With rising gasoline prices, on-site tech support is beginning to feel the crunch of the tech services sector costs. I should know … with gas hovering around $3.00 per gallon for the el-cheapo regular unleaded, this is a nightmare for someone on the road alot. Customers who have never had to pay for mileage on service calls before are now being squeezed for additional costs to cover the added expense. The bottom line is that with these increases and more increases in sight, who is the real winner here? Is there a benefit for the customer or the service provider?
When gasoline prices rise, everything goes up. Like it or not, that’s just the way it is in our service driven economy. Everything come to us via some sort of gasoline driven transportation. Even tech support. If you decide to carry your equipment in to the shop, you still have your own added gasoline costs. But, also consider that the costs of the parts will eventually go up, because the cost of transporting them from the manufacturer to the warehouse to the tech shop will also rise, added on to the final bill of the end user of the parts.
When you consider all of these factors, on-site tech support is not quite the win-win scenario that it was just a few years ago. At this point I think it would be safe to say that nobody wins in our current situation … unless it is the billion dollar oil and gas companies, who are still churning out a nice healthy profit each quarter.