by Sarah Bravo, Tekserve Staff

“It can be a lot of fun to help fix computers, but it’s really way more fun to help fix problems.”

Ben Casey
Joined Tekserve: 2005
Hometown: Bel Air, Maryland
Currently Lives: Williamsburg, Brooklyn

When I asked Ben Casey what his unique “specialty” is at Tekserve, he pleasantly surprised me. Knowing that he is a veteran of the retail floor as well as of the technician’s bench, I expected him to speak to his years of customer service and hands-on repair experience — or perhaps he would mention the thousands of hours he’s logged creating music with Ableton Live, one of the most innovative programs currently available for the Mac platform.

Instead, he named his positive attitude. For someone whose job it is to essentially alleviate Tekserve’s business clients of their most tedious and time-consuming IT troubles, this is a rare and precious quality indeed.

Here’s how Ben describes his work with companies facing a myriad of IT problems:

How Help Desk Shares the Load

My role is mostly focused on taking the burden off the IT Departments at companies. It frees those IT people to do what only they can: to provide specific care to the unique systems of that business. So what I help take care of — and take off their plate — are common annoyances like: “Why doesn’t my mouse work?”, “My computer’s making a funny noise,” and “How can I re-arrange the order of the pages in his PDF?”.

Assistance Without Limits

I think one of the huge values that Tekserve has in providing support to companies is that we can take care of all the products in the ecosystem. You can actually call one Tekserve number, and if the problem is with Acrobat, we can help you. If the problem is with Microsoft Office, we can help you. If the problem is with your Mac and the Finder, we can help you. And so on and so forth. Sometimes we find that the problem is caused by something you would never expect. For example, if you’re calling in because your web browser is running slowly — but the problem is actually that your hard drive is about to break and we need to rescue all of your data quickly — we can help you.

A Supportive Community

Tekserve has something unique. It’s very rare that in a company of 200+ employees, you can walk up to any one of them and be able to hit it off and make great friends. That’s rare in any business — that you have so many likeminded people that believe that the experience you have when you walk into a store or interact with a business should be an honest one, and that you should interact as equals and treat people with respect. That can be a real difficult thing to find.

Experts on the “Heart” of the Creative Industries

The computer has become the centerpiece of so much creative activity in the world. The heart of a modern recording studio isn’t a tape machine anymore, nor is it a mixing desk — it’s a computer. The heart of modern film editing isn’t reels and razorblades — it’s a computer. So we here at Tekserve are in this really cool position where we have an incredibly skilled knowledge base about the centerpiece of the tools used in the biggest creative industries in the world. We have a chance to provide a great deal of knowledge and experience, and to help provide solutions.