A local tech company founder hopes 2023 is a year of growth for the company’s services and outreach amid the digital momentum of recent years.
Grant Austin, along with his wife Katie, founded RGA Tech Support in 2017 with somewhat of a unique mission — to provide empowerment through tech-focused education.
In addition to providing a variety of tech support services such as computer and mobile device support, new technology installations, Wi-Fi support, smart home integration and scam assistance, RGA Tech Support offers workshops and training to empower customers.
“I don’t think it’s a natural focus for an IT company, and that’s a niche we’re really excited about filling,” Austin said.
Austin’s own excitement for technology originated from his childhood. His parents operated a retirement home while he was growing up, and Austin found a way to incorporate his growing passion into assistance for others.
“I realized there was a huge opportunity to help with VCRs, clock programming, TV troubleshooting and other stuff for the individuals who called my parents’ facility home,” he said. “I spent a lot of my childhood rolling up my sleeves and helping them understand technology as it was evolving.”
Austin began to witness a greater need to help older adults with evolving technology when he took a job at an Apple Store after college.
“There were a lot of people coming in for support and bringing in items that were not Apple products and had issues we could not help with in the store,” he said.
Now, while the company has expanded its client base to serve some small businesses and other individuals, most of RGA Tech Support’s clients are older adults. Austin said the company hopes to assist them in getting the most out of their technology and combat a key barrier.
“Fear is very much a real barrier we handle with our clients,” Austin said. “If they push the wrong button, if they open the wrong email, if they do any number of things, the fear is that they’ll get their device to a point where it cannot function, and they won’t have the resources to assist.”
Austin said the company’s approach is intentional one-on-one support, making sure clients are “in the driver’s seat” and guiding them through the process.
“We would be very capable of coming in, fixing all the problems and then driving away,” Austin said. “But our goal is to make sure that if this happens again, if they have to cross this bridge again, they’re confident to say, ‘Okay, this is how I got myself out of this situation last time.’”
RGA Tech Support offers in-home assistance for clients as well as support out of its office at 601 Maryland Ave. NE in Grand Rapids. The company currently rents the space from Tech Defenders, which opened the new facility in 2019.
Having the new location gave RGA the opportunity to host its workshops, which include topics such as iPhone 101, digital security, smartphone photography, an introduction to streaming services and the history of the electric car.
In light of the pandemic, Austin said the company had to pivot its business approach to remote support via phone call or FaceTime, which helped solve issues quickly as they came up.
For RGA’s older and retired clients, the pandemic also led to a unique opportunity in terms of their technology journeys.
“For a lot of our senior clients, technology is something that landed in their lifetime and really exploded, and if they missed the initial wave, trying to jump in was overwhelming,” Austin said. “Some of them, depending on what their careers were, they had individuals that could assist them for a long time, like at a help desk. But once retirement came, they suddenly had to start crossing some of these bridges by themselves.
“What the pandemic really forced them to do is, rather than being concerned and overwhelmed by the fear of messing something up, some of them really had to buckle down and learn some new skills on communicating. A lot of them started using Zoom to attend classes to fill that social need. So, a lot of them sharpened those technology skills during the pandemic.”
Now, with increased online activity leading to more opportunities for scams, Austin said he hopes the company can continue to be a resource to empower clients facing those risks.
“With the prevalence of scams and spam messages that are hitting the senior population specifically, if we can be proactive and make sure they know they have a resource to call on if something just doesn’t feel right, I would count 2023 as a good year if we can continue to do that,” he said.
With his own journey from childhood to today, Austin said it has been rewarding to use his passion to help others.
“It’s a good feeling to have your vocation and your sense of purpose validated and have clients excited about what you’re doing,” Austin said. “I hope we can grow this to a point where we can serve just as many people as we can.”
