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5 Awkward Things You Need to Know Before Starting Up Your Computer Repair Business
By getAcareer | November 9, 2008
It is a brave step going out on your own to become a local computer repair person. You’ll be in contest with others like you, computer shops and larger companies who provide for your market.
Some of the greatest challenges you’ll confront however will be when you are actually on the job. Contradictory to what some may think, supporting domestic and small business enterprise users is rather a great deal tougher than working in a large scale corporate environment. Here are some of the reasons why, so you can be geared up and be more effective - building up you a serious reputation and more word of mouth referrals.
Home and small business users can be the most tough customers you’ll ever deal with. They will expect tremendous value from you and will dispute their bills unless they are 150% content.
1. They will expect you to recognise what a problem is and how to fix it the same way they would a pipe fitter who came round to unfreeze a waste pipe. It won’t take place all the time but on occasion expect for them to decline to pay for whatever time you spend ‘figuring out what the problem is’.
2. They don’t have the luxury of being able to swop out their PC with one from the store room or to work on someone else’s while you work on theirs. And So when they are dead in the water, unable to work and losing money because of it - the pressure will be on you. You will unquestionably need to be able to manage with this and get used to somebody standing over your shoulder harassing you to speed up.
3. They will need you to look at all sorts of different things aside from what you’ve booked in to see them about. If you have apportioned them a particular amount of time to do a particular job then you have to be clear at the beginning of the visit. See if there is sufficient time left over at the end of the visit or schedule another one. The most fundamental thing is to state at the beginning of your call that you are there to do a certain project. A professional looking work order will help a plenty here.
4. They do not have standardized desktop set ups with effective antivirus and policies that keep them from downloading and installing whatever they wish. This is what makes this type of work so interesting, and frustrating. Just think spyware, spyware spyware, be equipped for it and anticipate to run into it everywhere you go.
5. They will blame you for things that have gone wrong that aren’t your mistake. Ever heard this phrase before?
“Well it was fine until the IT person came and today it doesn’t work (I’m not paying this invoice!)”
Expect this to take place a great deal. Over Again professional looking work orders and effective documentation of all work carried out will be the proof you call for to present precisely what you have and haven’t done. A client once phoned up and screamed at my boss right after a call because his printer quit working just after I left. Turns out he switched off the computer it was attached to.
Offering computer mending services to small business enterprise and home users can be a tremendously rewarding experience. And of course being your own boss is as good as it gets. I trust the above points haven’t put you off, the intention is to train you for some of the most intense parts of the job.
You can protect yourself and be trained merely by setting up a businesslike system of rules for work orders, call documentation and procedures for particular situations. Do this and you’ll become known in your area as the go-to person and have too much work to handle.
Now go get ‘em!
Peter Webber is an independent IT advisor and contractor to large and small commercial enterprises. His site focuses on numerous aspects of working in the IT industry in particular how to set up your home computer fixing business
Topics: Self Employed |