You’re trying to work from home. Your kids are trying to learn from home. To add to the stress of living through a global pandemic, your home network goes on the fritz.
Then, you get pinged by a remote support technician from Best Buy. He’s already aware of your network issue and he’s on the case.
“In these times of social distancing, when customers really want to get their stuff working, I can do the same things remotely than I can do in their homes,” said Damion Santos, a custom services technician who’s a pro at ensuring devices around a home work together harmoniously.
When they don’t, Damion can also fix it. He’s one of Best Buy’s highly trained experts dedicated to supporting customers enrolled in Total Tech Support Plus. This membership-based service provides remote monitoring of home networks and devices, along with tech troubleshooting, support, protection and more.
So, when Damion got the alert that one of his customers — he supports about 200 — had a network issue, he started looking into it right away from an app on his phone.
A status check with the customer’s internet service provider revealed there was an outage in the area. However, Damion noticed the next day that although the outage was fixed, his customer still had no network activity — and that meant there was no way for him to work from home or for his children to do their online schooling.
Suspecting a router issue, Damion called the customer.
“He was in a bind. As a dad with kids also working and doing school remotely, I understood what he was going through,” Damion said. “And I knew we could work together to get them back online.”
The customer took photos of the setup and sent them to Damion to examine, yet it was clear to Damion that it would be best if he could verify the router’s functionality in person. But given the current situation with social distancing, he couldn’t enter the home.
Helping from the driveway
Still, Damion was determined to find a way to help.
“I figured as long as I could get a long enough cable and we could maintain the safe social distancing practices, I could fix it,” he said.
Damion offered to stop by the customer’s home and use a 150-foot cable to troubleshoot the problem from the driveway. With the cable in his truck connected to the router in the house, he spent the next hour and a half walking the customer through what to do.
Damion determined a new router was the solution. Having suspected it earlier on, he’d made sure to bring one along.
Damion walked the customer through the setup process and … SUCCESS!
“The customer was relieved and grateful.
“If I could shake your hand, I would,” he told Damion.
For Damion, it felt good to know he could still help his customers.
“It definitely felt like a big win, especially with everything that is going on right now,” he said.