Author: Jordan Smith

As of 7pm 25th of March, the government have made additional decisions regarding which businesses are considered essential during the lockdown.

They have official stated on the covid19.govt.nz website: “Critical support services to ensure businesses and workers can continue working from home are considered to be essential. This includes functions such as IT and Payroll.”

Given this decision, I will be able to continue with onsite appointments, albeit with strict criteria as to whether the onsite appointment is absolutely necessary:

• The issue is not able to be resolved using our remote assistance system
• The issue can only be resolved by coming onsite
• The issue is essential for you to continue working during the lockdown
• You or anyone in your household is not unwell or hasn’t returned from overseas in the last 14 days

If an onsite appointment is scheduled, the following precautions will be taken:

• If there is a hardware fault with the device itself, upon arrival I will collect the device at the front door with at least 2 meters distance maintained. I will then take it away to work on it at home and return it to you after it is fixed using the same protocol as pickup.
• If there is an issue with wifi or internet, and your internet provider is Concentric, or your internet provider is not the problem and the issue is with the network in your home, I will ask that you please stay in an area of the house where I am not to maintain full physical distancing. 
• If the issue is with a peripheral of the computer (eg mouse/keyboard, screen, printer) that can’t be solved remotely, then I will ask that you please stay in another room of the house from where the devices are situated while I am onsite. 
• While in your home during the appointment, I will sanitise any surfaces or devices I need to touch using wet wipes. Before my arrival, could you please ensure that a window is left open for approx 1/2 hour so that the room can air. Also please ensure any internal doors are open so that I can limit the surfaces I need to touch.
• I will spend as much time as necessary to solve the problem that requires my presence onsite. Once the device is at a point where remote assistance can be performed, I will finish the appointment and anything further can be completed using remote assisance.

Thank you for your understanding here. We certainly are in unpreceidented times and these measures are necessary to help contain the spread of COVID-19. 

A large portion of my work day at Concentric is visiting clients, and given the new recommendations from the government regarding physical distancing where possible, I have decided to make a few changes.

From now, where work can be completed remotely, it will be done so. There will still be a few situations where onsite work is required such as picking up or dropping off equipment and needing to physically work on devices. In these cases I am still happy to come out, but if you are unwell with a cough, fever, or shortness of breath please tell me before the appointment so we can work out an alternative solution.

A lot of the work I do can be achieved by a remote session and it is very easy to do this. Please call or send an email and I will make a time to do this remotely.

If you are needing assistance with work from home solutions, let me know – I have some great tricks up my sleeve.

Also, in the coming days I will be launching a new product as part of the Cloud PBX services a video conferencing and virtual meeting room system called Backpulse. It allows you to meet with people face to face via video and audio link across the internet. You can have as many people as you want dial into the virtual meeting from anywhere in the world.

I will be sending more information about Backpulse on Monday, and if you are interested please email me so i can put you oat the top of my list.

Stay safe everyone!

Jordan Smith,
Concentric