That Time of Year – Again
This time of the year things start to get a little more hectic. Not only is the mercury climbing but you can notice an increase in car traffic and for us, more people coming into the shop. We always see an increase in not only new sales but also ‘fix-ups’ at this time of the year and this occurs for many reasons.
Quite a few repair jobs turn up because parents want to get their child’s computer working again as a Christmas offering. Many others are going away over Christmas and want to take their ‘secondary PC’ which is a portable device such as a laptop or tablet with them which may not have worked for a while. We also get customers that are normally too busy coming in because they have taken some extra days off to get ‘stuff’ sorted before Christmas.
It is interesting at times how the approaching end of the year also creates a particular time milestone for many that galvanises them into action. Around this time of the year, we often hear “I need this fixed before Christmas” when our next question to probe how long something has not been working, gets answered with “oh – for about six months now”!
Last Christmas offered little time off for Kerr Solutions’ staff as it coincided with us shifting 5 blocks further North on Musgrave Street to our current ‘new’ location. The frantic work of completing a shop fitout and moving 17 years’ of accumulated tools, displays and current stock still feels like it were only a few months ago and nowhere near a year.
Just in time for the Christmas rush this year we have two new team members in Tim and Kirra. Tim brings to the Kerr team a long background in IT sales and support while Kirra’s focus and forte is customer relations.
Tim has already been with us for 3 months and is adapting well to our unique way of turning problematic computers into useful IT tools. He is tackling the IT challenges that we throw at him very well. Alternatively Kirra has only been with us for a week but is making her presence felt immediately with her bubbly personality and zest for customer support. I wish them both well and hope they can cope with their tough boss!
One of the main aspects of our industry is the fact that it is largely a ‘catastrophe industry’. Such a large percentage of the work we do is associated with a catastrophe from the customers’ viewpoint. In fact, I estimate that barely 10% of our work is associated with the customer saying “don’t worry too much – it’s not urgent”.
To meet with customer expectations and skinny time frames all of our procedures and work flow processes have to be geared toward fast turnarounds. This is honed to the point that if a customer tells me they are not going to be back in town for a couple of weeks – I still tell the techs that the job is due out in 2 days.
This Christmas we are closing the shop from Wednesday afternoon on the 23rd of December through to Monday the 4th of January however we will have techs on call for emergencies during that time. If you need something fixed before Christmas I urge you to give us a call as soon as possible because even with extra techs I know that we will get pushed for time as we near our Christmas closure date.
If you are still looking for ideas for your Christmas shopping list stay tuned for next weeks’ article about Solid State Drives and their application in both new and upgraded computers.
Until then future Byte Me topics can be emailed to [email protected] and Bruce is contactable at Kerr Solutions, 205 Musgrave Street or on 49 222 400.
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