How to Deal with Clients that Watch Everything You Do

[qubit]

I am sure we have all dealt with this at one time or another. You’re on-site at a customer location and the customer will not leave you alone. He/she stands there looking over your shoulder to see what you are doing and in some cases likes to chat with you while you are doing your work. You don’t want to be rude, but it can be very distracting to the technician. I have had this happen to me with one of my SOHO clients. Here is how I dealt with the client watching everything I do and some suggestions for future reference.

The customer is a home office business client of mine who had business sensitive data on her computer and required all work to be done on-site. No problem with that. She gave me the list of tasks to complete and showed me some things on the pc that she needed to migrate to another pc. Again, no problem, business as usual. However, I did notice that the pc was running extremely slow. Even though the end task was to reformat this pc, I still needed to grab a good amount of data to migrate to a backup drive.

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A few curious questions and a cup of tea is fine and makes for a nice rapport. However, the kind of insecure, suspicious, distracting and annoying person described in this article, I wouldn't want to have as my customer. In my book, the customer has hired the pro, because by definition, they have the skills and resources that you don't, so the customer should just butt out of it and let him get on with it.

The comments at the end of the article are interesting, as they suggest lots of different ways of handling such customers, including upselling services.

Technibble

 

[MRCL]

I wouldn't want to leave a tech alone with my PC. I mean yeah he knows what he's doing (except when he don't*), any I've got nothing to hide (everybody has porn on his computer). But I want to see what he does so I can learn, or answer his questions that may arise on the spot.

On the pro side I can't say much, never worked in direct customer contact except in a hotel, and there was a counter seperating customers from me.

* I don't know a whole lot about networks, and one time I had a "professional network technician" over to have a look why in gods name I can't connect to a wlan. This was also back in the day when I thought P4s are the pinnacle of CPU technology. That said the "professional" knew even less about networking than I did. Would I have not been standing by his side the entire time, telling him that I already tried all the things he was about to do, he would've been there a whole lot longer making this fruitless undertaking even more expensive.

Turns out the apartment I lived in back then was an atomic bunker turned into an apartement. Yeah try connecting to a wlan network through three feet of steel reinforced concrete.

 

[Frick]

(everybody has porn on his computer)

Not me actually.

 

[assaulter_99]

In my experience, when working on tight schedules, I've come to the conclusion that I better be alone. Sometimes, silly questions distract you from the work at hand and makes you waste time trying to explain what does what and what is fact from fiction.

 

[qubit]

I wouldn't want to leave a tech alone with my PC. I mean yeah he knows what he's doing (except when he don't*), any I've got nothing to hide (everybody has porn on his computer). But I want to see what he does so I can learn, or answer his questions that may arise on the spot.

On the pro side I can't say much, never worked in direct customer contact except in a hotel, and there was a counter seperating customers from me.

* I don't know a whole lot about networks, and one time I had a "professional network technician" over to have a look why in gods name I can't connect to a wlan. This was also back in the day when I thought P4s are the pinnacle of CPU technology. That said the "professional" knew even less about networking than I did. Would I have not been standing by his side the entire time, telling him that I already tried all the things he was about to do, he would've been there a whole lot longer making this fruitless undertaking even more expensive.

Turns out the apartment I lived in back then was an atomic bunker turned into an apartement. Yeah try connecting to a wlan network through three feet of steel reinforced concrete.

Yeah, you would hang around and ask a few questions, which is just being a normal person and that's fine. You'd fall into the category of the inquisitive client who wants to learn, that I decribed in my OP. That's nothing like the awkward client he describes.

Unfortunately, it really is awkward when that awkward client are your family members. Arguments and flames abound, but you can't exactly dump them. I've often been told what to do and not to do and had stuff I wanted to do "disapproved" when they haven't a fucking clue about what they're talking about. Only when I finally forcefully told them to leave me alone or I wouldn't fix their computer did I get any peace. :shadedshu I do the minimum I have to nowadays after that experience. Their loss.

That "pro" network technician sounds like the kind of monkey most big companies such as Best Buy or PC World employ. If he had been self employed, he'd definitely have been a pro, or he'd be out of business in five minutes.

 

[erixx]

I have no Swiss guards to put on duty beside them, so who else but me is gonna check them? And offer'em a beer if they are cool

 

[casual swift]

Does everybody on this forum work as a Tech? Lol.

 

[happita]

Does everybody on this forum work as a Tech? Lol.

Nope, but that is the beauty of the gathering of places like these. Techs frequent tech forums, and this being my FAVORITE ONE...techPowerUp! is chock full of knowledgeable people whether thay have worked, are working, or are going to work as a tech for some company.

 

[cadaveca]

LuLz. Not me. I don't do house calls, and for example, I had two PCs dropped off recently by people who expected me to fix thier problems without payment. Both machines went back to thier owners without any work done. I did confirm the problems on both machines, and that was all. One wasn't even worth fixing, anyway.

I dunno why PC enthusiast, on a whole, start fixing other people's problems. I'm sorry; I will never do work I don't enjoy, but I do understand how some others have no choice. I suppose, in a way, it's a good way to pay for those upgrades ya wanted, but as a real job? going into people's homes? NO THANKS. Drop your PC off with $130, I'll fix it, and you might have to pay more to pick it up, too.

 

[TIGR]

This is why I charge twice as much for on-site service.

 

[Jetster]

Its all part of the game. If they want to watch just take your time. Show them somthing completely useless, they will think your a God

 

[phanbuey]

If you are a tech, then you should be charging per hour. If the client is there asking you awkward questions then, by god, answer them... you're getting paid!

It actually kind of sounds like the lady in that article was hitting on the guy.
1. Guy tech alone at woman's place of business... check
2. Woman not leaving guy alone... check.
3. Woman asking questions about a topic that guy is working on, of which she clearly has no interest... check

 

[FreedomEclipse]

well...the way i tend to do things, is keep the conversation going. just give them a small running commentary about what youre doing, then you can go into basics about why the problem happends and how to try prevent against it. after that, they are usually talk less. but ask a few more questions.

they might not exactly understand what youre telling them, If they did, they wouldnt need to hire you to fix their shit.

I find that that usually calms them down about. It shows a little that you know what youre doing and have a higher understanding of the inner workings of a PC.

they they still look over your shoulder. but after getting all the questions of their chest they usually let you get on with the job.

If they carry on being in my face then I'll just charge them a little extra.

I dont mind a little banter and answering some questions but im not there for tea and crumpets.