The Essentiality of Support in Business Relationships

As the world continues to recover from the impact of the pandemic, individuals, businesses, and their clients are leaning on supportive relationships and genuine insight to regain their confidence and comfort.  More than ever people are weighing a company’s values, customer service, dedication, and care before making a commitment.  The days of alluring clients in the AV industry with catchy marketing and flashy products are in the past.  Everyone wants to know that if something goes awry the companies and products they have invested in will have their backs.  Before this differentiator can be client facing, it must start at home.

At Control Concepts, support is, and has been, valued and handled with the utmost care for as long as the company has existed.  Support is back-bone of how we improve ourselves and how we serve our clients best.

The internal culture of Control Concepts fosters these key items:

1. Ask for guidance/assistance when you need it.
2. Provide guidance/assistance when you can.
3. You are not an individual to carry your professional burdens alone.
4. We are a team that share professional burdens to succeed as a team.

Now you may be thinking, “Dear naïve Victoria, that is not realistic.”  The thing is, it is realistic!

By approaching support with an open mind, you will learn where to improve.  Internal support forms naturally through building a compatible team and fostering a culture in which it is okay to ask for help and it is also okay to take a break from billables (within reason) to provide help.  Internal support is not a guarantee in every company and can have negative connotations and weakness associated with it, if not positively encouraged and re-enforced.  From my point of view, support is sewn into the foundation of how Control Concepts runs.

If you approach support with respect, you will receive respect.  External and internal support have been a strong factors in my integration into the Control Concepts team and my growth as part of the team.  I have learned an instrumental amount just by helping users work through their unique issues in the field. Through these cases, my team has been accessible and open to helping and teaching me.  On the flip side, I’ve had the opportunities to support my team.  Even more stunning to me, is the teams’ willingness to trust me and consider what I have to say when I do have insight to offer.

Through approaching support with humility, you will receive trust and patience.  I can still recall the feeling in my first week working at Control Concepts when I dared to speak up in my first weekly programmer meeting to offer insight on something I was knowledgeable on, and I felt not only heard but believed and trusted!  In that moment I had focused on showing up as respectfully confident, and open to admitting I may not know it all.  That is one of many events and actions that have made me feel like I am part of this team and this is an awesome team to be on! This is a reliable constant in my day to day that makes me excited and happy to show up for work.

For Control Concepts, external support is made possible through support agreements.  A primary product of ours is custom programmed modules, drivers, or plugins for any specified control platform a manufacturer wants for their controllable product.  The manufacturer’s primary support department will be limited in the support they can provide for a module, driver, plugin, or code related issues.  The value of support agreements with Control Concepts is that we bridge the gap.  Support agreements provide us the ability to dedicate focused time to supporting the users of the control module, driver, or plugin for your product.  This ranges from identifying user error to finding a true bug in a module, driver, or plugin, to assisting with equipment setup relating to a particular integration.  With a support agreement, Control Concepts can close the loop on support cases and provide a manufacturer notices of resolutions including modifications to modules, drivers, or plugins and next steps for releasing updates.  Without a support agreement, our team is limited in the attentiveness and level of service it can provide to make for awesome relationships between programmers, integrators, and manufacturers.

At the end of the day, one of the most fundamental truths, is that we get to serve our community through client care. We get to represent ourselves, the manufacturers, and the industry.  Daily, conscious of it or not, we get to make the choice of how to interact with and support our peers, superiors, and clients.

Today I chose to show up for myself, for my team, and for our industry.  Today I experienced my team showing up for me.  Today I had the honor of showing up for a client with respect and humility.  Tomorrow I will choose to show up again.