Authors: Bryce Whitty
Have you ever considered expanding your computer repair business by doing remote support? While it is unlikely to replace your physical computer repair work, it does allow you to save time with your current work and expand your service area. Here are some of the benefits of remote support that are worth considering.
Billable Hours
Many people scoff at the fact that a Computer Technician will charge in the range of $100 hour. Especially when a 9 to 5 office job will only earn in the range of $20-40 per hour. What these people dont understand is as business owners, we have to these charge prices because there is a large amount of unbillable hours where we still have to work, but cannot directly charge for. One of the biggest contributors to unbillable time is driving time (I know some techs DO charge for driving time/distance though).
With remote support, you can often cut out the driving time. In fact, you can pretty much start the moment you get the call.
If you are an onsite computer technician, think about how much time you spend driving around on a typical day. In my business, it was easily 3-5 hours depending on how many jobs I had lined up in the day.
Profit
On the topic of driving time, while you are running around town all day you are consuming fuel and slowly devaluing your vehicle as you rack up the miles/kilometers on the odometer. Of course, these are normal business expenses that you factor in but with remote support you can reduce these. Resulting in more overall profit.
Efficiency
Remote Support also allows you to work more efficiently. We all know about “loading bar time” where we cant do much more other than but sit there and watch the loading/installing bar slowly reach 100%. If you were working on a machine where you had to wait like this via remote support, you could use that time to work on another persons computer or do an in-office task – making better use of your time.
Access To Resources
We computer technicians cannot know what every single error message means and how to fix it, so we occasionally need to turn to the almighty Google. There is no shame in referring to Google but it doesnt always look good doing so in front of customers. With remote support, you have access to one of your own machines where you can research the clients problems and have access to a range of applications.
Geographic Location
This is an obvious benefit. Most onsite technicians have a “service area” where they limit the maximum distance they are willing to drive. With remote support, the geographics dont really matter anymore as long as the client has a good enough internet connection. Even with my own business, I look after my clients in my home city of Melbourne Australia even though I am currently living in London UK. Even though my clients are half a world away, the speeds are actually pretty good.
Proactive System Maintenance
If you are a computer technician who has maintenance contracts with their clients, keeping an eye on your clients systems is made much easier and more effective with remote support. For example, you can log into their systems and check the usual Windows/Antivirus updates and hardware statuses once every 2 weeks, and visit the clients physical location quarterly to check the physical state of the computer. Again, this saves you time driving around all the time to support your maintenance contracts.
Getting Started
If you are interested getting into remote support, I recommend you check out Lisa Hendricksons guide “Call That Girls Guide To Remote Support” which is now in its second edition.
Lisas book is not a technicial manual on how to do remote support but rather a remote support business operations manual. It includes setting your remote support rates, getting a ticketing system setup, marketing your remote support services, accepting payments remotely and up-selling.
It also talks about what to do if the clients internet doesnt work, dealing with issues you cannot fix remotely and how to deal with issues that make working remotely difficult.
Lisa’s guide is currently selling for $79 until December 24th, comes with a free copy of her “Computer Business Manual of Operations” and comes with a full refund policy if you find its not for you, so its completely risk free. You can check out the guide and what is in it by CLICKING HERE.
If you are looking for remote support software, ScreenConnect is picking up a lot of popularity on the Technibble forums. Their concurrent licenses start at $275 and once you purchase it you can use it forever. The software is self hosted giving you a bit more control over your product.
It comes with all the features you would expect from a good remote support package such as being crossplatform, has a Android/iOS app and is brandable. You can check out ScreenConnect HERE.
© Technibble – A Resource for Computer Technicians to start or improve their Computer Business
To get started with your own computer business, check out our Computer Business Kit. 6 Reasons Why You Should Consider Remote Support
