Almost a twenty percent of people in employment in the UK (a small island with a lot of places that are next to each other and therefore quite easy to get to unlike the US or Australia) are teleworkers (CIPD Autumn 2006). These are people who work from home at some point, using a telephone and a computer to conduct their business. Some of the reason for this is geographical (it makes sense from a travel point of view), some of it is financial, and some of it is to do with flexible working and family friendly arrangements. However, the one area where your front bedroom is definitely at a disadvantage to your office is the distinct lack of technical support available. Any takers????

If you do decide to include support for teleworkers in your offering of technical support for the coming year, look at our rough guides as a firm starting point - and before you know it, you’ll be galloping toward a ‘damsel/duke’ in distress and making their boss exceedingly happy as another wasted day has been averted by making sure that their best brain power is able to access the info it needs!

1. If you want to set up this type of first line teleworker support, you need to actually be able to get to the place the workers are working. That means you can only support teleworkers near to you, and that means as well you must be prepared to work outside of normal office hours, and respond to calls outside of normal office hours, as that’s when teleworkers tend to work. Many a freelance writer or manager is up at 5am writing reports to enable them to head off to a meeting somewhere at 7. So only service your local area, and decide in advance if you’re prepared to do what it takes, or you’ll have some very unhappy customers.
2. Advertise directly in your local area, and aim the advert at your would be clients, the teleworkers. Give them the means to escalate this request to their employers, and offer to meet with their managers to discuss further.
3. Find out, if you can, where people you live near actually work. Approach their companies directly and explain what you do.
4. State the benefits - how many days are lost due to not being able to access onsite tech support? How much easier would it be if an expert was liaising with the main tech support desk instead of the user? What can you offer by way of linking in with main support systems?
5. Contact all large employers within a 250 mile radius, and explain that if they have IT teleworkers, you can provide this service.
6. Liaise with tech support companies, especially outsource ones, and sell your advantages - offer to subcontract to them if you wish to, on a trial basis. This is a good one to get your foot in the door, as you’ll know about their procedures and about the opportunities and gaps.

Areas teleworkers are often struggling is connection to their ISP, especially at first setup, configuration of email management software to tap into their internal mail system, VPN connections (and clouds and stuff), remote desktop, password problems (old but still done, I’m afraid), permissions incorrectly set, software and access incorrectly installed first time, backup, file and data corruption, converting file types, reading received file types, virus infection, wireless networking problems and interruptions, and understanding what they are being asked to do by a standard first line support team. Not forgetting correctly installing any components, the very annoying (as I remember back to the bad old days (last year) of sitting on a train apoplectic that my laptop and phone would not work and I could not answer my emails) using mobile devices and phone cards correctly, setting up the work area correctly, knowing where to get consumables from or risk assessing desk and office space relating to work.

So, with your red bull in hand, your pager at the ready and a big smile plastered on your horse (read the title amigo) you could make a couple of quid/dollars. Remember to wipe your feet on the way in!

For more information on teleworkers and on homeworking, check out

http://www.tca.org.uk/magazine.html
http://www.homeworking.com/library/librar.htm