Why Customer Service is your biggest selling point

[MrUnknown]

I feel that the computer repair industry is quickly gaining a reputation of being like a car mechanic. That is, only out to rip you off and get as much money from you as possible and as quickly as possible. You can find plenty of videos on YouTube of car mechanics making their own problems to charge the customer for or charging for services never performed. You can also find enough videos of computer repair technicians doing the same exact thing.

I am currently working on a laptop for a client that was "fixed" yesterday by a competitor in my service area. The issues originally described was that the computer was slow and WiFi stopped working. The competitor blamed it on a virus, apparently removed a Trojan and installed Avira free, for $150. A side note, the customer was led to believe that they paid for an AntiVirus solution.

The customer gets the computer back, WiFi still not working and apparently with no explanation from the company as to why it still isn't working or why they didn't even look at it. This of course angered the customer and they called the next day to complain. I was not given all of the details but it basically ended with the customer being cussed out by the computer repair technician.

This is a business that only accepts cash and provides no receipts to their clients so they now have no recourse as there is no proof they even had their computer touched by them. This is also a business that has a storefront so that automatically makes them look more legit than I do.

If this is my competition, then I have nothing to worry about. The hard part is getting them to give me a chance before not trusting all computer repair technicians.

I just wanted to share this story while I wait for a disk image to complete.

forgot to mention, it is a HP DV9000, the slot with the WiFi is bad and shows no hardware installed. USB WiFi works fine. Unsure if there is a virus, they wanted a restore for some reason.

[nibblesandbits]

Originally Posted by MrUnknown

I feel that the computer repair industry is quickly gaining a reputation of being like a car mechanic. That is, only out to rip you off and get as much money from you as possible and as quickly as possible. You can find plenty of videos on YouTube of car mechanics making their own problems to charge the customer for or charging for services never performed. You can also find enough videos of computer repair technicians doing the same exact thing.

I am currently working on a laptop for a client that was "fixed" yesterday by a competitor in my service area. The issues originally described was that the computer was slow and WiFi stopped working. The competitor blamed it on a virus, apparently removed a Trojan and installed Avira free, for $150. A side note, the customer was led to believe that they paid for an AntiVirus solution.

The customer gets the computer back, WiFi still not working and apparently with no explanation from the company as to why it still isn't working or why they didn't even look at it. This of course angered the customer and they called the next day to complain. I was not given all of the details but it basically ended with the customer being cussed out by the computer repair technician.

This is a business that only accepts cash and provides no receipts to their clients so they now have no recourse as there is no proof they even had their computer touched by them. This is also a business that has a storefront so that automatically makes them look more legit than I do.

If this is my competition, then I have nothing to worry about. The hard part is getting them to give me a chance before not trusting all computer repair technicians.

I just wanted to share this story while I wait for a disk image to complete.

forgot to mention, it is a HP DV9000, the slot with the WiFi is bad and shows no hardware installed. USB WiFi works fine. Unsure if there is a virus, they wanted a restore for some reason.

Wow, this would infuriate me to know that someone local enough to make you a phone call away to fix was doing this to their clients. I go through the same thing every day. I have a storefront (if you want to call it that) I don't sell anything, I'm just in a building with another business and have my 2'x3' sign outside the door. My competition, which is apparently a joke has been around for a while and is on Main Street in town so everyone sees him far before they see me off on the side road. Seems like every business that hears my name has been calling me and dropping him though, so that's a good thing. Same will happen for you, just keep doing everything you can and keeping your customers happy and always remember "One happy customer will bring you two or three referrals, but one angry customer can put you out of business."

[activeits]

One of my competitors use to go around removing virus/spyware and then not even install any security products, therefore he would get repeats business. It did not take him long to get a bad name.

I do not do any paid advertisement and probably 98% of my business comes from word of mouth, therefore customer service is always on top of my list.

In this recession there has been about 5 new competitors, 4 of they have already gone by the waste side, and never affected my business.

[steve51]

Much the same opinion here, I live in a smallish town, population of around 85,000 I am the only mobile computer tech in town who advertises in the local press, I did have competition up until the middle of last year when he suddenly stopped advertising, I have dealt with a lot of his ex-customers who all state that he was arrogant and expensive.
I treat each and every one of my customers with respect, I go out of my way to make sure they are 100% satisfied with the work I do for them and in return I get a lot of referals.

[MrUnknown]

nibblesandbits, This did infuriate me. I have no idea how many times I said I was sorry for what they had to go through eventhough it had nothing to do with me. I just tried to explain that we aren't all that bad.

What I really don't understand is if you take out the business aspect, just leave a regular person, why would you treat someone else this way? I wouldn't act this way if I did a job for free, nevermind that they are paying me to do it. I just can't stand it. I mean, it is great that my competition is so bad, but I still don't want them to do this to my potential clients.

I currently do not advertise as I want to slowly grow my business for various personal and professional reasons (one being that I want to try to target business clients), but I have been getting quite a few customers lately through Google and I am hoping to grow even more through them from referrals.

For this customer, I have no idea why they contacted him if they ever saw his website. The page title is for another company, there is only one small bit of content about a product they resell, after that there is a huge SQL error from when they try to display the Anand Tech RSS. Clicking any link on the website shows a "under construction" page for a...well a construction company. I sure hope they aren't redesigning it for them because the company's current website is very nice. PM me if you are interested in seeing this mess yourself.

[Mushin]

I agree 100% and one thing in particular... You stated something to the effect that the only thing is getting them to give you a chance first.


This is exactly my strategy.. Give the client every reason to come to Site Tech FRIST. I build my entire business around getting to the customer first and then keeping them forever.

Some tools...
Customer referrals
Free Diagnostics
Free remote help (Remote diag)
Free Fix of basic things like... task bar got moved to the right hand side of the screen and the client can't move it back.
Free consumer bulletins about misleading commercials (www.doublemyspeed.com)
Free advice on choosing a computer

Do whatever it takes to keep the customer happy even if it means taking a loss on a redo repair that was not part of the original problem.