One of the things I am really passionate about is helping as much as I can. It may cost me my chance of being a millionaire (but hey ho). I like helping.
IT Support isn’t always just about the hardware or fixing actual software problems. Sometimes it’s about guiding people through every day IT problems and helping them understand something they can’t.
When I was IT Support for a group of dental practices a few years ago, I would always go the extra mile to help them, doing things that no other IT company would deem within the support contract.
The example for this I use is this: The group of practices had a simple Excel spreadsheet that they used to use for keeping track of petty cash payments, the Practice Manager would fill it out every month and there were formulas behind the scenes that would work out all kinds of numbers (money left, total expenditure, breakdown of categories etc). So I used to get many calls about this whenever it was month end as they invariable had overwritten the formulas and “broken” the spreadsheet.
I would happily help the Practice Managers every time this happened, but a much better long term solution – both for them and me – was to spend a little bit of time rebuilding the spreadsheet and locking the formulas from editing. I also did other things like a key (eg only green cells were to be edited) and put a nice front page on it with instructions.
Took about an hour in total, but saved the Practice Managers (and me) loads of time and heartache every month.
So, not a story of making money from the client, but giving the client extra value from their support contract
