While our cyber specialists are deeply knowledgeable and experienced at the technical side, much of their time is actually spent very carefully listening to what can be extremely distressed customers, so that they can understand how we can REALLY help.

Often, the first few minutes of a call is spent listening to and comforting our customers of all ages who feel a mixture of very raw emotions. Anger. Fear. Anxiety. A feeling of being vulnerable. Embarrassment. Humiliation.

Once we have spent time reassuring the caller that they are not alone, and just how sophisticated some of these cyber scams are, and only once the victim is ready, we move on to trying to resolve their problem for them.

That can take the following forms:

• If someone has fallen victim to a scam, working through the next steps to take in order to minimise its impact
• Working out with the caller whether their device has been infected with malware or whether something else is the issue
• Talking someone through the process of how to, for example, remove a virus from a device and make sure it’s clean
• Explaining how to retrieve and restore data that might be backed-up elsewhere
• Going through how to restore, update or upgrade a device’s operating system to combat malicious code

AND if the customer prefers, or is happy to

• asking the customer to install a trusted commercial app supplied by us so that we can, under their supervision, take over their device remotely and attempt recovery or restoration

So as you can see, our helpline is much more than a hub of technical excellence. Not only do we get on with the job of sorting out hardware, we very much get involved with helping customers understand what has happened, how it happened and how we can help them stop it happening again.