Customers Rate PC Vendors' Tech Support

VorfeedTech writes "News.com has a story on consumers' satisfaction with tech support. The article goes on to mention ConsumerReports' survey results comparing a few of the major PC vendors. Apple rated the best for tech support. I guess this is where they think different (TM)."

Comments

Reverse would be fun...

[MosesJones]

Getting Tech Support to rate the customers. Which company has the stupidest clients, and is there a relationship between quality of service and the intelligence of the people receiving it.

A Universal Truth...

[RomSteady]

Those in the know about any subject almost always think those who are not in the know are complete idiots.

When you are supporting something, you become a genre expert, and as such, have a domain of knowledge about the product that few outside of tech support could hope to attain.

Besides, when you've worked tech support, you only remember the bad calls, never the good ones.

I used to be a big Dell fan until...

[BlackMesaResearchFac]

...I had to use their customer support.

I've had two Dell computers without problem. The PCs worked fine for the duration of their life with me(2-3 years) and all was good.

This past winter I was going to buy another one only I had a complete brain fart about the limit on my card since I had never used it to make a purchase over $100 online.

So they send me an e-mail back saying the bank denied my purchase but did not give them a reason and I was to call Dell back, yadda yadda. So after figuring out about the limit from my card company I call Dell back and explain. I called the number they told me to call in the e-mail but after waiting 20 minutes to talk to them they had to rout me through to someone else because it wasn't the right department. So I wait another 20 minutes and I explain the problem to the next person...oh wait, it's not their department so they route me some place else. So I wait another 20 minutes and I explain the problem to the next person...oh wait, it's not their department so they route me some place else. Only this time my connection is disconnected...

I was so irritated I just forgot about the entire thing. In 2 days they had to release my order (as said in the e-mail) and I never did get a Dell. I built my own computer (thank goodness).

This could have all been avoided had I not bought the computer on the last day of a significant sale (free shipping -$90 plus a free upgrade or two, so I was saving quite a bit). Because of that I couldn't just cancel the order and configure and buy again.

In any event, that entire ordeal soured me to Dell.

After a great experience building my own computer months later, I'd never go back unless perhaps I ever bought a laptop.

Slashdot readers opinion not representative

[YeeHaW_Jelte]

I don't think we slashdot readers can say much about the quality of customer service for a simple reason: the average slashdot reader probably has a larger understanding of computers than the average customer service employee.
Point in case: I mailed compaq a few weeks ago, after I installed SuSE 8.0, because my computer was freezing, and the caps and scroll lock lights were blinking when this happened. I hoped the people at compaq could tell me if this was a diagnostic code.
The support was pretty good; I got a response to my email in less than 15 minutes. I find that excellent. However, the poor guy at the support centre couldn't get a grip on what I was saying, because he consequently underestimated my knowledge of computers. His first response was to make me use the quick restore cd's, which would erase my hard disk and repartition it and reinstall the win98 se that originally came with the computer.
My point is that if you're a professional yourself, your either better than the support guy or the support guy is not going to take you serious enough. Either way you won't be helped properly. That's why slashdot readers can't really have a representative opinion on help desks; help desks are aimed at nitwits (as far as their computer use goes anyhow).

Re:How accurate is this thing?

[Draoi]

[..] comparing an Apple customer's perception of Apple support with a Dell customer's perception of Dell support is hardly an accurate picture - the Dell customer has no particular love for the company.

Ask yourself the question, why not??

Re:Who is doing the support.

[Draoi]

Is it an apple employee trained to do tech support or an external support employee trained to support apple?

[OBDisclaimer: I work for Apple, in fact the Euro support centre is next-door but right now I'm speaking just for myself.]

Yes, Apple have full-time, trained employees working on tech support. They do in both the US support site (Sacramento, CA) and in Europe (Cork, Ireland).

By the way, every new Mac sold also contains a diagnostic CD. The user can simply insert it, boot in 5 seconds and get a result back for tech support without even needing a supporting OS!! Kewl or wha' ....

Re:How accurate is this thing?

[Matthias Wiesmann]

This seems ridiculously high to me. 5% of computers are unusable in the first month? No explanation is give of what constitutes "unusable". Does it mean the hard drive is physically crapped out or something like "the Internet is broken again"?

When we bought a bunch of PCs to build a cluster here in the lab, one out of 16 did not work (I think it was the motherboard, I can't remember), while 16 is not exactly a good sampling, the failure rate was above 5%. Between hardware duds, shippement errors, installation errors and configuration problems, 5% seems quite resonable to me. While the average /. guy could probably solve those problems, the average user cannot. Also note, that "the internet is not working" is a good definition of unusable if you bought the computer to go on the internet. When rating customer satisfaction having an objective reference makes little sense.

Furthermore, Apple is a terrible company to include in this kind of survey. A very large percentage of their customers are Mac enthusiasts. Not that there's anything wrong with that, it's just that comparing an Apple customer's perception of Apple support with a Dell customer's perception of Dell support is hardly an accurate picture - the Dell customer has no particular love for the company.

Huh? Because Apple customers like Apple products they should be excluded of a customer satisfaction survey?

You argue that because they are Mac enthousiast they will have a better perception of Apple's tech support. Has it occured to you that maybe Mac enthousiast are enthousiastic because of the quality of Apple's tech support and that the probable reason that the Dell customer has no particular love for the company is because their products are not very satisfying...

Re:Good ones...

[Dolly_Llama]

I make it habit to compliment good service wherever I receive it. When you find a person who is actually nice and personable, make sure to take their name down. Then write a letter to their supervisor. Not many people actually do this, so a single letter mentioning superior performance can make a difference on their next review.

This isn't just for phone service. For instance, I just replaced my battery at Sears (at Vallco in Cupertino). A guy named Frank provided superior service and proved himself an all around decent human being. I wrote a letter to the manager and would recommend anyone to him and to that Sears.