Mobile device support, How do you handle it? (if at all?)

[drnick5]

Hey Folks,

With the increasing use and reliance on Mobile devices, I wanted to start a discussion about how you guys handle it (if at all) I know there is a wide variety of folks on here, from techs starting out in the garage, to full blown MSP's, so I'd be interested to hear how both sides.

My biggest problem has also been the lack of any sort of remote software for a mobile device (although I've heard a few phone makers, such as samsung, are working on it). So the few clients we've helped with mobile issues, its a tedious process of walking them through things while either looking up the screens on my computer, following along with my Android phone, or borrowing a co-workers iPhone to talk a client through the screens. If you've done this before, you know what a pain this is.... I'm also thinking of starting to sell tablets, as we have a small store front next to a local market, and these could be an easy sell as we'd have 1 or 2 recommended options. (I feel like we've been getting asked the "which tablet should I buy?" questions a lot)

We deal with a good mix of Residential and small business with a handful of bigger companies. Lately we have been doing a lot of Gmail migrations for clients who are still using awful POP email from one of the local ISP's. I could easily see in some cases where some of our customers employees work entirely off of mobile devices (smartphones and tablets), leaving us no way to support them effectively.

Any thoughts, ideas or suggestions are most appreciated!

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

We really don't do much residential....so no worry there.
For many biz clients we'll walk them through over the phone, or write up a quick step by step guide for those that want to hand out instructions on setting up business e-mail to staff. I'll give them the pertinent info..such as their external mail server address, how to enter the username in domain\user format...but in recent years with Autodiscover setup properly it's really not necessary.

We're starting to get involved in managing clients fleets of smart phones through N-Ables mobile device manager....so we can track phones, and wipe them if lost...for information security. That's about it..and that's about all I wish to be bothered with when it comes to smart phones.

 

[drnick5]

Thanks for the reply! We are using GFI Max which just started rolling out Mobile device management (its VERY much in Beta, I tried it on my Nexus 5 and had the "mobile guardian" app crash several times on me.. I've uninstalled it for the time being). Even when it was working, it didn't give my any info in my dashboard besides the deice (all the other fields were blank, such as useage and apps).

The document isn't a bad idea, however we constantly run into foolish problems that our technology illiterate clients can't / don't want to handle. (most common one I run into is trying to download the Gmail app from the app store on an iPhone, it prompts you for your AppleID and password, even tho its a free app...its crazy how many of my clients with iPhones have NO CLUE what their AppleID password is!)

We are currently trying to ramp up our MSP offering, after doing it for less then a year I can see how its an effective long term strategy of recurring revenue vs break/fix. But I'm slightly nervous about mobile devices cutting into some of that leaving us with no easy way to support them. I don't see this happening in a year or 2, but in 5 years? who knows.

 

[callthatgirl]

I mostly do iPhone and Android support for aftercare with my hosted exchange/MO365 transitions. I have 2 iPhones, one with iOS7 and iOS6, so I can navigate them correctly for setup.

I have never had any other requests for phone support.

 

[neotechnet]

I'll support phones as far as configuring email, be it Google Apps or an in house exchange server and the occasional problem syncing contacts / calendar with the above service. Besides that I can't think of a single time I was asked to troubleshoot or configure any other issue and I really wouldn't be inclined to do anything.

 

[TenYardFight]

We really don't do much residential....so no worry there.
For many biz clients we'll walk them through over the phone, or write up a quick step by step guide for those that want to hand out instructions on setting up business e-mail to staff. I'll give them the pertinent info..such as their external mail server address, how to enter the username in domain\user format...but in recent years with Autodiscover setup properly it's really not necessary.

We're starting to get involved in managing clients fleets of smart phones through N-Ables mobile device manager....so we can track phones, and wipe them if lost...for information security. That's about it..and that's about all I wish to be bothered with when it comes to smart phones.

Stonecat, I've been playing with GFI's MDM. Based on what features we turn on, which would be based on the signed policy our client obtained from their employee, we can do the following:

On android phones, after the owner of the phone installs our app, we can see:

1.) All the technical specs of the device. i.e. amount of storage, how much storage uses, RAM, processor, battery carrier, ICCID, IMEI, etc
2.) The amount of data usage
3.) Each call and its duration
4.) Each text, just the phone number, not the content.
5.) Which apps are installed
6.) The Location, as reported by GPS

We can also send commands to the device:

1.) Lock
2.) Set new lock code
3.) Clear lock code
4.) Wipe device


Is that similar to what your RMM allows? Have you sold this service to clients yet? At what price? I'm thinking $10/month per device with breaks starting at 10 devices.

EDIT - Just found the other thread about this. Wow, N-able's offering is far superior. Specifically, these features are really cool:

Historical locations can be plotted on a map
Selected data (for example, Exchange emails) can be wiped
Email set-up in just a few clicks

I hope GFI can do this someday...