If you’re interested in becoming a computer technician, the first thing to know is what exactly you would do. You might like the level of the salary that is offered to you, but what you will do in return for it, for 8 hours a day, 260 days a year, that is something you should be well aware of.

The computer technician might work in all kinds of work environments, but at the basic level, he is the one that makes sure servers and personal computers are well maintained, and repaired when it’s needed. In some cases, it can also mean that he is the one configuring new computers for the organization when it’s needed, updating the operating systems and programs, installing new ones when required, and also taking care of the network in some cases.

There are jobs available with this title both in the private and the public sector. Any organization that has computers also needs someone to take care of them. The job is not regulated, so having a formal certification is not required, but if you want a decent salary, having an education to support your claims is highly recommended.

Some of the typical places where you can find computer repair technicians include IT departments of corporations or regular sized companies or repair centers. The technician that works in the public sector can be found in every department, from the ones that are health related, to law enforcement, military or national security.

The technician can be specialized in certain tasks. They can be used in technical support, or they can be used during repair or investigative processes. They can also be employed on their own though, having companies that offer services related to the things they’re specialized in. Such a small company could offer IT support services to small companies, that can’t afford to hire someone full time to take care of their computers.

Computer Hardware Repair

Even though hardware configurations are quite varied for computers, they are usually split among a few main categories, which include desktop computers, servers, laptops, clusters of computers and mobile computing devices (including smartphones).

Other hardware components that technicians might be required to repair when possible include mice, keyboards, printers, speakers and displays, among others.

As for the technicians that are used in the networking departments, they will be the ones making sure the components of that network are working, including the routers and the rest of the devices.

Computer Software Repair

Part of the responsibility of the technician when he deals with repairs of the operating system or the software, is to make sure the data on the PC is protected and backed up as soon as possible. Sometimes they are the ones trying to recover data that was lost, an essential skill to have when it comes to the important files that businesses often have.

1) Take time to make professional replies. Make your customer feel like you care. By explaining things thoroughly, instead of giving a brief response, you are not only giving off a professional atmosphere, you are also making the customer feel like they are important.

2) If you are the owner/CEO, take the time to do some menial work. If you’re doing hosting, take some time and answer some simple tech support tickets. It may be good to show them that you are the CEO/Owner (with a signature).

3) Talk to some of your clients over the phone. Unless you can’t speak english or your voice sounds pre-prepubescent , there is no reason to not talk to some of your clients on the phone. Many clients will feel much more at ease. I am not saying post a 1800 on your site and start offering phone support. I am only talking about select cases, ie talking to a client about to cancel, or someone requesting a phone conference.

4) When clients do cancel (let’s hope not!), ask them why. I have yet to meet a customer who will not explain why. You may find many times it was nothing your company did wrong!

5) When you do something wrong, admit it. There’s no shame. Your mistake, your responsibility. Offer the client a few months of free service to make it up.

6) If you’ve had uptime issues, or the customer is not happy — and you know it was your fault — offer them 3 months of free service. More often than not they will stay. Customers do not like the hassle of changing hosting companies. Losing 3 months of revenue is definitely not as bad as no revenue from the client.

7) Don’t talk to your customers in support tickets like you’re a robot. I see it time and time again where a technician, and in a number of instances CEO’s, talk to their customers like they are a piece of crap on their shoe. Say ‘Hi’ to your customer by their first name. Give them an answer to their question, and ask if there is anything else you can do to help. Personally I think saying “Hello” all by itself is worse than not saying it at all. There are many business owners who don’t like to form any type of friendship with their customers, and don’t let their staff form any type of friendship with their customers either. That’s fine, but please don’t become a robot with no personality.

8) Feedback! Feedback! Feedback! Make it easy for your customers to send you feedback. Include a link to an online feedback form in your e-mail notifications that tickets have been marked as resolved. Making it easy for yours customers to send you feedback is not good enough though. You need to act on that feedback. Make sure your customer knows you received it, and make sure they know you will act upon it. You don’t have to do everything the customer says, just tell them you will put it on the agenda for your next weekly meeting. Like the robot issue above, I see it time and time again where companies make it easy to customers to send feedback, but then don’t do anything about it when they do receive the feedback. They don’t even send a thank you note, or at best the customer receives some comical robotic auto-responder thank you note.

Lulu.com is a site that allows you to publish and sell your own books. I’m talking about paper based books here, not eBooks. It’s pretty simple actually. You upload the manuscript or the photos to their site, you use their tools to format the book the way you want it and you’re done. You can order just one book for you to have or you can sell it in their marketplace. You can even get your own ISBN and publish it in book stores from other countries (if it’s good enough).

I’ll give you one example. I have a small manuscript (150 pages) written by my grandfather that I want turned into a real book, as a gift for my mother. I upload the file to the site, design the covers and I have two options that I need to choose from.

Here are the two variants that I want to choose from and the prices/book:

Paperback, with Standard paper, Black & White, A5 size, Perfect Bound binding, 150 pages – it will cost me $7.50 per book for a 10 books order.

Hardcover, with Standard paper, Black & White, US Trade size, Casewrap binding, 150 pages – it will cost me $20 per book for a 5 book order.

As you can see, you can go for the cheap paperback or for the better looking hardcover. If you order at least 25 books, the price goes down. Instead of $7.50, the paperback from my example would cost $6.10 per book for an order of at least 25 books.