Onsite Computer Service Owners: Manage Your Time Before It Manages You

Effective time management is essential in every facet of a computer business, but if you carry out onsite computer service, it is particularly important. 

It is almost impossible to determine exactly how long it will take to perform an onsite computer service task. Often computers won’t behave as expected (especially when you are in a hurry!), and clients will often think of additional tasks that they won’t mention until during the visit. “Oh, by the way, could you just...?” 

Travel time between appointments is another important factor. Traffic jams and public transport delays can result in journeys taking longer than predicted.

Estimating the Time Needed for Appointments

The last thing you want to do when working onsite is leaving yourself short of time because you need to rush off to your next appointment. 

Not only can this leave you flustered and sacrifice attention to detail, but it can also cause you to miss out on billable time because you simply cannot remain on site any longer. 

Always allocate an amount of time that covers you for a “worst-case scenario.” Ideally, add a little time on top of that as well. While sometimes this may leave you with excess time between appointments, this is likely to balance out with days when you bill more hours than you had hoped.

Setting Onsite Computer Service Appointments

One way to make your day less stressful is to set appointments for a time window instead of a specific slot. 

Saying “between 1 pm and 3 pm” gives you far more flexibility than setting a job for 1 pm and then annoying a customer if you are late. It is easy to explain to a customer why this is necessary. 

Finally, don’t forget to build in windows in your day to keep up with emails and other tasks, and, most importantly, to stay fed and refreshed. If you don’t eat properly throughout the day, your concentration will suffer and no one will benefit! 

How do you manage your time when carrying out onsite computer service? Share your tactics in the comments below.

And to follow through on the time management tips introduced in this short post,  especially if you also support SaaS and IaaS, be sure to enroll now in our free 7-day eCourse: Go-to-Market Strategy 101 for B2B SaaS Startups and Scaleups.