pricing is published here; the plan details are on the plans and pricing page.
A real case
A workstation will not start on a Monday morning: what we do
Nobody enjoys finding that out on a Monday morning. A billing clerk hits the power button, the screen stays black, and payroll has to go out Wednesday. Here is the exact order of the moves, because that order is the difference between a lost morning and twenty minutes of inconvenience.
Get her working again before repairing anything
First reflex: the person has to produce today. We put her on a spare workstation or a loaner laptop, her Microsoft 365 session and her cloud files follow her over, and she works while we deal with the rest.
Read what the monitoring already saw
The workstation is already in our inventory. We pull its history: disk alerts, reboots, recent patches, backup status. More often than not the disk had been signalling for two weeks and the alert is already sitting in the ticket.
Decide between repair and replace
A seven-year-old workstation with a dying disk does not deserve four hours of labour. We weigh the age, the warranty, the performance and the cost of the work, then tell you straight what we would do in your place.
Recover the data
The documents are normally already in OneDrive or on a backed-up share. If local files are left, we pull them off the disk before any reinstall. This is where restore tests done ahead of time pay for themselves.
Hand back a complete workstation, not just one that turns on
Operating system, patches, managed antivirus, encryption, printers, business software, access and multifactor authentication. The person gets her environment back, not a blank machine she has to ask for everything on.
Close the ticket with the cause
The ticket closes on a note explaining what gave out and what was done. If three workstations from the same batch show the same symptoms, that becomes a line in the replacement roadmap instead of a surprise six months from now.
That last point is what brings the call volume down over the months. A printer that drops off the network every week becomes a problem to solve, not a routine everyone eventually accepts.
The sequence
The life of a ticket, from the call to the close
Every request opens a ticket, including the ones that take two minutes. That is what makes it possible, months later, to see what keeps coming back and to fix the cause instead of patching it up one more time.
- You reach us by phone, by email or through the client portal, and the ticket is created automatically.
- The request is triaged by real impact: one employee blocked, a team blocked, or the whole company down.
- A technician calls back, takes control of the workstation with your consent, fixes the issue, then explains it in plain language.
- A visit is scheduled when the job needs hands on the equipment or work on the network.
- The ticket closes on a note giving the cause and the fix, and recurring requests are reviewed on a regular basis.
Comparison
Managed support, an internal hire, or break-fix
Three ways to organize IT support in a small business. None of them is wrong on its own, but they do not cover the same risks. Here is what sets them apart in practice.
| Criterion | Support managed by OKTO | An internal IT employee | Break-fix, call when it breaks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Availability | A team, so no gap during vacation or sick leave | One person, away part of the year | Whatever the technician’s calendar allows that week |
| Range of skills | Network, security, Microsoft 365, servers, telephony | Whatever that person happens to know | Varies from one call to the next |
| Request tracking | A documented ticket for every request, history kept | Often carried in one person’s head | Rarely kept once the invoice is paid |
| Prevention | Proactive monitoring and patches applied continuously | Whatever time is left after the emergencies | None, the call comes after the break |
| Cost | Predictable, per workstation or per server | Salary, benefits, training and eventual replacement | Unpredictable, and highest when things are at their worst |
| The key person leaves | No impact, the documentation stays | The knowledge of your systems walks out | Not applicable |
| Long-term view | Regular reviews and an IT master plan available | Depends on that person’s profile | None |
| After-hours emergency | 24/7 emergency service under the Complet plan | Depends on goodwill | Depends who is free |
These three models are not mutually exclusive. Many SMBs keep an internal resource and hand us the first level, the monitoring and the emergencies: that is exactly what our co-managed IT services cover. To hand over the whole fleet, look at managed IT services.
Who it is for
Which organizations this service is built for
The service is built for Quebec SMBs with 10 to 250 employees with no IT team, or that rely on one person buried under the daily grind. We work with manufacturers, professional services firms, non-profits and retailers.
- SMBs with 10 to 250 employees with no IT team
- A single internal IT person, swamped by day-to-day requests
- Staff spread across several sites or working from home
Daily support is one piece of a wider offer: managed cybersecurity protects the accounts and the email, backup and disaster recovery covers the worst case, and the virtual CIO module puts the priorities in order for management.
- High turnover, with frequent arrivals and departures
- The retirement of the person who used to handle everything
- A current provider who is hard to reach or too slow to react
One ticket per request, even the smallest ones, gives a clear view of what keeps coming back. That is what lets you tell management, numbers in hand, that a printer cost eleven service calls this year and it is time to replace it.
Where we work
Where we travel in Quebec
The office is in Trois-Rivières. We travel regularly through the Mauricie, Centre-du-Québec, the Quebec City area, Lanaudière, Laval, Montreal and the South Shore. Elsewhere, visits are booked in advance depending on the mandate.
Questions and answers
Questions about IT support
How do you request IT support?
Four ways: the OKTO assistant that sits in the notification area of the workstation, the client portal, the support email address, or the phone. Every request opens a ticket that is tracked and documented until it is resolved, including the ones that take two minutes. Started from the workstation, the ticket already carries the machine and its diagnostics.
How fast do you answer a support request?
Requests are ranked by impact: one user blocked, a team blocked, or the whole company down. We aim to pick up within 15 minutes when everything is down, 1 hour when a group is blocked, 4 hours for a single user and 8 hours for a routine request. On the phone, we answer in under 2 minutes. These are targets we work to; under the Complet plan they are guaranteed by the service level agreement.
Do you offer on-site IT support?
Yes. Most problems get solved remotely, but we come out when equipment has to be handled, when the network needs work or when a workstation has to be set up. We travel regularly through the Mauricie, Centre-du-Québec, the Quebec City area, Lanaudière, Laval, Montreal and the South Shore. Elsewhere in Quebec, visits are booked in advance depending on the mandate. The plans include remote support; travel is either scheduled or billed according to the agreement.
Is support included in your plans?
User support is included in the Standard and Complet plans. The Base plan covers monitoring, cyberdefence and backup, without user support. For a one-off need, a block of hours or a single intervention is possible. The details are on the plans page.
Do you provide IT support in English?
Yes, fully. The team is based in Quebec and speaks to your staff in English or in French, whichever the person prefers, in plain language rather than jargon.
Do you replace our internal IT person?
Not necessarily. Many of our clients keep their internal resource and hand us the first level, the monitoring and the emergencies, so that person can focus on projects. That is the whole idea behind co-managed IT services.
What happens when an employee joins or leaves?
Arrivals and departures are requests like any other, except they come with a checklist: account created or closed, access, mailbox, workstation, licences, mobile device. A departure cuts every access at the same moment, which is the piece most often missed when nobody owns the file.
How long does onboarding a new client take?
Onboarding runs over roughly 90 days: discovery and audit, deployment of the management and security tools, then a strategic review. User support itself starts in the first few weeks, as soon as your workstations are connected to our monitoring.
Tell us what blocks you most often
How many employees, who looks after IT today, and what comes back every week. We propose the arrangement that fits, with no obligation.