How can you get a $150,000/yr technical expert to work for you for peanuts?
The average full-time IT technician earns $50,000 annually. Your budget for technical support is half of that, maybe even one quarter of that. How can you possibly make that budget work for you *and* get the high level of support that you need?
Some of you have tried placing ads for $10/hr desktop technicians and $20/hr network administrators. The great thing about those folks is they fit into your budget (2 workers for $60,000/yr). But what happens when they make mistakes, or run into problems that their experience and knowledge and ability can't solve? And when you need advanced technical support for a new process or IT project, do they have the expertise to implement it for your company?
Here is the list of "how to save money on tech support"
Have the person who knows the most about computers in your company take care of all the maintenance duties. This is a very common solution for small businesses, and it works. The staff go plodding along (maybe spending more time with personal computer duties than with business computing) and make the best of the knowledge that they have to perform their work tasks, because there is no one around to help them be even more productive or to limit their personal computer time by electronically monitoring their computer usage. There could be hidden problems and you don't know what they are, or what their effects can be. Data loss can be occurring. Backups may be minimal or non-existent. When a major problem erupts, your employee is taken away from their business duties to solve an issue with which they have limited knowledge to solve. This costs the business money in productivity, and you're at risk in getting the problem solved properly or at all. At least you aren't shelling out money for a knowledgeable, trained IT service provider.
Have your brother-in-law, or neighbor, or best friend maintain your computers. They usually have full-time jobs, so you can get their attention before 8 AM or after 5 PM. They might be really good at doing computer stuff, and as "moonlighters", they might cost you $20 per hour or just do the work for beer and tacos. Unfortunately, since it usually is not their primary income, there is the occasion when their priority is anything except your computer problems, and you have to wait. And wait. And wait some more. Until they "get around" to even checking on what your problem is. Hey, it's ok. Your data and systems aren't that important, you'll get by.
Depend on the manufacturer of the computers that you own, by getting that 3 year comprehensive warranty. Call their toll-free number for assistance. Put yourself into their hold queue, 15, 30, 45 minutes later. Then, get their Tier 1 support person, who speaks barely intelligible English in a heavry foreign accent. They might suggest that you just reformat the drive and reinstall the operating system. Oops, we forgot to back up the data before we did that. And we didn't take an application inventory. Or check the network configuration of the PC. There goes 3 years worth of data, right into a reformatted drive. Important e-mails and documents, lost forever. (Don't fret - if you call us early enough, we have a process to recover that data). That "free" service isn't sounding so good anymore, is it?
You, the owner of the company, supports all the users and equipment. Who better to do such a task than the person who knows what needs to be done? But do you really want to be trying to figure out why a users PC won't connect to the Internet when you have a million-dollar proposal to finish sending out to your best customer, or negotiating pricing with 3 different vendors to get a profitable project off the ground? Sitting on hold with Dell or AT&T for 20 minutes waiting for an operator to help you isn't any fun when you have important phone calls to make and return. But you saved money, you didn't need that $125 per hour technician there to solve the problem - you got it handled 90 minutes later. After all, you can multi-task as well as the best of them.
Don't spend any money on tech support at all. Buy computers, and when they fail, just buy a new one. They're cheap enough to repurchase, right? Just join the computer to the existing network. And reinstall the applications - an all day endeavor, if it gets done right. And restore the data - My Documents, Favorites, Desktop, Outlook mail file, ACT database, QuickBooks database, and anything else that was on that old PC. Oops, can't find the CD for that one application - where did it go? It was a download...where did it get saved, and where is the license key? Remember to map the applications to the correct data location. Don't forget to install the anti-virus software before you restore the data, and remember to create the data shares, and reinstall the printers. 2 days later, the new PC is ready for use. That was a lot cheaper than hiring a tech, even if you lost 2 days of productivity for the user of that PC. (God forbid the server gets compromised or fails - that's a lot of configuration information that you'll need to recover to rebuild it, outside of just the data and applications - we'll just hope that it works when you put it online, because if it doesn't, troubleshooting can take days, even weeks, for the inexperienced)