Entitled clients!

[exodus]

since I left enterprise class support and networking and basically semi retired into a nice small local adhoc breakfix service for anyone needing computer help, i occasionally come across customers who have a very one sided view of where the support incident begins and ends.

I'll give an example. Customer brings laptop in, says it will not start or will not load windows. I discover the HDD has failed/failing.

I recover the data from the drive if possible. Sometimes by removing the drive
then i replace the drive with new one
i migrate the data to the new drive
install office again

Im happy to setup the email again, but for those with 5 or 6 emails, pst files all over the place, no imap but pop accounts in the past, I want to setup a new support ticket. I charge for time after all.

Some people expect their broken PC to be "restored to how it was before", emails, printers and so on.

One must be careful otherwise you will find yourself working for nothing.

Its not always feasible to list out things to be done because you find out about these things as you go, and the customer is not there anyway. An option might be to text what will be included later.

What are your thoughts?

 

[dgoglio]

Sounds like you need to define a clear scope of work and set proper expectations with your clients. Even then some may complain, you just have to roll with it, try to make them happy and move on.

 

[thecomputerguy]

Yeah you aren't going to win them all. Some of them you're still going to lose even though you try to clearly spell out the scope of work.
Instead of trying to pinpoint the exact time and cost something will take you ... come up with a number that fits all clients, that would or should accommodate all clients for that type of job.

What I mean by this is for me in my market this Job would look something like this:

$150 Samsung 500GB SSD
$160 Flat Rate - Install SSD & Windows 10 reload updates etc
$125 Transfer data and put data back in place

Expensive? Yes.

This is one-size fits all number. With some clients that approve this job I'll make a killing and spend about an hour doing all of that. With some clients it will take longer because they will need Office reinstalled and email reinstalled which means passwords, and passwords are almost always the hardest part about setting email up.

After charging $435 to this client would I be OK putting in a little extra work if they needed some tweaking? Sure I already calculated it into the bill, they basically paid for it already and whether they use it or not is up to them.