The second type are what I will call the “stumblers”.

These are the computer repair technicians who

have some IT experience, but not as much as they should if they’re going to market themselves as a
professional computer service. There is a big market out there for Stumblers because the truth is
that about half of what we do is relatively easy and often the same: run a virus scan, remove what
you find, reboot, test, move on. Stumblers are like advanced computer users really, they know some
parts of the computer inside and out but usually have some gaps in their knowledge – like maybe
they’re great with software, not so good with hardware, or maybe they understand networks just fine
but aren’t very comfortable with servers.

I call them Stumblers because they can generally stumble through most computer repair situations
and get a satisfactory result – eventually. It may take them 8 hours of work to accomplish what
could be done in 2, or they may wind up with a really complicated work-around because they didn’t
really understand something the server is doing. Stumblers are also likely to suffer from what we
call “Nice Guy Syndrome” – that’s when they spend 2 days working on a solution then only charge
you for 2 hours, because they know they should have known how to fix it faster.

Computer Repair Tech 3: The Professionals

The third category is a rare breed we call the Professionals. As you might expect, this is the
category of computer repair services which Computer Troubleshooters fits into, as well as a
relatively small group of other providers. How can you tell if you have a Professional Computer
Repair partner? Here are some easy clues:

 Professionals show up when they promise

 Professionals fix the problem right the first time, most of the time
 Professionals recognize that no one knows everything about technology, so they work with a
team of IT specialists so that every possible situation is handled as optimally as possible.
 Professionals don’t just fix problems, they suggest new ways to use technology to improve your
business. In other words, a Professional moves beyond computer repair and into being a true IT
Department for your business.
 Professionals take proactive steps to keep other problems from occurring. Today this often
means using a low-cost monitoring service, similar to what you’d have monitoring your home
security system, to watch for signs of impending computer repair issues. Overheating, hard drive
errors, virus infections, security updates missing… these are things that any Professional
computer repair partner should be able to monitor for on a low-cost managed services plan (like
our BEST Lite plans), to keep big problems from happening in the first place.