Looking Back at the 6 Month Mark

This week my company, ACE Computer Services, hit the ripe old age of six months. A lot has happened in that time and it certainly feels like I have been open for business much longer. In fact the anniversary mark did not even occur to me until this morning. It did get me thinking of the things that have gone right, things that have gone wrong and got me reflecting on what I have seen so far.

In reality I have been in business much longer, having been working in computers/technology for more than 15 years now. In that time frame I fixed a bunch of machines for family, friends, coworkers home machines and friends of friends. It wasn’t until the end of 2006 when I thought seriously about making an official business. I have blogged about the startup before, so I will not rehash the whole story.

Looking back at the six month mark I am clear as ever why I started this venture. In nearly every other customer call I receive my rates compared to other service providers comes up. I know I am at the low end of the scale in terms of hourly rates for computer/tech services. This is a chief reason why started this business - to provide effective tech support at affordable rates. Some people are surprised at the rates and remark at the high rate quotes they received elsewhere. Others question the rate thinking I am less qualified compared to high-rate companies. I would like to think I am just as qualified and certainly just as customer service oriented and professional but that is difficult to prove on the website or over the phone. Hopefully with time and favorable word-of-mouth that question would be easier to answer or not come up at all.

I took a look back at all that has happened in six months. As I have written before I am just starting to see results in respect to natural page rankings through search engines. It has taken a lot of time and effort but very worth it. I have also seen ups & downs with web advertising. Just this week I did finally begin to see some progress with Yellowpages.com in respect to both customer service and my ad. I am hoping that continues.

I have also endured some painful phone issues. Reliability is becoming an issue with the phone provider I use. I originally liked the rates, which included free incoming calls but I am worried I am losing calls due to poor signal reception in my area. Add to that the awful customer service I have received and it begs the question - why am I still using this? It is painfully obvious that perspective customers do not leave messages and want to speak to someone. I respect that and look for that myself as a customer. Every missed call is missed business. I may make a phone carry switch soon and eat the early termination cost with my current provider.

Looking back at the customers I have worked with and the problems I have solved is very rewarding. I have had the good fortune of working with a diverse group of people from all around this area (Central NJ) and can genuinely say that each customer has been a pleasure to work with. There has been some interesting diversity in the types of problems I handled as well but some trends emerge. Below is a list of some of the common problems I am seeing:

- Lots of Virus, Ad & Spyware removal. I have written about this before in ACE Computer Blog and will continue to try and provide online resources to help. There are also some helpful links online at the main ACE Computer site.

- A bunch of busted fans and dead power units. I wrote a blog offering some tips to avoid these common problems.

- A few broken monitors and damaged keyboards on laptops. This one is situational where I have repaired some but recommended not to repair others due to price & age of the laptop. The price for replacement monitors makes it cost prohibitive for older units.

- Some data recovery although there have been several calls where a severely damaged hard drive was unlikely to yield any data unless looked at by professional services like OnTrack, and that can be a very expensive solution.

I am hoping the next six months brings more.

Thanks for reading!