SupportSpace Corporate Blog

Running an Online Tech Business from Home

I have just read a great article written by Eric Holmlund all about online businesses and if it’s the right thing for you.

Eric takes an honest approach by saying that although there are hundreds of posts out there telling you how easy it is to run an online business, it is in fact, hard work. He lists in his post a few main points to consider, such as set-up costs, time involved and willingness to commit to marketing.

“The fact is that it takes hard work to build a business, and there are certain abilities that will greatly increase your chances of success.” He continues by saying that in order to run an online tech support business, “You DON’T need to be a computer expert, but you must be comfortable with computers and willing to learn.”

SupportSpace experts benefit from the marketing efforts made by SupportSpace, some of which are listed in this post, while still being able to promote themselves individually, as each one has a designated online store (web page). These can be promoted using the various web 2.0 sites, craigslist and more, like our own Don Brown, who wrote this post about the advantages of working flexible hours from home.

SupportSpace experts are tech-savvy individuals who range from Microsoft MVPs to knowledgeable, self-taught individuals, and tech generalists and specialists in the widest range of products you can imagine.
SupportSpace experts are gurus, computer lovers, authors of technical books, self-taught techies or well-schooled computer science types.

But all SupportSpace experts have a few more things in common.
1. They care about what they do and really enjoy helping others
2. They are knowledgeable about the technologies they support
3. They are passionate about being part of a Support community and realize it is part of their responsibility to help us continually improve our service
4. They care very much about the customers' experience.

If you feel that this applies to you and that you would like to join our extensive community of tech experts, click here to start the certification process and we look forward to seeing you at SupportSpace soon. We think that this article pretty much sums it all up. According to Tom Harnish of “Undress4Success and as the title suggests, “SupportSpace is the Standout Employer for Work at Home Techs”.

SupportSpace Online Tech Support Adds New Features

As ever, here at SupportSpace our focus is on giving the best support on all technical and PC problems and so we are constantly working to improve our service.

Here are some of the latest updates released this week:

Messaging Capabilities (Example)

It is now possible to communicate with our experts through the new SupportSpace messaging service. On the homepage, there is a new option to “leave a message” which can be found under the “connect now” button. This can be used when you see that the expert is busy or offline or if you just want to say something even if they are online but you do not want to run a full session. This system is also useful for experts to follow up with customers and to consult with other experts within our community. You can also leave a message directly from the expert store page and you will be notified when your expert replies both through a message indication on the top right of the page next to your login name and by email.

Session History (Example)

There is a new option available for you to see details of all your previous sessions on SupportSpace. It can be found after logging in under My Account >Session History and the information can be accessed by date, status or type.

Feedback (Example)

Once a session has been completed, you are asked to fill out a feedback form rating various aspects from 1 – 5. On some occasions, it may be useful to have an option of filling in this form at a later date which you can now do through the new “Add Feedback” link on the Session History page. In the section named “Solution Report”, you can also read all about what the expert did and how he solved the issue, meaning you can now refer to previous cases should the same problem recur.

Pre-Booked Sessions

We have introduced a new service which allows customers to return to their original expert as they will appear online only for you. This will be particularly useful if, for example, you are in the middle of a session and need to reboot your computer. Previously, by the time you were back online, your expert may have taken another call and therefore would not have been available to continue the session with you. With this new service, the expert will appear busy to everyone other than you and as soon as you are ready to continue your session, you simply re-connect to resolve your issue.

We are already working on the next round of upgrades and look forward to sharing them with you soon.