Q: Do people actually still read Frequently Asked Questions on websites?
A: I have no idea, they did at one point. The fact that someone human is reading this means they have to be fractionally relevant still. Frankly this started serious, then I thought “Is anyone actually going to read this? If you did, and it amused or horribly offended you, please tell me about it at thatguy@justaskthatguy.com
Q: Why are you not always serious with the answers to these questions?
A: Two reasons
1) Because in life, and in business, if you don’t have a sense of humor you will burn out fast.
2) Because no one really reads these things entirely, and because I am long winded I really don’t think more than 10 people will actually read this.
Q: Why did you make that your second question?
A: Oh, it will be obvious soon enough.
Q: Are any of these questions REAL questions from customers?
A: On a frightening note, yes, some actually are, you get to guess which ones! I will never tell.
Q: Why do you offer a free initial consultation?
A: Because, it is more important to me to make sure that there is something that I can actually do to help your business improve before I offer it. I also LOVE learning about new businesses and people. I always have. I am one of those people that absorbs information like a sponge. At a minimum every consultation means that I have met a new business owner in my community, and for me that makes my time worth it.
Q: Are you just a glorified consultant?
A: Depends on how you define consultant. I not only show you what to do, I can then actually do it, or help you do it, or manage it.. Beware of these kinds of consultants:
Q: Why should we hire your company instead of the kid down the street, or Staples, or Future shop, or someone else?
A: My focus is on the relationship between my business and yours. If I can provide a service you want or need at a price you are comfortable that perfect. Do you really want the kid down the street to work on your business computers, or a “friend of a friend”? You can get a big company to deal with it, but then what if there was a problem with your service provided by their employee? Then what? With Just Ask That Guy, you can call the owner, at home if you need something.. Oh, and those “big companies?”
Notice the large companies tried to upsell everything people don’t need? And when they get caught he marketing spin kicks in and the big companies deny, deny, deny.
It is critically important you find a company that you can trust. We would like the opportunity to be that company.
Q: How do you know if my computer or device is going to fail before it does?
A: We licence software that we install on your computer. That software tells us if your computer has a problem and it tells us. We can read technical gobbligook and translate that to English.
A: Yes, it’s a technical term. We have lots of them, some are funnier, some very significantly less funny.
Q: Oh yea? Name one!
A: PEBCAK have you ever heard someone say that? Its gobligook for user error. It stands for “Problem Exists Between Chair And Keyboard”
Q: Are you being serious?
A: Yes, but we have a sense of humor, when you call for support, who is answering your phone?
That video is crazy funny and a parody. However, the truth is most call center operations are outsourced domestically or internationally, they are not all, as some may believe in India. They are all over the world. Remote support is typically outsourced to the lowest bidder (although there are other very critical factors outside of cost). Every year companies are outsourcing more and more call center jobs to third parties. Who do you want helping you when you call? The owner of the company, or somebody making a fraction of a decent wage who does not care who you are or if they fix your problem? When you call a company how many
levels of “Manager or Supervisor” do you have to go through to get someone to actually listen? (We have some tricks because the owner knows how big companies like that work). If you happened to simply find this site through google, and want to know HOW to properly escalate a complaint contact us, we can share the secret for FREE!
Q: How does your 100% Guarantee work? Can I get a refund for everything I have ever paid you, EVER?
A: No, because then I would be out of business, as soon as a crazy person ordered a few thousand dollars of equipment, and decided to keep it and not pay for it. Or someone requested the money back for the service from the last 5 years.
We are a registered incorporated company. I have to pay payroll, taxes, expenses, etc. As such, I can’t go around making guarantees of “I will refund you 500% if you are unhappy!”. No bank in their right
mind would issue me credit, and no insurance company would touch me with a 10 foot pole! What I can promise is this, if you are not 100% satisfied, then come talk to me. As the owner in the company, we can talk about it. If you bought a bunch of equipment and software and you want to keep the equipment and software and not pay a cent, then well, that’s not going to work out too well for either of us. If you want to sue me for 5 billion dollars because your internet that I don’t provide is down, or your computer beeped at you and now you believe it is possessed I don’t want to have to hire a lawyer to defend against “crazy” in court because I had no reasonable terms of service. I need to have “Legal” protection in the form of a terms of service. HOWEVER, If you ever feel you have been overcharged, or we have made a mistake, or we simply did not fix a problem or provide service to your satisfaction, then contact me. I WILL work with you until it is solved.
Q: Are you saying that your customers are crazy?
A: No, crazy is actually the wrong word, “abusers of the system” is more accurate. There is a small segment of the population that looks for and abuses the goodwill of companies and people that offer Satisfaction Guaranteed or Money Refunded. They are the people that eat though 90% of the meal, then say it was cold and want a refund. Or they buy a fancy camera, use it all vacation and want to return it for a 100% refund after they dropped it twice and lost the box and receipt. Those are the people my business (and any business) needs to have terms of service and contracts for. They spoiled the concept of “If you are not happy 100% money back” that we saw when we were kids for everyone, and made lawyers rich off writing small print and liability limiting clauses. Thankfully most “crazy” lawsuits are south of the border
http://money.howstuffworks.com/8-outrageous-lawsuits.htm
Q: What are the IT things you don’t help with?
A: Web design, SEO, Social Media content, reputation management, data center builds and others are not things that we do professionally. If you want to know how to register a domain
cheaply, how to setup a basic website to get started then we can give you some basic tips FREE! If after that you need a professional designer, we have partner companies that can help you out.
We also don’t train on things like Microsoft Word, Excel, Sage, QuickBooks, or any specific software beyond operating systems and browsers. Again, if you need assistance we have partner companies that can help you.
If you need a technical service that we can’t provide, or we don’t have the capacity to handle your needs at this time, we will tell you. We will even refer you to partners or competitors that can help you! Remember we are more focused on satisfaction than profit. If we can’t help you, we will direct you to someone that can.
Q: Why the name “That Guy”?
A: When I worked for my former employer, I was often utilized as a SME. For those that have never heard that term it stands for “Subject Matter Expert”. Meaning that I was the go to person for a large number of people and processes. In any given day I could be dealing with employee issues, outside consultants, different departments, and at times even the HRSDC. One day a VP was in a brainstorming session with a few other executives. I was there providing expertise and well subject matter to their inquiries. One of the VP’s needed specific information and a complex task planned executed and followed up on. He
asked the Senior VP in charge, who do I ask. That VP pointed to me and said “That Guy, he is the guy we use for that, give it to him and you don’t have to worry about it”.
Although on one level, I was a nameless Manager to this VP, on the other hand I was given a compliment. Give the job to him, and it will be handled, bar none. That was about 6 years prior to forming the company you see today. I realized that I was often given the “Complex” projects and assignments, normally because quite frankly I really liked the challenge, and would tirelessly work on the problem until it was solved, even if it meant working evenings, weekends, holidays to get it done, or work side beside my team to get it done. I took ownership of the task or project from beginning to end because I was proud of the result. Who cared if I was “That Guy”, I was proud of the accomplishment of the work, and my team.
Q: That “Guy” can sound a bit sexist, why not change to something politically correct?
A: Because just “Ask that gender neutral human information technology service providing executive” would not fit on my business card, and would confuse everyone
Q: So the “Fractional Executive” or “Virtual CIO/CTO”, that’s smart! Did you think of that?
A: Nope, not only did someone think if it well before me, there are a lot of people that took the idea and copied it, including me. My focus is on managing your risks, and executing solutions. My role is to anticipate your business problems, and address them before they become an issue, while still handling them when the inevitable happens.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional_CIO
I “robbed” the idea because of a concept i learned that was fantastic. “R&D for small business, Rob and Duplicate.” I took this idea of “R&D” from Rick Nicholson who did a presentation at a Business Development seminar that I attended. I expect he got it from someone else based on, well you know, the whole Rob and Duplicate thing…
The presentation at in a class that I was in, and it was fantastic. He has an excellent blog worth reading: http://helpmeinc.blogspot.ca/
Q: I need mission critical, 100% reliable technology. My systems can never ever fail, EVER. They must always work 100% of the time, even with all of my software and hardware that I have now, and will have in the future. It needs to be safe, secure, and nothing, or my employees do, will break it. It needs to be able to withstand a flood, fire, acts of god, data corruption, hardware failure, employee breaches of security, outside intrusion, anything that may happen today, or will happen tomorrow.. and I want it for $20 an hour because that’s what the kid next door or the guy down the road charges, and it has to be fixed RIGHT NOW, on Christmas Day.
A: If the kid next door can give you all that, for $20 dollars an hour.. Please, Please, give me their number.. If they have a sustainable business model, then I want to hire them, or invest in their company. If it’s a company, then I really hope I can invest in them because they found the magic beans of the IT world.
Now on a more serious note, if any actual company or individual can promise you the above, and they aren’t charging your small business a literal fortune. Then you need to run, far and fast away… Any good firm will tell you IT services, and “protection” are all managed risk, and you get what you pay for. The more risk they manage for you, the greater the cost, the closer you get to 100% protection, all day every day, the more it costs. No one can ever guarantee 100% all the time every time with technology.. Unless you only want a single computer to sit unpowered in an unopened box, and never take it out of the box.
Q: Ok Mr. Smart guy, you said earlier you will be handling my problems before they happen! Why do you need to fix things if they never break!
A: Never is a long time, and is a impossibility. As in the last answer in business you can only manage risk vs cost(or reward). If you want a guarantee that you will never have a single IT issue, you will never lose any data, nothing will ever break, good luck. You are going to need to have the kind of spending money that IBM or Cisco, or Target has.
Oh wait, Target?
Scratch target. 100% Risk control is going to cost you a fortune for that kind of protection. And no matter who you are, the bigger you are, the bigger the “Target” (see what I did there.. if you missed the
joke check the link below)
http://krebsonsecurity.com/tag/target-data-breach/
If a computer security professional says, they guarantee you will never have a virus infection or a systems breach, they don’t understand computer security. If a technician says you will never have your servers go down, right in the middle of your peak season, they don’t know what they are talking about. If you have a consultant that tells you that they can anticipate every single business problem before you do, then check to see if they moonlight as a physic medium.
Unless you have an IT security professional standing by each of your computers every day watching everything happening, you are at risk of a virus, spyware or intrusion, your servers will eventually go down, despite the best planning and processes in the world, something unexpected will happen. I do not have a guarantee that any of these things will be 100% protected. What I do guarantee is that my business is there to manage your risk, and provide the service when the unexpected happens.
(unless your computers are physically turned off, or they are powered on, sitting in a faraday cage with no connection to the outside world, it can technically be compromised)
Q: Can you promise me that if you manage my backups I will NEVER have data loss or downtime?
A: No, and anyone that tells you can, is either incompetent, or lying. Real high risk, mission critical, redundant progressive is horribly expensive. As we mentioned above, backup, and IT security is about managing risk, vs cost. We offer protection is progressive and scalable in on our model, it gets exponentially more expensive through the levels and is not directly included with our plans because of how different each companies requirements are.
1) No backup
Benefit: its free
Risk: You get protection equal to what you paid, nothing. Its like jumping out of a plane without a chute, its not a matter of if you will hit the ground, but when.
2) You back it up, on your own.
Benefit: potentially very inexpensive, better than nothing.
Risks: its only recovers what you lost since your last backup, if it works.
3) We run local managed backup.
Benefit: Low Cost Our software backs up what “YOU” deem important, and we back it up in sessions. You purchase the hardware, and we monitor the backup program for success and failure.
Risk: If the backed up files are corrupt or damaged, it may not be possible to tell. Even with the risk its substantially more protection than the first two.
4) We run local managed backup on a redundant array of independent disks (RAID 1+0 or RAID 10) on a server.
Benefit: This is the first level of “real” backup. Your data is protected from multiple hardware failures. The array takes time to recover, but you can reduce or eliminate down time.
Risks: It can backup bad data or corrupt files. If you don’t detect a failed drive fast enough, you could lose data. Even with the risk, it hands down beats anything before this.
5) Multi-pronged backup, we back your files up locally to a RAID 10 device, AND back it up to an offsite storage “cloud”.
Benefit: This gives the first opportunity to perform what is called a “bare metal” restore in the event your business burns down, floods, or everything locally is destroyed.
Risk: You can only test the backup so far to make sure it will work, All the testing is in a “virtual” environment. The cost here varies widely and gets substantially expensive if you have large data files. If everything is destroyed in a fire or flood, replacing servers with exact model specs can be difficult. Again, this will meet the needs of 95% of businesses and protect you from all but the worst case scenarios.
6) We do everything in step 5 and we test it to a mirror of your data environment and verify something called fall over.
Benefit: This is effectively the best you can get, you can scale the redundancy with more fall over sites, hot swappable servers, and on demand deployment.
Risk: You go broke paying for it.
The reality in this case, is if you need this level of protection, on a regular basis, you don’t need us. You need a full time server admin that is watches your companies data and only their data like a hawk, all the time. At this level of protection it becomes more cost effective to have a full time IT staff. We can help you as a stop gap to hiring a full time qualified IT admin and staff.
Q: Why should we hire your company?
A: Hopefully, you already have met me face to face, and you are looking at this site because you have my business card, so we already know each others. If you just found me through this site or a random Google search, you will see that I am an experienced, competent business IT professional with a strong pedigree of employment. I have risen through the ranks of all of the companies that I have worked for and have continually been cited for excellence in performance. This time I am doing it my way with my “vision” if that works for you, then what are you waiting for? Just Ask That Guy!
Q: Why did you leave the corporate world?
A: I was a manager the most senior manager (IE highest paid) in my department the corporation went through a “cut the most expensive” or reduce the staffing expense exercise.
I was one of a number of managers and staff that was part of this initiative, anything beyond that is under a confidentially clause that one typically sees in these circumstances.
Q: What if I can’t afford you?
A: What if you can’t afford NOT to hire me? If you have the time, you can afford my initial advice, because its free and you don’t have any obligation to buy managed services or products. If you are a
charity or non-profit, then I can offer services on a cost recovery or sliding scale if you can offer charitable receipts. It’s a specific question that depends on a number of factors, give me a call, some services I may be able to provide a charity completely free.
Q: You answered that last question with a question!
A: Yes, and that’s your question was not a question it was a statement? Iwonder if anyone is still reading this far into the blog
Q: What if all I need to ask is a simple question? How much will that cost?
A: Nothing, it’s a simple question, ask it. If its really good, not only will I answer it, I will put it up on my webpage with the answer. That way other business owners can benefit from the question. Toss me an email thatguy@justaskthatguy.com
Q: If I go with your company can you guarantee I will never have issues with technology again?
A: I can guarantee you that you WILL have issues no matter what you do unless you are exceptionally unnaturally lucky. We can only reduce the possible number. What we can promise you is to give you the benefit and experience of our years of training and education.we can promise you that we will give recommendations to you what “WE” would do if “WE” was in your exact same shoes, with all of the knowledge and experience behind that question. We can help you manage risk, We cannot ever eliminate it completely for you.
Q: Ok, so you are my virtual executive, what if I have a problem with HR or something that you don’t specialize in!
A: I may not specialize in it, but I do have a number of years of experience in business, people management and HR. Plus, executives talk to each other all the time about issues outside of their “departments” that’s how innovative solutions are found. My business model is all about building a business network. I may very well have someone that I can refer you too. I may not be able to solve a problem directly, but as your Virtual CIO, I may have a perspective that I can share. Give me a call!
Q: I read or heard your opinion on “X” and I disagree with you, you should have done this, this and this instead!
A: You might be completely right. A good solutions provider / consultant / employee will give you the best answer given your situation at the time. If the situation changes afterwards, or the technology changes in the future the answer we give today will not apply tomorrow! That is one reason that we don’t touch Search Engine Optimization “SEO” you need to be a specialist in that field to do it properly.
Q: Wait, What?
A: I love analogies, so here we go. Let us say it’s the dark ages, and people know if you drink some water, it might make you sick and die. But if you drink alcohol, you are less likely to get sick (not drunk, but oh my I am going to die sick). At the time, the reason was not understood why alcohol was safer than water. We know have a scientific understanding that brewing process that made the alcohol, and the subsequent alcohol in the drink killed the harmful bacteria. At the time they thought the problem was the water, and that was the so called industry accepted opinion. That opinion did not change until they figured out it was the bacteria that was the problem, then slowly, the knowledge was accepted later.
So now, we know that drinking polluted water is generally a bad idea, but before anyone knew about bacteria, it was because of the bad spirits.. and that was a perfectly reasonable answer.
Q: You sound like the kind of person that always wants to be right!
A: Yup, I thought to myself, do I want to be a person that is always right, or always wrong. My preference was always right. I like to think that I am always right. That thought is not reality. What reality is that, I love learning and information, I read about all sorts of topics because I am what my wife calls an information sponge. I am a fan of details, plans, and risk management because that is just the way I think. However, although I am sometimes wrong. The good news is that I can say that I am very rarely intentionally wrong!
Q: AH HA! You said you are rarely intentionally wrong! That means at some point you were wrong on purpose!
A: Yes, have you ever been a parent? Specifically of a toddler? Has your child ever asked you something along the lines of “Dad, can I eat this entire sack of Halloween candy tonight?” Me: “No because then you will turn into a chocolate bar in the morning”. So therefore I was wrong on purpose and saying otherwise would not be accurate or polite.
Q: AH HA! I see what you did there, you side stepped that whole thing and gave me an unrelated but yet relatable example! So you can be wrong!
A:First off that’s a statement not a question. Secondly, you are awesome for reading this drivel so far into it. Your tenacity is admirable at this point. Thirdly, I caution everyone never deal in absolute or black and white terms, ever.. The problem with 100% uptime is that in the world of Technology, it is impossible without exponential cost. The best you can hope for, is downtime that’s “non impacting”. The problem with 100% satisfaction, again, its impossible, 100% of the time! What I can 100% guarantee is that we will always continue to work with you on a problem until either its resolved, or you are satisfied* ( My lawyer wanted me to say subject to the terms and conditions in your contract.. but they said I can use small print like this)
Q: Why aren’t you more serious in these questions?
A: Because I got you to read this far into a frequently asked questions list and I still have your attention so far in the end. In advertising, they call that a hook J
Q: You sound really interesting I would like to meet with you for coffee!
A: Sure, give me a call, I love meeting people and hearing new ideas!
Q: If I hire your company will you be able to always give me cutting edge technology experience, on everything technical even things that don’t exist now?
A: I have heard this before, In my opinion there is no such thing. Best case scenario one or two people or companies do cutting edge, and people doing it, are the ones on the cutting edge of THAT technical concept.. With Just Ask That Guy Technical Solutions, you get the research behind the solution, and the opinion on how it will apply to your business!
Here are some almost exact same questions as above, but phrased in a different way? Why, because some explanations work better than others, and two.. Google likes original content…
Q: Let us revisit that 100% Guarantee again. You say you have a 100% Guarantee! Why do you have a contract and terms of service then!
A: Ok, here it is a different way. Without contracts and terms of service, there is no way that I would ever be able to get insurance, or financing, for my corporation. Remember way back when I talked about managing risk? As a business owner I can never realistically offer 100% anything because that 0.000000000001% is the person or company that sues your company for something their cousin in Ontario thinks you may have done wrong.
Q: So again, Why don’t you charge me the first time we meet?
A: Because I look at it as an interview. My company is going to work with your business, as a partner. Do you pay partners to work out a business arrangement? Do you pay employees that you are interviewing before you interview them? In almost every case I can think of, the answer is no. My initial service to you is my interview with your company. I can demonstrate my skills and abilities to your company.
If that works for you, and you want to take on my services, then fantastic. If not, that’s fine as well. In the end, I still walk away with more experience, and a greater understanding about my potential client base.
Q: Why Terms of service, why not a handshake and a smile? We trust each other right?
A: Remember when I said, “In business contracts are the only defense against crazy” that’s why.
Q: OH MY GOD THAT WAS SO LONG MY EYES ARE BLEEDING! WHY DON’T YOU JUST STOP TYPING ALREADY! WHY DID THIS HAVE TO GO ON SO LONG!!! I WANT MY LIFE BACK FROM READING THIS!!!
A: First off, press the caps lock button, or your shift key is stuck. We can help you with that. Secondly, that was not a question, this a Frequently Asked Questions list. Thirdly remember the first “question”? There is a time to have fun and a time to be serious. If the internet gets too serious it will implode.. I think you have to enjoy life…
Q: Your site has horrible grammar and spelling! Its fully of run on sentences!
A: Another non question question, That’s something we also don’t do here.. we don’t write web content, because our grammar and spelling really really stinks..
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