5 Tips That Will Position Your Remote Tech Support Team for Success

Aug 9, 2021 | Uncategorized

Remote support can be a great addition to the products and services your small business is already providing, but only if you have good support technicians.

If customers aren’t getting the help they hope for, word will get out, and you’ll find that your remote support revenue is going down as a result.

An average of 58% of Americans will switch to another company if they’re not happy with the customer support they receive. On the other hand, 89% of consumers are more likely to purchase more from you after a positive experience. 

To grow your remote support business and your company reputation in a positive direction, it’s important to position your tech support team for success. If you just throw them in the deep end and expect them to come out on top, you could find that your miscalculation has lost you an important client.

How do you set your remote support team up for success? 

1. Allow New Support Techs Time to Train With an Experienced Technician

Just because someone has good technical knowledge, doesn’t prepare them for being online with a customer during a remote support call. The experience is very different when you’re logged in to someone’s system and with them potentially on the other end of the connection expecting you to fix everything.

You give your new techs a better chance at success and more confidence in handling support sessions on their own by allowing them some training time with an experienced technician.

Being on several support calls where they can watch an expert and then slowly ease into the lead role themselves, can ensure they’re properly prepared when doing their first solo session.

2. Train Them on Your Customer Personas

Every business has different customer personas. These represent the different types of customers you provide remote support services to. For the average MSP or IT business, you may have personas that look like this:

• Experienced with tech, like to know what’s being fixed and how
• Not comfortable at all with technology, anxious when things go wrong
• Business owners that just want things to work as fast as possible

Each persona will require a slightly different approach. For example, those not comfortable with technology will need more patience. Users that are tech-savvy will want a full report of what was done after the call is over.

For all personas, support technicians need to learn how not to talk down to people but to vary the explanations they use according to persona type.

3. Make Sure They’re Familiar With Your Products & Services

Often remote support calls end up being sales opportunities as well. For example, if a customer needs help removing a virus, once the malware is removed, a technician that is familiar with your offerings may offer to send some information on your managed antivirus plan.

If the technician doesn’t know exactly what you offer, a sales opportunity could be missed. Also, a customer might wonder why the tech can’t answer a simple question, like what’s included in a managed IT plan.

Provide your remote support technicians with a listing of your products and services so they can become familiar with them if asked or if an opportunity to mention one arises naturally during a support call.

4. Provide Them With a Reliable Remote Support Tool

Few things are more frustrating to your technicians and your customers during a remote support session than having problems with the connection. If a tech keeps getting cut off or can’t reboot a system without getting disconnected, it can cause your customer to go elsewhere for support.

You give your support team the best chance of success when you give them fast and reliable remote support tools. Robust remote support software doesn’t have to break the bank and it can pay for itself in time savings and happy customers.

5. Outline Remote Support Expectations

If you send a technician into their first remote support call without letting them know your expectations, you’re setting them up to disappoint you if they fail to record a support session or don’t send the client a follow-up note.

Go through a standard remote support call and write down the process and what you need to have done before, during, and after. 

• Is there specific information they need to ask of the customer for your records?
• Do all sessions get recorded?
• Are they to note the support work performed in a CRM?
• What do they do if the session runs longer than expected?

Make sure you don’t just assume your technicians know all your expectations. Write these down so they can refer to them and become familiar with the entire process.

Set Your Remote Support Team Up for Success with Instant Housecall Software

Instant Housecall remote support software is an easy-to-use, reliable, and robust platform built to enable great connections and allow technicians to focus on the job at hand. 

Try Instant Housecall risk-free for 15 days and experience it for yourself! Try it out now.

How to Use Remote Support to Market Your Managed Services Plans

Jul 19, 2021 | Uncategorized

Of all the services that IT businesses provide, the one that is typically the “bread and butter” is managed services. A managed support plan keeps revenue coming in the door each month and can be streamlined through an RMM tool to be very time efficient.

If you can effectively use your other popular services to cross-sell MSP plans, then you can increase your revenue and gain more long-term clients.

One of the services that can act as a springboard in this way is remote support. It’s gained in popularity during the pandemic out of necessity and due to the rise in work-from-home employees. This is a trend that’s not going away.

The number of employees permanently working from home is expected to double in 2021.

Because the need for remote support has increased sharply, it’s a great tool to use for promoting your managed support services. You can think of it as a steppingstone in your sales funnel if you do it right. Here are several ideas you can use.

Bundle It in as a Selling Point

Having unlimited remote support as a managed service plan feature can be the deciding factor that pushes a company towards a remote support plan. Bundling remote support with your services packages can also be a better deal for a customer who may be using a lot of remote tech support.

For example, a company with 30 remote employees might be paying nearly as much for remote support troubleshooting and software setup and not realize it. For just a little more they could get a full package of much-needed services, such as managed antivirus, backup & recovery, patch management, and more.

The thought of unlimited remote support can be a big draw and it can make the “numbers make sense” to a business owner that’s trying to justify the cost before moving forward.

Use It to Draw People to Higher Level Support Plans

Remote support can also be a handy way to entice lower-tiered support plan customers to a higher level of support. For example, your most basic MSP plan may not include remote support as a part of the package, but your Intermediate tier does.

Getting remote support along with all the other services could be worth it, especially if a basic tier customer is having to pay for remote support on top of their monthly fee.

You can even do a few tiers and increase the level of support as people choose a higher-level package. Such as:

• Basic Plan: No remote support included
• Intermediate Plan: Three hours of remote support included per month
• Premiere Plan: Unlimited remote support included

Add a Link to Remote Session Summary Notes

When you finish a remote support session, it’s a good practice to send a summary of the session to the client afterward so they understand exactly what was done. This is especially true when you’re providing support remotely for an unattended device and the owner wasn’t there to see what you did.

This summary note can be sent via email or through a virtual sticky note on a screen when using Instant Housecall remote support software. On your summary note, you can include a message about your managed IT services.

For example, you could do something like, “We identified a virus that was causing your PC issues. We’ve completely removed it and checked to ensure all files were intact. Your system is clean and operating normally now. PS: You may want to check out our monthly managed services, which include managed antivirus/anti-malware!”

Do a Price Comparison on Your Remote Support Page

If you are bundling unlimited remote support with one of your managed services packages, then you can do a price comparison on your remote support page. You might actually capture a new MSP customer right away with this tip.

Do a comparison such as the average price for a 1-hour remote support session x times per month, and the price for your managed services plan with unlimited remote support.

You can’t just assume someone is going to figure it out for themselves that if they’re using a lot of remote support, it’s a better deal to just get a managed services plan instead. Spell it out for them!

You could even offer two buttons on your remote support page:

• One button to initiate a one-time support session
• One button to initiate the session and at the same time, sign up for managed services with remote support included.

Use a Remote Support Software That Streamlines Your Process

Instant Housecall is a powerful yet easy-to-use remote support software that allows you to spend less time and energy providing quality remote support.

Try Instant Housecall risk-free for 15 days and experience it for yourself!