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ForumsA computer technician on a site that I occasionally read brought up the topic “phone support should be the most expensive service we bill for”. Personally, I think hes right.
For example, if you call up the manufacturer of a router they will help you up until the point where they know the problem isn’t being caused by their hardware. They will then pass you onto a paid helpline that often charges $80 per hour and upwards. Yet, we as freelance computer technicians often give phone support away for free. When its free, it becomes hard to track and leeches billable time off you and your employees; something that a small business can hardly afford.
To the client, phone support can be a lot better than onsite callouts. Its convenient because they can call when they want rather than a time that’s convenient for you and problems are often fixed very quickly. The equivalent of this in the on site repair world are emergency or after-hours callouts which we usually charge extra for. Yet we often do not charge for phone support.
Think of it like this, phone support is essentially remote support but its harder because you have to talk someone else through it instead of being able to see the screen yourself. Your client would expect to be charged for remote support, so why not more for phone support if its the same thing but harder?
I personally do it a similar way to the hardware manufacturers. I spend 5-10 minutes asking them questions to determine what the problem is. If they are previous clients and its fixable with a few button clicks I’ll usually help them out over the phone.
However, its not easily fixable over the phone or they are new clients I try to arrange a callout. The reason why I wont help new clients over the phone for free is because it establishes you as the “friend who knows computers”; you can bet they will call you back expecting more free help. I’m all for creating goodwill with new clients, but its wasted if they don’t know the value of your help.
Do you think phone support should be our most expensive service? Do you currently give phone support for free or do you charge? If you charge, at what point do you start charging?
If I think it’ll take more than five minutes I just tell them it’s something I’ll need to look at. If it takes less than the five minutes I don’t see the point in billing them as it must have been simple.
Anyone that’s not an existing customer on good terms doesn’t even get the five minutes. I’ve had a few people call and fish for information in the hopes they could take what I said and fix it themselves. One guy called expecting me to walk him through installing a modem he didn’t even buy from me.
Personally I find phone support quite frustrating, and even at 2x my normal rate it still wouldn’t be worth doing. It can’t be a pleasant experience for the person on the other end either. My advice would be to avoid doing it altogether. I’m sure you’ll have much higher customer satisfaction if you just show up quickly and resolve the problem.
I completely agree with the statement above.
I agree with the article I had recently a customer who have done work for a few times who was having network issues. I told them how to reset/power cycle the modem and router and the problem was fixed. I didn’t want to drive out there to spend 30 seconds and charge them for 1 hour. If it wasn’t an old customer I might have setup a call out where I would test the equipment fix it and then with the time remaining and them allowing preform a few maintance task on thier PC.
I try to avoid it, but if I was going to offer phone support (and had a billing system for it), I would charge more than my normal rate.
When arranging on site jobs, I do get some information about the problem over the phone, so I can be somewhat more prepared. However I take everything with a huge grain of salt, as nobody has ever described the problem accurately, which translates to a lot of frustration and wasted time for phone support.
I agree, I had a young man a few weeks ago trying to get free phone support for a wireless networking issue on a Saturday morning, I Listened to the problem and got some details, but explained to him that its “Something I would have to see”. I don’t really feel these people are potential customers they are the HYPER CHEAP customers who are barely worth having, I would treat a good customer a little differently if they wanted something very basic.. like say a keyboard short cut for turning off the touchpad on the laptop. (Hey this guy tips +$10 per job!)
This is a worthwhile subject indeed and I believe we should be charging something for this customer service.Some customers will take advantage of a freebie service if allowed, however we all will have times that it will be difficult to charge because of circumstances.In general I will look seriously at a rate system for these calls.
For business customers who doesn’t have a support agreement or residential customers, I don’t charge for the first 15 minutes. After that I charge by the half hour. If it’s a new customer, I figure I’m going to spend ten minutes of the call on selling them, anyway.
If the call goes longer than a half hour, I’ll connect remotely or go on site. I’ll do anything I can to NOT go on site, though.
If they have a support agreement then they get unlimited phone support.
And if you are on the phone with me for 14 minutes and then call back an hour later with a “different” issue? Yeah. We’re done.
i’ve never charged for phone support although i have spent more than 30 minutes on a phone call several times. it usually builds up client trust and loyalty and i usually make it up on the end. I only do this for my best customers that i can’t get to, as i don’t have any employees yet and there is a lot of competition out here. after this article, im going to consider charging something for the time.
We charge for phone support if the customer is in good standing and issue can’t be addressed in under 5 minutes. As part of that process we use web based remote support tool that allows us to gain access to their computer. The first screen that they see reminds them of our billing policy and ask to them to enter into a web form their name and email address to start a paid support session. That information does two things creates a ticket in our support software so we track issue and ultimately bill for that session and secondly sends to the customer a email that on this day at this time we provide a remote support session and thanks for their business.
Usually if it is a past customer we will help them over the phone if possible. Typically if they can’t be helped over the phone it turns into a job anyway.
If it’s a new person we will still help a bit, but not to the extent of fixing every single issue they have.
And for most past customers when we do help them typically they always ask about paying for the help, or how to pay. 99% of the time we tell them not to worry about it. This will and does result in future work either from them or them referring us because we are such “nice” people.
And then of course there is always that percentage that even tho we say “no” to payment we end up getting a check in the mail anyway.
In the long run it all comes around.
Harold could you tell me the name of the webscript you use to do this? Or did you write your own?
“”We charge for phone support if the customer is in good standing and issue can’t be addressed in under 5 minutes. As part of that process we use web based remote support tool that allows us to gain access to their computer. The first screen that they see reminds them of our billing policy and ask to them to enter into a web form their name and email address to start a paid support session. That information does two things creates a ticket in our support software so we track issue and ultimately bill for that session and secondly sends to the customer a email that on this day at this time we provide a remote support session and thanks for their business”"
Do you think phone support should be our most expensive service?
Well sometimes it should more expensive depending the situation, I had customers that call everytime for little things making waste my time helping them. I believe if I set a price per call I will reduced these time consuming calls.
Do you currently give phone support for free or do you charge?
For now I don’t charge for any calls but I always encourage my client to arrange a visit so I can fix the problem, if for some reason the client doesn’t have the time to receive me them I attempt to troubleshoot the problem via phone. Also another alternative is remote service but this only work when the computer is functioning and not completely damange.
If you charge, at what point do you start charging?
For now I will be planning what rates to charge when I receive troubleshoot calls from my clients, unless I do a job for them phone support will not be free at least unless they still in the guarantee grace period.
Jake,
To answer your question the frontend is a custom script that eventually takes the customer to logmein rescue session. Have more questions just ask.
At our shop we charge for any telephone support we do. Our rate is the same as for onsite or inshop work. The reasoning is that if we are on the phone with someone that is time we cannot use for other billable work. Obviously if it is a 5 minute call for a good client the charge might be waived.
If our clients don’t wish to pay for our time on the phone we can be doing other productive and billable work. We do work with laywers, doctors, and other professionals that bill for their time and don’t have any problems getting paid for our time.
I am torn about this subject. See I work for a very small computer repair shop, and we get a lot of calls, but I don’t know that we should charge for them. I like the idea of our time being worth more to people, but I think charging for a phone call would make us more like the dreaded IT department in large corporations. Is there a way to be sure this doesn’t happen?
We bill for our time. Plain and simple. Our most profitable clients get a free be every once in a while (5-10 minutes), but that’s the exception and not the rule.
Oh yeah… to answer the question: Should phone support be the more expensive?
We charge less for our remote support than on-site services, mainly because we don’t have to spend gas money and the extra hour or two we’d spend driving around. It makes more sense for us to have a small trip fee and bill the same hourly rate regardless of whether or not we’re on-site or on phone.
I charge the same as onsite for remote support. I have been thinking about this issue for a while, and although it costs me less, it is a greater convenience for the customer because they get immediate help and they don’t have a to pay one hour minimum fee like with an onsite appointment.
As long as the remote support tool doesn’t cost you an arm and a leg. I’m currently using Techinline (http://www.techinline.com) which is awesome for fixing small issues and not having to walk computer illiterate people over the phone on how to adjust their settings, and it’s a steal of a price as well, given that most of the other tools out there are waaay too expensive. Give it a try, maybe it’ll solve some of the problems mentioned above
I would have to go with Jory(first commenter) on this one. Spend just 5 minutes over the phone and if it aint working out then make a visit and charge them!
I don’t bother with phone support per se. The client either has an issue that I can fix by remotely connecting to their computer, or they have a physical problem or a low-level OS problem which can only be fixed by being there on-site.
In the former situation, I bill at my off-site rate, which is less than the on-site rate I’d charge in the latter situation.
So if by ‘phone support’ you mean ‘remote support,’ I don’t agree that it should necessarily be more expensive. But if you mean ‘phone support’ as in, “Sitting on the phone with a client and telling them which widget to dingle,” I would personally set my phone support rate so high that no one would want it.
I get the same yahoo calling me at like 9pm asking me stupid stuff like, how can I recover data from a hard drive, can you walk me through it? Yeah sure np pal!
Our company charges the same rate for onsite and remote work – just onsite is minimum 1 hour, and remote is 15min.
As we try not to go onsite (most of our support work can be done by phone and remote) I plan to order payed phone line – there will be no questions how, when and why to charge, they will pay say 1$/min.
I am very interested in script Harold told about. Harold, could you share more information or sell the script?
Phone support…ehh
Last year I had a customer call me with a computer problem a popup that she couldnt get to go away. It was called the Contra Virus. After fixing the machine I went home and posted several blogs about it on my wordpress blog account. To my surprise I started getting 3-5 phone calls a day asking for assistance in removing this “Virus” Sometimes it went well and sometimes it was just plain agonizing trying to get the customer to do what you want them to do and knowing that they followed your instructions correctly. I would say that if you are going to do phone support you limit yourself as to the number of calls that you take per day as you can get burnt out quick especially fixing the same problems over and over again. Within about a week I got sick of taking the phone calls and just posted some more helpful info on my site to let users fix the problem themselves. That cut down on my frustration level significantly, but it didn’t help me to make any more money. Personally I prefer driving to someones house or working on thier computer remotely. Does anyone know of any open source remote control software out there that they use?
I don’t offer phone support at all because it’s too much of a PITA to deal with. If I am going to do any sort of a remote support, there is an executable that can be downloaded from my website that will allow me to access their PC after they have paid me first.
If it’s family or freinds and it’s something simple such as just adding a printer or something that only takes a few seconds to a few minutes, I still have them download the executable.
I’ve found it to be far too frustrating to both the EU and myself when they don’t understand the basic terminology that is used to explain things to them. (Icons, desktop, etc) It’s just faster for me to do it than it is to try and walk them through it over the phone.
I don’t do phone support. I worked in a shop before where we charged the same $75/hr phone support as we did working on it ourselves. I hate phone support. Now in my own shop I don’t do it. You can’t get people to follow your instructions and sometimes with their odd descriptions of the screens you can’t figure out what they are seeing.
I got a guy on the phone one time saying he needed help getting an icon back on the screen. He had no idea what the URL used to be. I ask him how he got it on there in the first place and he couldn’t remember. Then he told me it was there but the icon was different. Ok, so is it there or not? Geez! Sorry to rant. So after that I tell everybody “Look, you have to bring it in or let me come work on it. No phone support, sorry.”
Man what a fantastic website!! Finding other techs that understand what I’m going through! lol. I am in a situation where I live in a small town in New Zealand called Te Kuiti of around 5000 people. I gained A+ years prior (not that that means anything) but someone asked if I could fix a computer and so on and so fourth and now we have a retail store and over 1500 return customers. Problem being…. Small town, Word of mouth and working from home. Bascially for the last 5 years I have been going to the ends of the earth to help customers. Turning up after hours, Phone calls up to 11pm using the classic statement “Sorry for calling so late I just wanted to pick your brain for a second) ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh And living in a small town everybodies ya mate but realising that “Bad Word of Mouth” travels twice as fast. Downside is I have a reputation for being the real nice guy. “Phone calls”. “I’m sick to death of that telephone”. We now have an answer phone message that is on all day that states how busy we are and how many phone support calls we get and that we have now been forced to charge for this service. This gives the person on the other end of the phone the opportunity to leave a message knowing full well that they will be receiving an invoice. This also is a good way to deter the time wasters. Check messages on the hour and this is also stated in the message. Let’s face it “The most important clients are businesses” and they call my mobile anyway. If it’s that important for “Jo Bloggs” then they’ll also call it. Really interested in the Script for the beginning of the “Remote Session”
Shane Fowler. you asked for some good open source remote desktop programs. take a look into cross loop and Team viewer. If you business is more lucrative try instant house call or the very expensive but awesome log me in’s rescue me.
A lot of good info here but not what I was looking for. I am looking for a statement to put into our maintenance & support agreement that notifies the customer that “regardless of time of phone support at a minimum they will be charged 15 minutes toward their agreement and more if the call time support allocates”, here is what I mean. Many of my M&S agreement clients, call for phone support and now that our business is growing, 5 minutes here, 10 minutes there, it translates into abuse because being ‘nice’ translates into more phone calls. I don’t mind the support calls, I just see it as money left on the table and there is no value to it if it is not billed. So here is what I am looking for, a ‘legalese’ statement to insert into the M7S agreement that includes phone support in 15-minute minimums and increments.
Lets translate this into $. On average I receive 2-5 calls a day. Previously these have been ‘free’. Kudos so to speak for our M&S clients and starting a new client. However, my flat rate of billing is $139 (outside of a M&S agreement) so, if I receive 5 phone calls (implementing 15 minute billing), then that translates into $34.75 x 5 = $173.75 that was left on the table and a business loss.If it was from the same client, they just got a free hour!!!
Please do not hear me ‘nickle and diming’ our clients, I am promoting value on the services they receive and retaining the integrity of our company. I want to be professional about this. I do not want to implement separate billing for phone support as this becomes a logistical nightmare for finance and the tech.
sorry about the long post, but again, I am looking for a good statement to include into our M&S agreement and to educate our clients with.
Regarding Remote Desktop solution, I highly recommend TeamViewer. I am currently working with CrossLoop to work on some bugs, but at this time it is not reliable. Logmein’s subscription fee is VERY expensive and the extra kudos outside TeamViewer are not worth it. Getting the Technibble Computer Repair Business Kit will assist with documentation. TeamViewer is a LIFETIME license when purchased and a one time fee until an significant upgrade. Here is what I have learned about remote software and open source. You get what you pay for…IMHO
Just an idea:
Can’t you guys say you can’t give over the phone support because it is a liability? Liability gets to people quickly. “I can’t help you because it can cause some damage if you misunderstand me and that can get me into trouble, lawsuit etc…”
PS I am not a tech: I am reading this website with the idea of getting into repair on a part time basis. Lot of good info.
Lot of good info.