Feb 14, 2022 | Remote access, Small Business
Remote support can look different from one small business to the next. One company might lean on its remote support for a good portion of its revenue and do as many or more remote sessions as site visits.
Other businesses might only use remote support for managed services, but still end up having to make long trips for simple fixes that could’ve been handled via remote support software.
The difference between the two is that successful remote support businesses tend to adopt better habits when it comes to marketing and managing their services. This puts remote support front and center to customers as an excellent way to get the IT help they need regularly.
68% of organizations said they saw an increase in customer support calls during the holiday season.
Increasing your remote support business is a win/win for IT businesses and customers alike. You save time and money and don’t need to send a technician out in the field (no gas, no drive time, etc.). The customer also saves time and money, getting their issue addressed faster and not having to pay a service visit fee.
If you’re looking for ways to improve your remote support, try following some of these habits of companies who are successful at managing remote support services
They Train Their Technicians on Remote Support
Doing a remote support session takes specific nuanced skills that differ from an on-site visit. Technicians need to be able to effectively communicate with customers and guide them through the process of connecting.
Some customers may want to leave their device while the technician is working on it remotely, others will want to watch and learn. Your technicians need to be comfortable with all scenarios and with walking the client through a fix.
Companies that are successful at providing remote support train their technicians and will even have remote support-only teams that completely focus on this type of technical service.
They Collaborate Between Support Teams
You can provide more effective end-to-end services when your team collaborates on a client’s care. Successful remote support businesses will ensure the on-site and remote support teams are collaborating, so everyone is on the same page with a customer.
For example, if the remote team worked on a specific issue during a session that they then escalated to an onsite visit, it’s helpful if both technicians are in communication so they can problem-solve together.
Likewise, after an on-site visit, a company might schedule a follow-up with the remote support team to ensure all is going well.
They Proactively Resolve Customer Issues
You can provide more value to customers if you proactively solve issues during a remote session. A technician might be helping a user learn a new company software, but during that time see that the PC occasionally freezes up.
Suggesting a fix and addressing that before it results in a bigger issue will cause your customers to be appreciative of your proactive support, helping you cement a strong relationship.
They Promote Remote Support Interactions in the Customer Journey
How often do you promote remote support as an option during your customer journey? Companies that earn a lot of remote support business make sure they’re letting customers know at all steps that it’s a convenient option.
For example, after you bring on a new customer, you can suggest they schedule a remote support session for user onboarding. You can also offer it when you know a company is going through a technology transformation as a way to facilitate its change management.
The more your customers use remote support, the more comfortable they will be to choose it as a first option for connecting with you for help.
They Use Tools That Reduce the Effort Needed for Customers & Technicians
Companies that are successful with their remote support business use tools that are easy for technicians and their customers. If you have remote support software that is hard for people to install and connect with, then they’re not going to want to bother.
Some of the ways that Instant Housecall remote support makes the experience easy for all involved are:
- Customers can open a time window for support
- You can pre-install the software on customer devices
- The software can be automatically removed at the end of each session
- Get a complete session history and log
- Automatically send review requests after your support session
- Leave support notes on your customers’ desktops
- Auto PC repair to address many common issues (like malware removal)
- Easy connection without PINs or codes
Promote a Great Remote Support Experience
With Instant Housecall remote support software, you can promote an easy and fluid remote support experience. It has multiple features that improve your customer experience and make your job easier.
Try Instant Housecall risk-free for 15 days and experience it for yourself! Try it out now.
Jun 21, 2021 | Remote access, Small Business
A famous quote from Einstein is, “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”
There are two common frustrations with people that are dealing with any type of technology company, from their cable company to their IT provider. These are:
- Hearing technical jargon and having no idea what it means; and
- Getting talked down to like they’re a child.
Balancing those two can be challenging for a technology business owner, but it’s important if you want to keep good customer relations and continue growing your customer base.
42% of people will switch service companies if they feel put off by rude or unhelpful staff.
There’s a fine line during remote support sessions between oversimplifying and being way too technical in your explanations of an issue and resolution. But when you hit the sweet spot between the two, you can have a fruitful engagement with customers without any misunderstandings or hurt feelings.
The Problem With Speaking Tech Talk
When you speak in technology and IT jargon during a remote support session, what you say can go completely over the head of your client. You may think everyone knows what IP whitelisting means but find out later (when there is a problem) that wasn’t the case.
For example, say you’re adding an IT security measure that involves IP whitelisting. Your client only has a vague idea of what you mean, so when you ask if there are any other IP addresses to add to the whitelist, they say “no.”
Then a day or two later, you receive a frantic call because staff members suddenly can’t connect to resources. All the client knows is that something was working and now it’s broken because of something you did during your remote support session.
Had you noted that IP whitelisting looks at the virtual address of every device connecting to a system and blocks those not on the list you could have avoided a problem and a bad experience for your customer. They may have realized you were asking about the actual employee devices that needed to connect.
The Problem With “Talking Down” to Customers
On the flip side of speaking “tech talk” is speaking down to customers. No one likes to be disrespected, which is what they feel when they think they’re being talked down to.
They might feel that you’re wasting their time by over-explaining something that they already know. They can also end up feeling that they know more than you do because you’re speaking to them on such a low level of technical expertise.
How to Walk the Fine Line Between “Tech Talk” and “Talking Down”
Read the Room
When someone makes an inappropriate or irrelevant comment in a group, a friend might say to them, “Read the room!”
What this means for your remote support engagements is to cue from your client’s technical knowledge as you’re providing support.
If you’re getting ready to launch into an explanation of how email signatures work when helping someone with an email issue, pause and see if you’re getting some feedback. Such as, “Yes, I have my email signature set up already.” You’ll gain a clue into their technical knowledge and can adjust accordingly.
MSP providers can be working with customers at drastically different technology comfort zones, and you must be able to adjust how you explain an issue and resolution to match each level.
Watch Your Tone
When people feel talked down to, it’s generally about the tone of the support person. You can say the same exact thing and have it taken two different ways, depending upon your tone.
If someone is hearing a condescending tone in your voice, they will instantly go into defensive mode, which is going to make your work harder and strain the customer/business relationship.
You may not have any idea that you’re speaking in a “tone,” at all. But if you begin to get negative reviews that mention this, it’s a clue that you may need to make some adjustments.
Learn to Explain Things Simply Using Examples
Going back to the Einstein quote about explaining things simply, often an example is a great way to shed light on a technical explanation.
For example, say you’re trying to explain how memory impacts performance and why someone may need a memory upgrade.
If you launch into a monologue about 8GB of RAM compared to 12GB of RAM, you’re bound to lose some people.
Instead use an example and simple, understandable terms, such as:
“Memory, or RAM, impacts how many things you can do on a computer at one time. Expanding your system memory allows the PC to handle more programs being open at once and can respond faster to requests.
For example, I worked with a client having problems similar to yours with browser windows freezing, especially if they had videos or ads loading. We tripled their memory from 4GB to 12GB, and those freezing problems were eliminated. I think increasing your system memory will do the same for you.”
Use Speech Techniques for Better Remote Support Communications
One of the tenants of giving good speeches and training sessions includes these three steps:
- Tell them what you’re going to do.
- Do the thing.
- Tell them what you did.
Often support technicians might miss a step, causing confusion and leaving customers feeling uninformed.
Once you diagnose an issue, explain in simple terms what you’ll do to resolve it (rather than just jumping in keys flying).
Then once you’ve finished your session, you can explain the fix or resolution. One great way to do this when the client’s device may be unattended is to use remote support software, like Instant Housecall, that allows you to leave a visible “sticky note” on the customer’s computer. This neatly closes that communication circle.
Use a Remote Support Software That Makes Your Connections Easy
When you’re trying to explain and address an issue, the last thing you want is problematic remote connection software. Instant Housecall is a powerful yet easy-to-use remote support tool that makes your life easier so you can focus on your customer support.
Try Instant Housecall risk-free for 15 days and experience it for yourself!
Apr 15, 2020 | Remote access
Since it’s all the rage to work from home these days, there’s no better time than now to share the tools that we use to get the job done.
Working from home comes with its own set of challenges, many of which can be managed by properly understanding how to manage a remote team.
Monitoring your staff
One of the biggest concerns people who are new to having remote workforce is knowing whether or not their staff are actually working when they say they are.
I have very mixed feelings on surveillance apps. I don’t personally use them. In particular, I woudn’t install them in a BYOD situation, first because it’s an invasion of privacy; and second, because you’ll discover things about your staff that you’d probably rather not know.
You can generally get a better sense for how busy your team is by seeing what they actually deliver rather than how many hours they spend on reddit.
With that said, and since a lot of people have asked, if you want to monitor what your team is up to, you can use a tool like Activtrak to keep tabs on what they’re doing.
G-Suite alternative
One of my favourite tools in my arsenal is Nextcloud. We use it for everything: file sharing, as a drop box for files from external customers, and to share files internally among ourselves. It also has a calendar, contacts, email, a Talk app that lets you host video conferences, and even a password manager. Here’s an example of a document share.
Nextcloud is an excellent replacement for G-Suite, but not quite as robust. If you’re looking for higher margins, it’s an alternative that you can sell. It’s also open source so you can host your own instance (or an instance for your customers) or you can order Nextcloud hosting from a variety of vendors.
Collaboration tools
If you need to get documents signed, you can use the canonical Docusign or the poor man’s alternative, PDFFiller.
We use Zoom for meetings and webinars (yes, they’ve taken a lot of heat lately). There is not shortage of alternatives, but one of the more compelling ones is Jitsi.
Slack is our IM client of choice. We use it in place of email for just about everything, and it integrates nicely with our ticketing system. MatterMost is an excellent alternative and it comes with a ton of integrations. You can either use their hosted service or, again, host your own or host it for your customers. Riot.im and Rocket.chat receive honourable mentions.
Instant Housecall is, of course, how we provide remote tech support to each other and remotely accessing Windows servers. We also use it for collaborating remotely on documents, graphics, and just about anything. If you want to give your customers remote access to their own PCs, subaccounts are accounts you can sell or give your customers so they can control their own unattended PC.
As always, if you’re looking to provide remote tech support, give Instant Housecall a try.
Did I miss anything? Share your favourite work at home tools in the comments below.
Mar 30, 2020 | Remote access
I know a thing or two about working remotely. I sell remote support software (Instant Housecall — you should try it) and I’ve been working remotely for the past ten years myself. My developers are remote, my marketing person is remote, and while the blogger — you’ll be hearing more from her soon — and designer I work with are here in Toronto, they work remotely most of the time, too.
There are some things that MSPs, techs, other IT business owners — and their customers — can do while working remotely to make sure it’s successful.
Start your day off by getting dressed and walking to work. It sounds simple, but it’s easy when working from home to avoid getting dressed for work. You need to dress the part, and so do your workers. “Walking to work” (ie, around the block) is not only refreshing and good exercise, but it makes a difference in your mindset.
Meet with your team first thing in the morning, every day. Set up a time every day that you do an informal morning check-in. We’re an agile software shop, so we do a daily scrum. I don’t see why this could couldn’t apply to anyone in any line of business. We spend 15 minutes, no more, answering the following questions:
- What did you do yesterday?
- What will you do today?
- Do you have any impediments?
You can read more about how to conduct daily scrums at Mountain Goat Software. Watch this excellent video that illustrates very well how to do, and not do, a daily scrum. There are several advantages to meeting with your team at the beginning of each day
- you ensure that your remote workers are actually there and ready for work
- by asking those three questions, you know what they’re up to each day and can clear any blockers
- you can set up offline discussions with your team as needed
Book meetings, just like you would if you were in an office. It’s easy, while working remotely, to lose some of the structure you had when you were working in an office. IM’s can fly fast and furious. You never know if someone is in front of their computer. Booking meetings gives you the structure that you need
Never use e-mail when connecting with colleagues. There are a number of reasons for this, not the least of which is that e-mails are annoying, mess up the flow of your day, and require more time than other methods of communication. If you need to collaborate with someone, either do it inside a ticket on the platform you use (we use Jira, which also has a Service Desk app) or through instant messaging. E-mails are for external customers. IM and tickets are for internal work.
There are several tools in Instant Housecall that are good for remote workers. You can generate reports to see what your workers are doing, use standard remote support sessions to collaborate on a ticket or document, or if you have several workers who work at the same time, conference call is a great way to have everyone working on one computer at the same time. You can also create free subaccounts on Everything Edition so people can access their own unattended PC in the office.
In the next post I’ll talk about some of the tools we use to get the job done.
If you’re looking for remote support software, either to fix your customers’ computers, or to sell to your customers so they can remotely access their own PCs with subaccounts, give Instant Housecall a try.
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