It’s amazing how quickly remote work became the new normal in 2020. We humans may not be perfect, but we are adaptable.

Need me to work from home? No problem. Want me on the road? Yes, please. Expect me to know how to fix my laptop when it suddenly fizzles out? … Not so much.

Even before COVID-19 hit, we here at LogMeIn were thinking about remote work a lot. The truth is, work has been more distributed and global for a long time.

A technology-enabled remote workforce

Think about office work in my parents’ era…You had a desk with a phone on it. A calculator. Maybe a computer terminal, depending on the decade. A filing cabinet. There was a fax machine down the hall in the printer room. Meeting rooms. An actual water cooler to gather around (for gossip purposes). It was a big deal to dial people in from satellite offices. If your printer was on the fritz, you called in a professional. He arrived a few days later with a big toolbox, a sore back, and an invoice pad.

Now I can hold all of that and so much more in the palm of my hand. I can hike through the woods while I meet with my team on my mobile phone. They can be hiking through the woods too, at the very same time, wherever they are. We can view a report together while we do it. And while we’re on the call I can check the shipping status for the new hiking boots I ordered last week.

It’s kind of glorious, kind of astonishing. Work used to be a place. Technology has made it a capacity.

On the other hand, this also means that workers rely on technology more than ever before. So when a technical issue pops up, it can halt us in our tracks.

Remote workers need remote support

Fixing the problem quickly is obviously job number one, so we can get back to our hike work. But as a remote support tech company, we’ve seen how hard this can actually be—not because the issue is complicated, but because of friction in the resolution process itself. And on top of that resolution friction, there are also internal process frictions that prevent IT organizations from evolving in ways that let them deliver better results.

The good news is that remote support can eliminate all this unnecessary friction—when it’s done right. But having remote support capabilities isn’t enough on its own. To eliminate friction, a remote support solution needs to meet certain imperatives.

We detail these imperatives in our new ebook. It’s an easy read, and a great way to prioritize your remote support requirements.

What friction is your IT help desk dealing with today? How is this unique moment in history-changing your ability to resolve workers’ issues? Where is your IT department on its digital transformation journey? Let us know in the comments below.