In the grand scheme of things, the thing that we do at our Indianapolis small business computer support company is to help our customers do whatever they do a little bit better. Often, particularly with new network support customers, that amounts to nothing more than keeping their computer network running without crashes. After we've worked with them for a while, that becomes less exciting to them because they become accustomed to the idea that their business computer system should work without unplanned down time. That's when we have to start working to earn our keep.

Sometimes we do obvious things like informing our computer consulting customers about the status of their IT system. We keep them up to date on the age and status of their equipment and help plan replacements, refreshments, and upgrades as they go about budgeting. At other times, we move a bit out of the normal things considered outsourced computer support to areas like online marketing and social media. Every now and then we really step outside the normal envelope and do research that only touches computer support because it's done online. A recent example was a question posed to me by a customer who received several gift cards from friends and vendors at Christmas. He knew he would never visit many of these stores and wanted to know if there were options other than "re-gifting" these cards.

We took the challenge and, believe it or not, there is another option. We found a website, giftcardrescue.com, that allows you to trade in your gift cards for cash or other cards. Sure, my customer could have spent a few minutes online himself and perhaps found this site. I could have told him that I didn't know of anything other than re-gifting and moved on to my next task. But the reality of our outsourced computer service is that we do what our customers need us to do so that they can be more productive. Besides, now that I've found this option, I can share it with the rest of my Indianapolis computer consulting customers and perhaps help them with a small problem as well.