When I first started my Computer Repair Business about 9 years ago, I focused my advertising towards residential areas. After some time, my residential clients started asking me to fix the computers at their own businesses or place of employment. I learned that is quite different to residential and they need to be treated differently. For example, a business generally values turn around time over cost; whereas a family with a few children will probably care more about price than turn around time.
Here is a list of some of the differences between doing work for businesses and residentials:
Speed of Repairs
As I mentioned before, businesses generally value turn around time more than the price. The reason for this is because businesses spend money to make money and by having a system out of action, it may be costing them more than what you are going to charge them. For example, the business may be paying the secretary $150 per day to be there but that may be wasted if they cant get on their computer. Also, by having that secretary out of action, the business may be slow to respond to customers which hurts the business even more and may cost thousands of dollars in lost revenue. Your $100 per hour fee may not be that expensive in their eyes if they can get the secretary working again and keep their customers happy.
Increasing Your Prices For Businesses
There are a few different schools of thought towards charging businesses more than residential clients. Some Computer Technicians believe that you should not punish your customers for having a business. Also, since commercial work is often harder and more time consuming so you will be making more anyway and therefor dont need to increase your prices.
However, other technicians will tell you that commercial work is on a whole different level than residential work (such a servers) and thus it requires a higher level of education that a technician needs to put time and money into. Therefor, the technician should charge more in the same way a doctor, dentist or lawyer would.
Some Computer Technicians say they only charge businesses more as a “priority fee”. The Technicians get out to businesses as soon as they can whereas residential clients get scheduled.
I am not going to say which way is right or wrong, its up to you to decide which feels best for you and your business.
Minimal Disruption and After Hours Support
As I outlined earlier, businesses can lose money when their systems are out of action so if you need to do work that isn’t urgent, its a good idea to offer after hours support (if you want to work those hours that is). This can be both onsite work or offsite remote support.
Insurance
If you are not insured now, you will definitely want to be before you start touching business machines. An honest mistake by you can cost your clients business thousands and they may come after you for damages. This is where having “errors and omissions” insurance can save your behind. “General Liability” insurance is also a good idea to have. You should speak to a local insurance broker to find out exactly what you need for your business and dont be afraid to shop around.
Be Cautious
You should always be on the side of caution when working on business machines, especially when data is concerned. Of course, you should be careful with residential computers as well but be extra careful with business machines because they can be mission critical to their business.
Also, dont be afraid to turn down work if it has the potential to turn ugly. About a year ago now, I went onsite to the base station courier company to do some preventative maintenance (cleaning and dust and such). This courier company had 4 servers tracking where their hundreds of trucks were, what they were carrying, where it needed to go all running from these servers on a custom Linux build. I had no problems cleaning out the 12 or so workstations but they then asked me to clean out the servers as well. In order for me to access the sides of them I would had to remove them from the rack and in order to remove them, I needed to power them down. I asked the client who manages these servers and they said they have another technician but he is currently in Cambodia. It was at that point I said I wouldn’t be cleaning out the servers. I didnt know enough about them should there be a problem bringing them back online. The guy who does know how to fix it is currently overseas and these servers are mission critical.
I could do the work and get paid for another hour if everything works our fine, or if it goes bad I would disable the company for an extended period of time. It just wasn’t worth the extra hours pay, the risk was just too high so I turned it down.
In conclusion, if you are going to work on business machines, focus on a fast turn around time, do what you can to minimize disruption, get insurance and always be very cautious.
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