Laptop Repair needs better notes and processes

Why at Lithgow Tech we now have amazing notes about every Laptop repair.

Learning from other shops mistakes

I have worked support for over 20 years in one form or another. One of the key things for me has always been good notes and processes. Being an award winning Apple support phone tech I leaned how to take crazy amounts of notes. We are talking everything is written down. So when at my last job in Katoomba I noticed that no notes where taken … I warned them of the train wreck that was coming. Did they listen … Noooooooooo.

What happened was a customer came in to ask how a laptop repair was progressing. Unfortunately the tech who was in charge of that repair was on vacation and the other techs had no idea what was going on.

Another horror story was a phone tech at a different location did not keep track of what device was what. This is a problem when you have five iPhone 7s on the bench and they are all black. The Tech had to have the client punch in their code to every one to find their phone. Could you imagine what would have happened if they got the wrong phone?

We take detailed notes in a database that gets backed up and synced

At our shops we use Obsidian Notes. This is open source software that is similar to Evernote but better. Using syncing software when our techs make notes on a repair every member of our team can see what is going on.

• What is wrong with the computer , Laptop or Phone
• Where is its physical location in the shop. (Down to less than a meter … I’m not kidding)
• Customer contact info
• What was done, what worked , what did not
• What parts were used
• What was paid and what is owed
• Photographs of damage
• Everything is timestamped
• Records of when we called and what was promised to the customer

This means that if you drop into the shop every single member of our staff will be able to see the notes and know exactly where the laptop is in the repair process and where it is physically located.

Then we backup the database every hour

We backup our database in two ways. We sync the data between four computers so if one dies we have can just restore the data from one of the other computers. One of our computers is backed up every hour to an external drive (Hidden) Another is taken offsite just in case of fire.

Security minded

With understanding of security needs we have the backups encrypted. Every computer requires a password to access. And the sync process is done internally so none of the data ever leaves the shop except for our encrypted laptop that is also encrypted. (This laptop can be remote wiped incase of being stolen)

We also use three different operating systems Windows , MacOS and Ubuntu Linux to insure that virus can not cause havoc. Customer devices are never connected to any of our computers that have access to this database.

Passwords for your computers or accounts are never kept. You should always consider changing your passwords after repair anyways.

Why is this important for a Laptop repair?

It is all about the customer experience. I have seen first hand what happens when a customer witnesses a tech not knowing what is going on. The trust is instantly broken even if the tech who is working on the device is the best in the world.

Good notes allows the techs to share information and pool our collective knowledge. It allows us to save time not hunting for a Laptop or phone repair ,

We know computers are important to you so we will not waste your time by not knowing what is going on.