Here at Computer Consulting 101, we often see that small business owners want lower computer support costs. But since this presents an inherent conflict (i.e. you want to be billing out MORE consulting services, while they want you to billing out LESS), you need to get really good at conserving your clients’ budgets for the projects that yield the fastest, most positive bottom line business benefits.
This often involves a “delayed gratification” philosophy where you sacrifice some early “easy” billable hour opportunities, in favor of doing the “right” thing and building up much, much greater lifetime client loyalty.
So given all this, what can you do to keep costs down? And what are some of our favorite Computer Consulting 101 tips for lower support costs?
When in doubt about a tricky problem, reboot first.
Tell your small business clients that before they consider an issue a real computer support problem and call your firm, they should always reboot first. They’ll need to exit out of whatever files and programs they’re working on. Then they’ll need to run through a Shutdown and Restart sequence to reboot their PC’s.
If you suspect the problem involves something hardware-related, such as a network card, modem, mouse, keyboard or sound card, tell your clients to go one step further. They’ll want to Shutdown their PC’s. Turn the power off for a minute or so and then power their PC’s back up again.
This simple step can go a very long way toward lower computer support costs and it’s one of our favorite cost-savings tips here at Computer Consulting 101.
And it’s also a great way to make sure that you don’t burn through your clients’ IT budgets on easily preventable billables… so they’ll money left over in their budgets for the ROI-exploding projects that really WOW them into lifetime client loyalty.
Joshua Feinberg
Computer Consulting 101
