IT Support Personnel (Podcast)

Summary: IT personnel are here to help! Steve Ripper and Lonnie Cherry from Portsmouth Computer Group discuss why every business needs an IT firm. Listen or read more to find out about what IT people do and how they help solve issues.

Mike:  In our WTSN morning information center, brought to you on this Tech Tuesday by Portsmouth Computer Group with convenient offices in Dover and in Portsmouth. PCGIT for world class IT service and customer support. Go to pcgit.com. Check out their website today, pcgit.com, and it’s all part of Tech Tuesday, our good friends Steve Ripper and Lonnie Cherry joining us this morning here on News Talk 98.1 WTSN. Good to have you with us guys. Nice to have you here.

Steve Ripper: Good morning, Mike.

Lonnie Cherry: Good Morning, Mike.

Mike:  How are you?

Steve: Very good, thank you.

Lonnie: Doing alright. Doing alright. Bundled up, but we’re doing good.

Mike:  I know you’ve been talking off the air, leading into this segment, but you guys aren’t winter people, either, are you? [crosstalk].

Lonnie: I’m not a winter person at all.

Steve: Not at all.

Lonnie: Not a winter person at all.

Mike:  So, when people talk about Portsmouth Computer Group, what is really the main thing that you guys do for businesses, Steve?

Steve: So, we go in and we consult. I mean, we’re going to, try — we’re problem fixers, right. I mean, that’s what . . . that’s what Lonnie and I do particularly.

Lonnie: Yeah.

Steve: We’re troubleshooting, we’re walking through the door, we’re trying to figure out what can we do to help it’s not always just the IT, it’s not just the PC that’s on the desk, its business processes “what’s going wrong?” What is inefficient and how can we help.

Lonnie: Yeah.

Don’t Fear IT Support Personnel

Mike:  So today, we’re going to talk a little bit about how to get the most out of your IT support people and, as you say, hate them less because you know you’ve told me off the air that when you guys come into a business it’s like Mike Wallace from 60 Minutes: something’s wrong, something’s going on. I mean, why do they have that impression, Lonnie?

Lonnie: Problems they can’t solve — it makes people uncomfortable. And they look towards…

Mike:  . . . Really uncomfortable. You think they might feel happy to have their computer backup online?

Lonnie: No. They’ve gotten used to these tools that they’ve been given to help them get through their day and without them and they struggle. They struggle and they don’t know how to handle it.

Mike:  Yeah. You get, “You get you again!” And you get, “Hey Lonnie, I was thinking to get you a desk here.”

Lonnie: Yeah. All the time.

Mike:  “Because you’re here all the time.” And it’s like, “I don’t want to be here as much either, but we got to fix this, something’s going wrong, I’m trying to help.”

Lonnie: Yeah.

How IT People Can Help

Mike:  Yeah. So, what is that mean? I mean, if you guys are there all the time, does it mean that some of these companies don’t have the most efficient machines running don’t have the most efficient systems running? Or you’re just enough bugs out there that people just don’t understand?

Steve: Yes. So, it could be any combination of things. We’re just getting to know them. And the relationship is just starting. It could be where there’s an upgrade to a piece of software. And, so, there’s some trouble either learning or figuring out or the issues. So, it’s things like that. We’re not trying to milk the clock people like, “You’re here a lot.” No, of course not. But we’re there until the problem is solved and that determines what it is.

Mike:  And no question really is a stupid question. I mean you guys are the experts. I think I know enough about computers to solve things. But when I get to my personal stuff, I have to ask friends, because I don’t know about some of these programs that I need to have to run my computer faster, more efficiently.

Lonnie: Absolutely. And for me, I want to educate my clients, because if I can educate you, and you can learn from that education, then you make my job easier. I make your life easier. And maybe next time you can fix your own problem, or we can educate you enough that you don’t end up in the things that we’ve been talking about on this show — the security problems, the loopholes, the viruses that you may potentially get.

Mike:  Yeah. And people — if they don’t have a strong IT department within house, obviously, they use your services Portsmouth Computer Group, because you’ve talked about this for the last year or so about security, about passwords, about the efficiency of running your systems and how to protect the information that’s on your system, because everything is there. And you don’t want it to go wrong.

Steve: Yeah. So, I mean, we look at it like, if it was easy, everyone could do it. Like we have a job because we know a little bit about something that everyone else doesn’t know. [crosstalk].

Mike:  I think you guys know a lot more than what I know. Because I think you guys are the experts and whether it’s anything, I can’t fix my refrigerator. If the water spout doesn’t work. I can’t do that. I got to get somebody who knows about appliances to come in and do that.

No Question is a Stupid Question

Steve: But people always go like, “Hey, do you mind if I ask you a question?” And I’m like, “I can’t fix what’s on your computer if something’s driving you crazy if I don’t know about it.” Like, if you don’t tell me how I’m going to walk by, I’m going to keep going. Like, you got to not feel like it’s a stupid question. You got to not feel like it’s going to be an imposition on me and just say, “Hey, this is bothering me.” And then I’ll fix it or I’ll try to fix it.

Mike:  So, people need to have a good relationship with their IT company. You guys are well-known around the area . . . convenient offices in Portsmouth and Dover. And I keep telling people, especially not just on Tech Tuesday, but throughout the whole week that just go to the website, pcgit.com, you can really find out everything that these guys can do. But what should people look for in an IT company basically?

Making IT Fixes Easier on You

Steve: So, you’re looking for things like if you’re trying to pick one out, you’re looking for things like, how to answer the phone. Phone demeanor, are you getting someone? Are you getting —

Mike:  Right from the start, right?

Steve: Exactly. So, a ticketing system, you want to see some kind of — where they’re keeping track of the issues. So a ticketing system for us or any IT company will give you tracking, have we been dealing with this problem for a long time, it’s been going on for months and months and months or so if you don’t see something like that, if it feels like there’s no paperwork or trail of what you’re dealing with. And that’s a red flag.

Lonnie: And you also want to make sure that they have the right tools for you — the remote monitoring tools — so that they can see what’s going on with your servers and your desktop systems and so on.

Steve: Yeah.

Lonnie: You also want to make sure that to speak on web statistics. They have that documentation that they’re taking in everything that your company has, so that you have it down the road, they have it down the road that your experience is always the same no matter which tech they dispatched to your location.

Mike:  You must have seen just about every problem possible. Is there anything you have haven’t seen yet?

Steve: So, I’m 20 almost I don’t know if it’s 25 yet, Mike 24 years —

Mike:  In the business?

Steve: 24 years at PCG. And even did it before then —

Mike:  Congratulations, that’s great.

Steve: So, there are times where I’m like, I am amazed when I see something I haven’t seen before. But like, yeah, for the most part, Lonnie, I’d be like, people like, “Have you seen this guy?” I don’t really know exactly why that’s happening and how you got the screen to do that. But yeah, pretty much I’ve seen it all, for sure.

IT Personnel Myths

Lonnie: You know, I read a rumor the other day that IT people, they specifically put viruses and problems into a computer just to come back and back [crosstalk].

Steve: That would never happen. Come on, where do people get that? That idea though?

Lonnie: One of the big things in IT right now is what I call the ‘hands in the pocket’ thing. A lot of the services that we have to offer to protect you now, our monthly reoccurring revenue. And I think sometimes people are a little frustrated with that because they don’t completely understand. So that’s why we’re out here educating that we’re coming here to the talk show and other places, other mediums to get that knowledge out so that they don’t feel that way…you’re doing it just so you can come back and make an extra buck.

Steve: Yeah, it’s like that old New York thing where the mafia owns the trucks that carry stuff. And they overload them and ruin the roads. And then they also own the companies that fix the roads, and it’s just a record. So, but the truth is . . . earning money, like making money cleaning a virus is a terrible way to make money. Like, of course, we’re not doing any of that stuff. No company wants to pay us to clean stuff up.

Mike:  I mean, you’d rather not do that?

Steve: No, of course. So, like, they hate us. That’s where that hate thing comes in. Because they come in and like we do the virus. The only way that we have a good relationship with the company is if we’re preventing things from happening in the first place. Once it’s happened. It’s a terrible way to make money a company looks at us and goes, “What did I just spend five grand on? What did I spend, I got nothing out of it.” There’s nothing like they want to buy computers, they want to buy servers. They want to buy better internet, right? They want to buy better tools, they want to empower their workers. So, if just given us money for cleanup. So no, like that whole thing that we’re creating stuff? Of course not that’ll be a terrible way to make money.

What to Look for in IT Service

Mike:  Yeah. It would be in business. [crosstalk]. The reviews would not be very well. That’d be like a 1.0 out of five. What’s the most important thing for people who are just tuning in today and saying, “Wow! Do I really have all the stuff I need in my business to keep things secure?” What’s the most important thing that people should look for first? Really?

Steve: So, they want consistency? Are your problems getting solved right? So that’s the really big thing. We joked earlier at the beginning of the segment. The seeing the IT guy too much. Are you seeing your IT guy too much? Are you thinking about having him or her over too much? Are the problems . . . it’s fine that there’s a big problem. You got to put a little time at it. But is it getting solved to a point what you’re really looking for — and Lonnie you’ll talk about this. You want consistency, right? You want to be proactive. We use that word like we just kill that word. We want proactive, we want to be ahead of everything so that the company knows. So, the company can sit and go, “what are my expenses going to be this year”, right? Because if you don’t know what your expenses are, if IT is just going to blow up every other month, it’s going to be terrible, right? For us and you.

Lonnie: Yeah. And with those proactive tools, we want to see you less, we want to make sure that you do see us less because those tools are working, we know they’re working, we know that we’ve done our job to the point where you’re not getting the viruses that your systems are running optimally and you’re not having problems with hardware, software, any of those things. So, Steve spoke on that consistency that the tools, all those things add up so that you don’t see us all the time —

Mike:  And you guys [crosstalk]. But, also, you guys are on the forefront of the newest systems out there the newest platforms out there that people who are in business they probably don’t even stop to think about that. That’s where you guys come in.

Steve: So, there’s always a part, Mike, where why are you doing it that way? Right? Stop doing it that way like we should be thinking about this. So, one of my jobs, Lonnie’s job, when we walked through the doors, is not just fix the problem because sometimes the software that they’re using or the method is like seven years old. And it’s like no, there’s new . . . you don’t have time to do it. You’re in construction you’re in being a doctor. Our job is to go, there’s all new software out in the industry that you should be thinking about the cloud and we’ve talked a lot about it in the last like six months.

Lonnie: Yes. Everything’s in the cloud.

Steve: So, we’ve talked about all of those things where we go stop doing it that way we’re going to like if you accept me, if you give me a little bit of trust, we’re going to do it completely differently. You’re going to hate me for three months like that old TV commercial, and then you’re going to [crosstalk].

Mike:  Steve and Lonnie joining us this morning from Portsmouth Computer Group, check out their website. They’ve got the locations in Portsmouth and Dover. You can check out all the numbers pcgit.com always great, valuable information. Always fun to talk to you guys as well.

Steve: Thank you Mike, thank you.