A neighborhood tech company founder hopes 2023 is a yr of expansion for the company’s providers and outreach amid the digital momentum of modern many years.
Grant Austin, along with his spouse Katie, founded RGA Tech Assist in 2017 with to some degree of a exceptional mission — to offer empowerment by tech-focused instruction.
In addition to furnishing a range of tech guidance solutions this sort of as personal computer and mobile gadget assist, new technologies installations, Wi-Fi guidance, smart property integration and rip-off assistance, RGA Tech Assistance presents workshops and schooling to empower clients.
“I do not assume it’s a organic emphasis for an IT enterprise, and which is a area of interest we’re genuinely excited about filling,” Austin explained.
Austin’s very own enjoyment for technological know-how originated from his childhood. His mothers and fathers operated a retirement home even though he was rising up, and Austin found a way to incorporate his escalating passion into aid for other people.
“I recognized there was a large possibility to assistance with VCRs, clock programming, Television set troubleshooting and other things for the people today who termed my parents’ facility house,” he stated. “I spent a good deal of my childhood rolling up my sleeves and helping them understand know-how as it was evolving.”
Austin commenced to witness a larger need to support older grown ups with evolving engineering when he took a career at an Apple Retailer after higher education.
“There have been a good deal of folks coming in for guidance and bringing in goods that were being not Apple goods and had difficulties we could not assistance with in the retail outlet,” he explained.
Now, although the organization has expanded its customer base to provide some modest enterprises and other people, most of RGA Tech Support’s shoppers are more mature grown ups. Austin mentioned the corporation hopes to guide them in receiving the most out of their technologies and battle a key barrier.
“Fear is pretty much a genuine barrier we cope with with our purchasers,” Austin stated. “If they push the wrong button, if they open up the erroneous electronic mail, if they do any variety of items, the anxiety is that they’ll get their product to a position the place it cannot functionality, and they won’t have the sources to support.”
Austin explained the company’s strategy is intentional one particular-on-one assistance, building sure shoppers are “in the driver’s seat” and guiding them by way of the process.
“We would be extremely able of coming in, fixing all the problems and then driving absent,” Austin stated. “But our target is to make certain that if this happens yet again, if they have to cross this bridge again, they’re self-confident to say, ‘Okay, this is how I got myself out of this circumstance very last time.’”
RGA Tech Assist provides in-property support for customers as properly as assist out of its office at 601 Maryland Ave. NE in Grand Rapids. The business at present rents the house from Tech Defenders, which opened the new facility in 2019.
Acquiring the new site gave RGA the possibility to host its workshops, which consist of subjects this kind of as Iphone 101, digital stability, smartphone pictures, an introduction to streaming companies and the history of the electric car or truck.
In gentle of the pandemic, Austin claimed the firm had to pivot its small business solution to distant support by means of cellphone contact or FaceTime, which helped resolve challenges swiftly as they arrived up.
For RGA’s more mature and retired clientele, the pandemic also led to a one of a kind option in terms of their know-how journeys.
“For a good deal of our senior shoppers, engineering is anything that landed in their lifetime and truly exploded, and if they skipped the preliminary wave, striving to soar in was overwhelming,” Austin said. “Some of them, depending on what their occupations were being, they experienced men and women that could guide them for a extended time, like at a assistance desk. But at the time retirement came, they suddenly had to start out crossing some of these bridges by themselves.
“What the pandemic seriously pressured them to do is, rather than getting concerned and overwhelmed by the fear of messing one thing up, some of them genuinely experienced to buckle down and study some new capabilities on communicating. A large amount of them commenced working with Zoom to attend lessons to fill that social want. So, a lot of them sharpened these know-how skills during the pandemic.”
Now, with enhanced on line exercise major to much more alternatives for ripoffs, Austin explained he hopes the corporation can go on to be a source to empower purchasers facing people risks.
“With the prevalence of ripoffs and spam messages that are hitting the senior population particularly, if we can be proactive and make certain they know they have a resource to phone on if something just doesn’t come to feel right, I would count 2023 as a very good 12 months if we can proceed to do that,” he said.
With his individual journey from childhood to now, Austin said it has been fulfilling to use his passion to support some others.
“It’s a very good feeling to have your vocation and your perception of intent validated and have clients fired up about what you are carrying out,” Austin stated. “I hope we can develop this to a stage where we can serve just as a lot of men and women as we can.”
