Good Ideas and Inspiration

During the conference call I brought up an idea on how to deal with data recovery and backup for customers.

Though the boss was initially not wanting to add yet another checklist for us to use on calls I clarified that this was not a checklist for technicians but rather a checklist for customers to give us a complete report of the following:

Where files are stored, what programs are used for email and finances. This is valuable information that has been some issue because the customer doesn't always tell us everything and well we techs are human and can forget sometimes. Having it in writing in front of us makes a huge difference.

One of the many things I learned while in the military is that memory is more short term than we like to admit so a good checklist filled out with the right information is an invaluable tool to make sure that the job is done right. Some people are blessed with a photographic memory, like my boss. I am not one of those people and truth be told my short term memory is suffering these days. The suggestion stemmed from a frustrating phone call that one of my clients called on saying we forgot to back up her quick books data. Fortunately she isn't upset but had we a checklist at that time it wouldn't have happened.

Now how well did my idea come across? The other techs all agreed with me. Something that we have the customer fill out while we setup for data recovery and/or backup will help. Knowing what we need to put in the backup set saves us a lot of problems later and makes the customer feel better because we show we care by making sure we know what data to save.