If you are a geek, you likely get bombarded with technical support queries and other people's problems from within your family or friends. I've been there, and now I'm ready to share some of the top ways you can make technical support a less... stressful experience.
1) If you are running Windows 7, you can use the 'Problem Steps Recorder'. You might want to use this to help someone with a slightly complicated problem in which you cannot, for some reason, view their screen. Basically, they click on the start menu, Type PSR, hit return on the keyboard, Click on Start Record and reproduce the steps that they did before. It automatically takes screenshots and saves them in a ZIP file which can be viewed by the person on the other end, as long as they have a web browser.
You can either email the files, or if you do not have an internet connection, use a USB drive/CD etc. to transfer the media.
2) Remote Desktop Connection tools are one of the life-savers in the technology industry. Not only do they reduce the hassle of trying to explain to some one that a 'Right-Click is not the correct click to a left click which is not the other click...'. It foes on forever. Basically, you connect to the recipients computer by way of a software program either built in to the machine that you are using or third-party. Some good solutions used by enterprises and personal people alike are those by Citrix. Citrix provide services like GoToAssist, a great software tool that automatically downloads to the other persons computer and after they verify it, you have complete control over their machine. You can run remote diagnostics to find out what programs are running, version number and much more from using this tool.
We wrote an article a few months ago about one of the free tools we thought was good; TeamViewer - How TeamViewer can help you when Assisting Family and Friends. Teamviewer is not as advanced as GoToAssist, but it certainly is a powerful too for what it does. It has meeting capabilities as well as remote control. Read the article to find out more.
3) Email. A method of communication I rely on every day of my life to communicate with friends, family and other bloggers. There are great email solutions out their for both personal and business, so you will have no trouble with this.
You can either buy a custom domain and hosting for your email address or simply use a free one by Google (my former email address, which I love), Yahoo!, Microsoft Hotmail, Mail.com or multiple other options which you can try.
If you have any other tips to share with us, please email us at team@thegeekpanel.com and we will get back to you.
4) Social Media is a great way to reach out to stores and companies, as well as close friends and family. But when it comes to tech support, social media can be a great resource. Simply posting your questions on a forum (like LockerGnome.net, one of my favourites) can get your problems answered by people who have either more experience than you in IT or have encountered this problem before. Best of all, it is mostly free and it causes the family Geek (i.e You!) from getting 'bombarded with questions and support requests' when you most likely have other things to do with your time.
Comments are welcome, as always.
