The short answer
Ask for remote support when the problem is with software, an account, email, permissions, or a machine that still turns on. Ask for an on-site visit when the problem is physical — a machine that will not power on, a failed drive, cabling, a dead switch, or Wi-Fi that fails in one part of the building. Roughly eight in ten reported faults are the first kind, and remote is faster and cheaper for all of them.
The single question that decides it
Does the machine still turn on, and does the office still have internet? If both are yes, start remotely. There is almost no fault that meets those two conditions and still needs a person in the room to diagnose — and if it turns out to need one, ten minutes of remote work will have identified exactly which part, which makes the visit shorter.
Choose remote when
- Email has stopped, or Outlook keeps asking for a password
- A machine has become slow but still works
- Software will not install, launch or update
- A printer, scanner or mapped drive has disappeared for one person
- Someone cannot get into a shared folder they used to reach
- A new starter needs accounts and access set up
- An email looks suspicious and you want a second opinion
- Anything at all where you can still see a desktop
Choose on-site when
- Nothing happens when you press the power button
- A drive is clicking, grinding, or the machine will not boot past a logo
- The screen is cracked, or a keyboard or fan has failed
- A switch, router or access point has gone dark
- Wi-Fi works at one end of the building and not the other
- New cabling, a new desk, a new office or a move
- Hardware needs to be physically installed or swapped
The exception worth knowing
If the whole office has lost internet, remote support cannot reach you at all — by definition. That is an on-site call from the start, and it is the one situation where ringing rather than emailing genuinely matters.
Cost, honestly
A remote session has no travel in it, so it is billed for the time spent and nothing else. A callout absorbs travel and usually a minimum charge, so a ten-minute fix does not cost ten minutes. That difference is why we push people towards remote first — not out of convenience, but because the same result costs less.
Where a visit is genuinely needed, the remote-first approach still saves money: we arrive knowing the fault and carrying the right part instead of diagnosing on your clock. What IT support costs covers the pricing models in full.
How to describe the problem so you get the right one
Three sentences is usually enough, and these three answers save more time than anything else you can do:
- Is it one person or everyone? This single answer eliminates half the possibilities immediately.
- What changed recently — an update, a new starter, a new supplier, a power cut, a move?
- Does the machine still turn on, and can you still reach the internet from it?
Providers who ask these questions are not stalling. They are deciding whether to connect in the next five minutes or get in a vehicle, and getting that call right is most of the value.
What we do by default
Remote first, always, unless the description makes a visit obviously necessary. If the remote session establishes in the first few minutes that hands are required, there is no charge for that time and we book the visit. It is the arrangement that keeps the incentive pointing the right way — see remote IT support and where we work on site.
Is on-site support better for complicated problems?
Not usually. Complexity almost always lives in software and configuration, which is exactly what remote handles well. Physical problems tend to be simple to diagnose and require presence only for the swap. The correlation people assume between "serious" and "needs a visit" is largely backwards.
Can you tell over the phone which one we need?
Most of the time, yes, from the three questions above. Where it is genuinely ambiguous we start remotely, because that is the cheaper way to find out.
We are outside your driving radius. Does that limit us to remote?
For day-to-day support, remote covers it fully — see Australia-wide remote support. For the physical side we diagnose remotely and brief a local technician, so nobody is guessing on your floor.