Yes... During the hours of operation (To be determined) the clients can get live support a chat window. My staff are very well versed on how to answer basic questions while recognizing when a question needs to be esculated to a paid service.
I want this service to offer exactly the type of features you mentioned here but there is one unknown right now and that is the amount of time basic questions would take up. Like you said you don't want customers getting a full training session or answers to more complex questions. The goal would be to build a relationship with the client and then sell some type of service to them.
This paid service would then cover the issue or question. In the case of a question being converted to a paid service your account would then be charged a "credit" or "use." This is a win win for both parties. We sell a service for you and the better we do at selling services the more money you make. The more services we sell the more credits you buy and the more money we make.
When a session is created we can see which of our clients the session belongs to, that is the first key.. Since we know it is your client and the goal is to sell services we always have the goal of converting an interation into a sale. Initially our goal will be to sell remote services but with a little planning, work, and good communication with you about your schedule would could easily offer real time dispatching.
If your are setup with a payment gateway we could even navigate to that page on your site and enter any collected payment information to process the order and then schedule the appointment. This would be part of a dispatcing service (Optional add on) that we are also planning but would not be part of the initial service.
So the first phase will include end user services as well as repair of computers on your bench. Dispatching services will follow.
Absolutely! I think that branding is one of the most important aspects of a company. So if you have a specific requirement such as referinng to your employees as Advisors and Nerds we will do that. We can also refer to your services and scopes of work if you have them publised on your site somewhere for easy access. I would recommend creating a Branding Guide for us to follow. Example: "Refer to all employees of XYZ company as Nerds."
Credits are like a difficulty rating that takes into account the scope of work to be performed. A virus removal takes much longer to do than helping someone figure out how to send an e-mail attachment. So... different tasks will be grouped into a point category. When a service is performed a point is subtracted from your account. This is how we will track usage of the service.
So lets say we change it to a 1 credit or point for the most basic service and 10 for the most difficult. We could have something like this:
Service Cost
--------------------------------
Virus Removal 10 points
Computer Optimization 5 points
Update a device driver 3 points
Answer Basic Use Question 1 point
This is an example because the point system will take some tweaks. Idealy points will only be charged for services that result in us selling a service for you or work that you have us perform. Your basic membership will cover the general use stuff.
The main reason for this is to give flexabilty in usage. If all you want done is a quick optimization on a computer it is not really fair to charge you the same amount as a virus removal. I did not get too detailed on the tiers but it look like each tier will actually be broken down into a an amount per point. The more volume the lower the cost per credit.
This project is evolving quickly and there are things that need to be nailed down still but It looks like we are going to make it a go.
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