One of the odd or at least frustrating aspects of tech support, for clients, is that we come to set everything up, seemingly disappear, and yet they keep paying. Then when something goes wrong they wonder what they’ve been paying for.
For the most part, clients don’t really understand what we do, so it becomes a challenge to remind them that when they don’t call us and we don’t call them, it’s because we’re doing a good job keeping everything running. They can easily forget why they’re paying us and think that since everything is fine, they don’t need us.
And yet you don’t really want to call them, because you’ll get a, “While I’ve got you on the phone…” aka “I have a bunch of questions not important enough to have called you about, but I’ll rattle them off now since you called me.” You’ll hang up the phone and immediately wonder, “What did I just do?”
You also don’t want to email them basically to say, “Everything is fine,” because then you’re on the record saying something is fine and you know as soon as you do that, something will break and you’ll look incompetent.
So as much as you want to let them know you’re accessible and working hard for them, you kind of want to keep your distance. You need to, “Keep your distance without trying to keep your distance. . .” in the words of Han Solo.
The best thing to do is to have an automated report sent to them every month with a few basic status updates so they know that “Systems Are Nominal.” The report can include, for example, that:
- systems are up-to-date
- antivirus programs and firewalls are enabled and up-to-date
- CPU/RAM usage is within normal parameters
- HD storage is not at/nearing capacity
That’s enough to remind them that things are running because you’re keeping them running and that you have your eye on their systems. Realize they probably won’t even read this report, but seeing it in their inbox will be enough to diffuse their wondering about whether your services are expendable.
Your IT Startup Guide 