When the Desktop Support customer is a small company, a private user, or even a friend or relative, professional support folk and part time techos often provide an adhoc, "time and materials" solution for PC problems and requests. This is especially true for one-off customers and end users with low budgets (or seeking a freebie). Apart from recording basic customer contact and PC information, no other quality processes are applied.
In many cases there is little incentive or apparent value in maintaining a more structured, systematic approach for support management. However, there is a strong argument, and many benefits for small PC support businesses and stand-alone technicians to think of the bigger picture - think ITIL.
In the past, setting up and maintaining a comprehensive PC Support management system would be hard to justify as cost effective where regular customers were not the norm. The local PC technician spent more time on fixing hardware problems and OS issues were generally less complex (Anyone remember the 386 and Windows 95?)
These days, a number of significant shifts in technology have influenced our judgement for adopting a smarter approach to supporting PCs -
The Web, Google, Wikipedia, copious Technical Review/ Support sites, free Tutorials, user guides and tech forums provide a growing, endless Knowledge Base for technicians to solve just about any problem outside their immediate capability. The demand for local, hands-on desktop support technicians is growing, but so is the supply of remote and semi-automatic solutions and enterprising providers. The tentacles of unsolicited adware, spam, browser and smartphone popups increasingly annoy us, trying to sell us tools to manage and protect our PCs - "Protect from what?" (Removing the well-known antivirus and internet security tools from our new netbooks is a common request, when activation is imminent or demanded).
Any developing PC Technician would give his or her career prospects and job opportunities a boost by learning, understanding and adopting best practice support methodologies for all customer types and requirements. Obtaining ITIL certification and then thoroughly applying the components of IT Service Management will increase a technician's reputation, respect, and credibility as a Desktop Support Professional.
So even when you are providing basic support and problem solutions for a one-off, single PC customer (or friend), look at the bigger picture - and think ITIL.
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Hi Kendar not sure whether
Hi Kendar not sure whether you wish to update references but Windows XP went out of support a week or so ago...(April 2014). Just thought you may wish to reference it somewhere? I've also read that due to XP's loss of support - there is also a increase in new PC sales... good for some :) .
End of Support for Windows XP
Thats's a fair and timely comment, MarkD given the official "end of XP support" on April, 8th. We can expect to see a huge flurry of discussions on the impacts of this milestone, and also a strengthening of online XP support groups. I particularly liked the articles at PC World on Continued XP Patching (at a cost), and at TechNibble - What Technicians Need to Know.
The percentage of XP desktops in use seems to be somewhere between 24% through to 36%, with some research also backing that (See the web analytics at NETMARKETSHARE ). Bear in mind that these users will be predominantly private and small businesses, although you' shouldn't be tsurprised to find some bigger corporations with applications still running on XP. I'm currently working with one business to upgrade their FoxPro 2.6 database systems running on XP Pro.
Their will many users who will want to retain their "trustworthy" XP desktop, but will be more interested in managing their vulnerabilities. This would be a smaller issue for users isolated from the internet (or foreign flash drive insertions). I noted that some Antivirus Makers were not too pleased about the drop in free support from Microsoft (See this post from Redmond Magazine ).
We will take this opportunity to expand our Desktop Support resources to provide worthwhile information and links to self-help groups and migration tips. I've already asked AdrianL to help compile this. (Oh, thanks for also volunteering, MarkD).