Tech help that’s Right Click away

A CLICK AWAY: The Right Click owner Jeremy Walsh says that people skills are as important as tech skills for business success. “You can learn the technology, but you have to be … patient and be able to answer the same question over and over,” he said. / PBN PHOTO/TRACY JENKINS
A CLICK AWAY: The Right Click owner Jeremy Walsh says that people skills are as important as tech skills for business success. “You can learn the technology, but you have to be … patient and be able to answer the same question over and over,” he said. / PBN PHOTO/TRACY JENKINS

When you call The Right Click, you’ll hear the company’s telephone greeting offering to “drag you clicking and screaming into the 21st century.”
That’s likely to be welcome, if you’re a small business threatened with a dip in the bottom line due to a computer glitch or an individual with an “everything-stops-until-it’s-fixed” computer problem.
Being a computer-support service and rescue squad is a business in demand in Rhode Island, especially if it’s done with The Right Click’s overriding view of “people first, technology follows.”
“For the first six years, our business was doubling every year,” said The Right Click owner Jeremy Walsh. “We did not go down at all during the recession – we continued to grow. We’re still growing. We’re up about 10 or 15 percent over last year, even with opening the new location in Providence.”
Walsh left a computer-consulting job in New York and the high cost of living in nearby Danbury, Conn., to launch The Right Click in South Kingstown.
The Connecticut-New York region was just too expensive for Walsh and his wife, an artist who does museum-quality work, to buy a house.
“Around Westchester County we would have had to pay half-a-million dollars for a shack on a postage-stamp [sized] piece of land,” said Walsh.
“My wife and I visited my father-in-law in South Kingstown one weekend and kind of on a lark said, ‘Hey, let’s see if we can buy a house and both start our own businesses,’ ” said Walsh.
“We found a Realtor and said, ‘We have $200,000. What can we buy?’ We saw about 30 houses and fell in love with an old mill house in [South Kingstown],” said Walsh.
In addition to his computer-consulting experience, Walsh was armed with a 1996 bachelor’s degree in philosophy from the University of Connecticut, where he took one computer course and began tinkering with computers with a friend who worked in technology for dining services.
“I learned about networking and it was interesting. I found out I was pretty good at computers. I’m self-taught,” he said.
Even in the world of 21st-century technology services, wearing out your shoe leather is still one way to launch a business. “I started on my own, literally driving around the state stopping in office parks and knocking on doors,” said Walsh. “I printed out these little fliers on my inkjet printer, picked a town and went to the businesses there. I just went in and said, ‘I’m new in town. Do you need any help with your computers?’ I still have two of the clients I got from knocking on doors.”
About four years into the business, with a newborn and people calling to leave messages all night long, Walsh realized the company required an office, so The Right Click moved from his garage to space in South County Commons.
The business grew, with clients ranging from one person who spilled wine on a keyboard to the main clientele of companies with 25 to 50 computers, sometimes up to about 100 employees.
The wide client base, in terms of types of service and geography, naturally led to a second location in Wayland Square in Providence, which opened in September 2013.
“We have 15 or 20 business clients within a few miles of our new location in Wayland Square,” said Walsh. “Our guys lose two hours every time they have to drive down to South County to pick up or drop off a computer.
Nearly all employees of The Right Click are from Rhode Island and Walsh’s business model is that all employees are full time, with health insurance for the entire family paid 100 percent by the company.
“I consider all of my employees my family and I want their families to be protected and safe,” said Walsh.
That perspective goes along with Walsh’s mission for The Right Click.
“We try to take the geek out of computers. People have experiences where the computer people don’t pay attention to them or talk over their heads,” said Walsh. “We do exactly the opposite. I hire people based mainly on attitude.
“You can learn the technology, but you have to be kind and patient and be able to answer the same question over and over,” he said. “You may have heard it a hundred times, but for that person, it’s the first time they’ve asked the question.” •

COMPANY PROFILE
The Right Click
OWNER: Jeremy Walsh
TYPE OF BUSINESS: Computer support and networking
LOCATION: 35 South County Commons Way, South Kingstown, and new location at 144 Wayland Ave., Providence
EMPLOYEES: 17
YEAR ESTABLISHED: 2002
ANNUAL SALES: $2 million

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