Only Ever seem to Get External Drives In - help

[ontariotech]

I run a small data recovery business as an adjunct to my IT Support business.

90% of the enquiries I get concern external hard drives that have been dropped and quite frankly I am sick of it. Even though the business is aimed at data recovery for the small business market, I keep on getting calls like "I need all my Ipod music recovered" or " I need from our trip to Florida last year recovered". Needless to say - most of these customers expect the recovery to be done for pittance.

The website I have was designed with the small / medium sized business in mind. It holds an excellent postion in google, has quality content and is very professinal looking etc.

But how do I stop all of these "mickeymouse" jobs flowing in?

[CK]

Unfortunately it's a fact of life in this business and I'd rather spend 5 minutes explaining the problem/solution/costs than be rude to the customer. Perhaps you should indicate the likely costs upfront, early in the conversation and if it's way out of their price range, you'll soon find out and you won't waste too much time. Remember, this customer may have data that needs recovering in the future that warrants the cost or may recommend you to somebody else.

[ontariotech]

I'm not rude at all with them far from...I am cordial but very upfront with them.

For example, I might say to them...

"I have not seen the drive, but from the symptoms you describe, the problem is likely to be X and we normally charge Y to do that type of recovery"

They then are shocked...and promise they will phone back. Most them never do!

Compared to the FINAL Price of My Competitors ...my work is competitively priced but I am just too upfront and honest with them when they first call.

[harddrivespecialist]

Its better to give a person some idea of the price and a likely type of damage, if possible, otherwise you will be doing a lot of extra work and explanation to do when they will visit you.

I always trying to mention a minimum price customers should be expecting and about a 40% of them never call back. Most of those people expect a recovery cost to be from $20 to $50.

[BlackST]

Make a price list for diagnose, logical, physical. From min to max. So they have an idea.

[poehere]

Direct them to your web page and put in a questionaire that needs to be filled out and submitted to you. You can then send price quote to them and if interested tell them it is an estimate of damage and can range from x dollars to x dollars depending on how badly they have damaged their drive. Problem people think that data recovery is easy to do. Had one client who has a pre amp problem with his drive and is not willing to pay more than 150 to 200 dollars to recover his data off the drive. Sorry it is not possible and you need to be tell them this and if they do not want then give back drive with fee attached for your time and efforts then they might stop all of it. Or if you do not want them on web site send them email with questionaire on it and price quotes to follow. Might save you time in the end

[BlackST]

Agree. I always ask evaluation fee to end users.

[ontariotech]

Obviously, most jobs "big" data recovery companies must be from referral from I.T support companies or I.T depts. of large companies? Because if all they got were external drives with Ipod music and photos to be recovered, they could not sustain the costs.

[zed]

Troubleshoot the problem over the phone, give them an estimate price and tell they need to pay an evaluation fee for any 'clicking or buzzing' hard disk. This way for the 'time waster' customers you at least get something for your time to test the disk and explain more to them. 90% of my customers also simply come in for a free quote, are shocked but just came in becuase the quote was free. Once we started charging for a quote for any 'dropped disk' we get less time wasters and only the serious customers with money to spend.

[Money fan]

But it's not always easy to understand how is time waster and who is a serious customer. Once I had a customer, obvious time waster, he came to me several times, asking for quotes, after I told that quotes won't be free now, he gave his drive and I recovered it. It was my favourite 7200.

[Keatah]

Data recovery for the small guy is such a rip-off. None of it, if done by a true professional operation is really affordable. Best educate them early on with backups. I learned backup operations in grade school in the 1970's. Beginning with audio cassettes and magnet strips for the programmable ti-59.

[einstein9]

Keatah, i noticed that you are replying to 2009 posts
may i know WHY?

[Keatah]

Just something to do. no other reason.