IT phone calls/service

How do you handle people calling for "free" IT consulting/service over the phone? What I mean is, I run a small mobile computer repair business. Sometimes people will call me on my cell phone and want to know how to remove a virus or browser hijacker or whatever. Normally I would be happy to help a customer that has previously purchased a service from me, but I am not sure what the appropriate response is to new customers that do this. Do I give them "free" advice, or do I tell them "I would be happy to setup a time to meet you and consult with you your issue and take a look at the pc/machine in question..." bla bla bla. What is the correct way to handle this?

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Comments

Danielm7

It's really up to you of course, but what I did when I was consulting is have a mental line, or a limit on what you want to give away for free. So if someone calls you and you know you can talk to them for 2 minutes, help them out and build some good will and maybe a future customer then go for it. If it is something really detailed just explain that it could be a number of different, complicated things and you'd love to setup a time to come check out the problem in person.

devils_haircut

I used to work for a small, privately owned computer repair shop, and the owner had been in the business for ~20 years and was an expert at handling customers. I don't know if you have a physical location or if you go to the customer's site, but when we encountered a customer looking for a free repair or over-the-phone walkthroughs for basic tasks, we would just try to be vague and remind them that we were unable to resolve the issue if we couldn't see exactly what was going on. A lot of times I would simply say that there could be any number of causes for the problem they describe, and that their best option would be to bring their system into the shop so we could run a full diagnostic on the computer. If they were persistent, I would simply remind them we can do remote service (via LogMeIn), but we had to take payment up front, and that was usually enough to put the issue to bed.

It's possible to be firm with customers without being rude, and more often than not, they are understanding that you are a business, not a library.

Akaricloud

Referral business and repeat customers can make you a ton of money. Personally I'd set a line at something like if you can solve it in under 3 minutes over the phone go for it and make money off their next problem. Anything more and ask them to schedule an appointment or bring their equipment in.

If someone calls 3 different repair shops and one can fix their problem over the phone in a few minutes then you bet they'll be calling them first when more major issues come up.

Being overly firm or misleading drives customers away and often hurts the bottom line in the end.