Comments on: Geek Squad

By: Zubair Balwa

Zubair Balwa — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 11:37:31 +0000

i am a former geek squad agent…..i dont work there nemore but their marketing skills are excellent

By: Sanjay Yadav

Sanjay Yadav — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 09:24:27 +0000

The key pad of my ipod nano has stopped functioning. When I tried restoring it, it comes till the language selection section and then there is no further response.The only thing what has gone wrong as per my knowledge is that once I wiped it with a damped cloth, after that this problem has occured.

We stay at Bilaspur (Chattisgarh) and the ipod was purchased by one of our relatives abroad.

Kindly assist.

Thanks.

By: Pradeep

Pradeep — Wed, 21 Dec 2005 12:23:42 +0000

what t3 says makes sense. But, it need not be true all the time.
If you have paid for “support” from a `professional`, you will know what I mean. The professional support people will have more than one way of getting the money out of you, including inflating the problem out of proportion and trying to convince you that he is the only person who can solve it, and all the other “selling” techniques.

The `Problem` in tech supporting, especially by somebody so young is:
* the end user may not understand the difference between clicky-clicky installing a software and genuine troubleshooting. for him, everything is click of buttons and perhaps a `few` minutes spent in front of the computer..

* So, it is important that, the geek trouble shooting “Sell” his expertise even before he starts troubleshooting. This might sound not ok to our pure-at-heart geek whose chief motive is to solve an interesting problem. This ability to sell will also come in handy in future, when your sys-admin tells it will take 3 hours of hard work to do “X”

* ah most importantly, talk about money even before you start. For instance, you could say, “troubleshooting xyz will cost you Rs.M, can I proceed?” or something similar. Don’t expect the user to do justice.
The same user who was cowering before you a few minutes in the fear of losing his precious data, will act as if the computer was alright all the time, and the ‘inconvinience’ already forgotten…

HOWEVER,
ALL this is a good learning for our geek.
He will get a dose of selling, customer “relations” and of course cold cash(hopefully).

Yeah, the F/OSS angle is important. Ah! the memories of installing Linux on skeptical(nah! pertrified ) classmates’ systems and troubleshooting the infamous SIS 6215C cards…
Kids today have it easy .. God! I feel old.

Perhaps, the most important lesson, even if our wannabe geek is not interested in promoting F/OSS is -
Interacting with `Real Users`. The earlier you understand how the rest of the world looks/uses/hates/loves software the better.

By: Swaroop

Swaroop — Wed, 21 Dec 2005 08:36:54 +0000

@t3: GeekSquad charges per-hour… but still, yes, getting people to agree to pay up money is the biggest problem.

By: t3rmin4t0r

t3rmin4t0r — Wed, 21 Dec 2005 08:34:05 +0000

Been there, done that …

Here, the problem would be charging for it … You try getting 500 bucks off someone for spending 5 hours finding a driver for his cheap and dirty video capture card.