11 years in business

Location: Auckland Region

Contact Name: Alex Grant

Website: www.easypc.co.nz

Business mission and vision:
To take the pain out of IT through clear and friendly communication without all the technical jargon and to focus on customer satisfaction.

“We provide a full range of IT Support throughout Auckland for residential users and small-to-medium businesses.”

We go the extra mile for our customers and keep them in the loop the whole way, we take ownership of issues and see them through to the end and we treat them with the respect they deserve.
I started Easy PC after working for several other IT companies who didn’t focus on the customer. Their customers were always frustrated at being talked down to, bounced around from person to person and not getting clear communication. I thought their must be a better way!
I had to juggle a full-time job initially alongside Easy PC whilst I grew my customer base and gradually invested in all the aspects of setting the business up (branding, website, accounts setup, various software systems, etc). I was doing all the work after hours on top of my full time job until I had enough business to go into Easy PC full time which meant some very long work days!
Signing our first business customer onto a Service Level Agreement was a real challenge as I had to figure out pricing and put together the legal contract for it having never done one before. I found every possible example/template that I could online and adapted them to fit New Zealand’s laws, ran them past some friends who work in IT and ran them past a lawyer. It took a lot of work and fretting that every detail was right but it worked, we landed the customer!
It is quite common for us to get a new customer who has come to us after reaching the limit of their frustrations with their existing IT provider. When this happens they are usually very stressed and have already spent a significant amount on trying to resolve their problems with their exisitng IT provider without a solution. We have to try to give them a good solution whilst being sympathetic and understanding. These situations call for dedication to reach a result and we often give discounts to make this situation more palateable for them. Usually this results in them loving our work, continuing to use us for their IT and word of mouth. These opportunities are critical to gaining new customers.
We have started several side-businesses offering Web hosting and domain names, Vocie Over IP (VOIP) business phone systems, web development, and graphic design & branding. Our top success so far though is our customer satisfaction and the word of mouth it results in.
Our customer satisfaction. We get so many good testimonials and reviews and it results in great word of mouth. All of this leads to a much less stressfull work environment when your customers are happy!
EasyPC only employs myself but I have contractors I use for overflow. The aformentioned side-businesses have a contractor in each of them except the web hosting which I have an equal business partner in. Aim is to continue to grow and emply someone full-time in EasyPC
IT Support contractors for overflow, a web developer in the web development business and a graphic designer in the graphic design and branding business.
I had an employee for about a year who had to quit due to illness. During his employment I sent him on a several training courses and conferences for common industry software we used, trained him in all the systems EasyPC uses and acted as a bouncing board for all the jobs he worked on with daily check-ins on each of his jobs and brainstorming about how he would tackle any issues he got stuck on. He told me he was very happy with the support he had when he needed it whilst still having some autonomy in his role.
Many!!! There are a few listed on my current website but my previous website had many more. See here: https://web.archive.org/web/20220126170900/https://www.easypc.co.nz/about/testimonials/
I love getting to deal with different people from different walks of life (often in person) every day and the satisfaction I get from their appreciation when I provide them with solutions. Additionally, I’m always learning as IT changes very quickly and every job is different so I get a lot of variety.
We support several charities (The Devonport Peninsula Trust, NZ Riding for the Disabled and The Devonport Community House), we are members of the NZ Institute of IT Professionals (IITP), we sponsor North Shore United AFC football club as a whole and two teams within it and Alex is the Vice President of his weekly BNI networking group.
On a case-by-case basis we regularly provide discounts to students, new businesses starting up, people in extremely frustrating circumstances or where a degree of understanding/sympathy to their circumstances or financial ability seems appropriate.

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