A customer at my bench taught me to ask "what did you do right before this?" and now I close tickets twice as fast

Sam Ward · 2026-10-09T12:45:04.270584+00:00

Last Tuesday a guy came into the repair shop on Grand Ave with a laptop that would not boot, and instead of running my usual diagnostic script I just asked him what he did right before it died. He told me he had been watching a movie in bed and rolled over onto the power cable, which bent the barrel jack and shorted the board. That one question saved me from a 40 minute teardown and a $60 bench fee I would have charged for nothing, and we just replaced the jack for $35. Now I lead every intake with it, and last week it caught a desktop that a kid had poured apple juice into while it was still running. It turns out most folks already know what broke, they just do not think it matters. Do you all do a verbal history first or go straight to pulling the case?

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A customer at my bench taught me to ask "what did you do right before this?" and now I close tickets twice as fast | Computer Technicians - Rigidtalk