Archive for February, 2011
Saturday, February 19th, 2011
Hello to all my Portland friends and their computer repair problems!
At Happy Hamster we remove a *lot* of viruses. In fact, last year over 60% of our business came from doing virus removals. We have offered virus removals at the same price, and with the same terms since almost the beginning of the shop – $150 flat rate and a 30 day warranty against any reinfection of the virus.
Our warranty terms are the most generous in the city. At 30 days we offer a warranty 3 weeks longer than any of our competition. In my research, the average in Portland computer repair stores is 5 days. Some store offer a warranty as long as 7 days, and others only 72 hours. Nobody else comes even close to us at 30 days.
This warranty also creates a problem, though. Viruses come and go in waves, and while not every computer is hit by every virus, we see a rush of virus removal jobs every 1 – 3 months (today is a good example, a new virus came out last night and today we have already taken in 9 computers for virus removal on a day we expected to see 2.) This cycle of new virus releases means we often end out with people just past their warranty, at the 35 or 40 day mark, who get hit by the latest thing, but feel burned for needing to pay another $150 to get the new virus removed.
So, starting today, we are offering a great new option - virus insurance. With your virus removal, for $14.99/month, you can now purchase virus insurance. There is no contract, and you can cancel whenever, but as long as you subscribe we will remove any viruses you get for free! We hope this will help us reduce warranty issues, and also reduce costs across the board for our customers. So next time you come in with a virus, ask up as about our virus insurance plan and if it’s right for you!
-Zac
Monday, February 14th, 2011
Hey Folks,
I spend a lot of time thinking about what makes us and our offerings different and unique. There are dozens of other managed services providers in Portland, large shops with 10′s of employees and small one man operations offering full on business IT managed support. I am always interested to know why, of all those options, so many companies choose our services, and I’ve recently noticed one that a few customers have also commented on – we only sign the contracts that make sense for both parties.
For most businesses, sales drives the company, and the operational staff feel left in the wake to pick up all the pieces. I’m reminded of a story I once heard about an insurance salesman who sold life insurance to low income people for a dollar a week. He promised every person who bought his dollar-a-week insurance that if they were still alive at the end of the year, he would give them a piano. Of course, hundreds of people signed up, he made his commissions and quit a few weeks later. When the year ended, the poor guy who took over his position kept getting asked for pianos, and the new sales guy had no idea what they were talking about.
We do things differently here. We do an in depth business analysis with every client that covers their entire process, from customer acquisition to product delivery, to see how we can help. We refuse to simply sign a contract that enshrines bad systems. Imagine a customer using 3 different database systems to run their business. The easy way out, to the quick dollar, is to simply offer them a contract that supports all 3 systems and let that inefficiency be their problem. Instead we dig in, when we see inefficiency. We ask why? Why are you using all of those systems? What kind of system would you prefer to have? What would your ideal system do, and how would it behave? Often times when we dig down deep into a company, we can find not only cost and time savings for them, but also opportunities for us to support them without impacting their bottom line. Imagine, if you will, that those 3 databases cost the customer $500/year in licenses. If we can get them into a single database for $250/year, and then spend that other $250 providing them our excellent support, everybody ends off in a better place.
Further, and I think this may be our biggest difference, we make sure that what we offer matches what the customer wants. When you bring us into your business, we become a part of your business. You will get to know our staff by name, and we will know yours. Over the course of our meetings to figure out how to best support you, we also make sure that our corporate cultures and people will fit together. We want to sign customers for life, not to simply sign as many customers as we can find. This means making sure that our goals and yours align properly and the way we like to to do business is also the way you like to do business.
Long and short, we are penguins, we bond for life with our customers, and our processes and style are built to that ideal.
Thanks everybody,
-Zac
myitassurance.com
Monday, February 7th, 2011
Hey Everybody in Portland Computer Repair Land,
Saw this neat post from Microsoft that I want to share with everybody. I think it has some really great tips, especially #1 which reminds you that your company owns your work computer. This means they can access anything you put on it, e-mails you use, etc, so be careful to keep personal stuff and work stuff separate!
The rest of the tips are useful also, so check them out.
Thanks!
-Zac
President
Happy Hamster Portland Computers & Repair
