Technology: Remote Assistance

Perhaps I am behind on technological advances, but after a recent experience of having a friend search through my whole computer to troubleshoot, all the way from his office at work, look how far we’ve come from spending hours upon hours of precious time with technical phone support!

I bet a lot of people share my feelings of being frustrated at one time or another because the expertise of a rep sometimes exceeds your own knowledge or the actual problem just has you so frazzled that you are unable to even follow the simplest step-by-step instructions.

Life has this frequent tendency to catch us off guard, and so the ingenious discovery (well my recent finding anyhow, I realize that RA has been around for quite some time now, but this my first time to ever use it!) of Remote Assistance was perfect timing.

Remote Assistance is a way for someone else to simply “take over your computer.” Yes, control! After you locate the program and it loads up, you can send an invite to “someone you trust” as it states, with or without a password code. It is then delivered to the recipient’s e-mail account, and he/she has the ability to click on the link attached in order to connect to the other side. No, not the dark side, but it gives permission to let the other person connect to your computer. Once those preliminaries are sorted out, the magic begins!

As you sit back with mocha latte or a glass of red wine in your hand because your stress is appearing to melt away now that you believe someone can finally figure out why your computer is malfunctioning, watch as the other person completely navigates around your entire system. Warning, all your files are readily available so keep those naughty photos in a safe place unless you’re comfortable with someone else taking a peek as they try and figure out the computer issue!  Take note that depending on how quickly someone can zip through, you can still easily follow along and see what is being done. If you have a microphone, landline or even cell phone, you can communicate verbally too on speaker phone, just in case you had any questions throughout the process or if you suddenly feel adventurous to learn some other techniques being shown to you for the next computer disaster.

At critical times, Remote Assistance may not be the solution and you’ll actually need someone to physically be at your location to really get down to the nitty-gritty of what is happening. However, for certain technical support problems when you would phone up your ISP and the rep would attempt to talk you through the problems occurring, it seems like most of them are using this more efficient method to communicate with customers. 

I cannot tell you how relieved I am to have another option for technical support instead of hearing the dreaded “someone from _______ company will come to your home between the hours of 8 AM – 6 PM.” 

For me, Remote Assistance was a blessing in disguise that I am so happy to know about now and want to share with everyone else. Goodbye virtual insanity!