Tech Support - To Phone or Not To Phone?

flyingember asks: "With years of experience with tech support I have yet to come to a conclusion as to which form of support to use. Phone, or not phone. For some companies their online chat is great, I used it often with HP since you were much more likely to get through fast during a peak time of the day and the support was high quality. I recently used Philip's online chat to ask about a product feature (or lack of) and they demanded a name, zip and phone number, then claimed the product wasn't supported through chat and that I had to call when I refused to give this. I've had mixed luck with phone support. From half-hour hold times and little knowledge with some companies to well-staffed techs such as with installing a DSL account or getting the Internet on my phone. I have used email chat with some companies, and it does the job as well as email does allowing lots of detail but has lag sometimes. Which do you think is better, support over the phone or support another way?"

Comments

Google

[Geno Z Heinlein]

Which do you think is better, support over the phone or support another way?

Another way: Google.

Seriously, since Google, I haven't needed to call tech support numbers. Whatever problem I'm having generally falls into one of two categories: other people have had that problem, solved it and posted the solution to the web somewhere, or no one has ever had that problem, and in that case tech support is useless.

The only value of tech support is to the product vendor, who can then advertise that they have tech support.

Hell, I look things up on Google before I crack the manual. Google is faster, I can narrow down the search to exactly what I'm looking for, and I often come across a cool and informative website on the topic at hand.

Plus, using Google requires that you think about how to describe the problem, which can often solve it before you even need to follow a link. Tech support is kind of like "natural language" programming nonsense. Programming isn't hard because the language is hard, programming is hard because you have to specify your desires precisely. You do that without realizing it as you refine your search; the search process is educational.

Research before you buy

[Txiasaeia]

Disclaimer: I'm talking about a single customer for a home-based office, not medium-large businesses.

I research every tiny freaking little thing before I buy it. This nit-picking includes cat5 cables and different types of USB cables, and especially includes software. The result? I haven't had to contact customer support for a computer part/peripheral in five or six years.

This probably doesn't help if you're in IT for a huge company where you're pretty much given the hardware and said, "Here, make this work," but it's better than nothing. For what it's worth, if I do have any problems with features, incompatibilities or whatever, I find that the most valuable place to look is in the company's user support forums. There might be a ton of people saying that this particular laptop has dead pixels, or that a certain function in a piece of software doesn't work with a certain sound card, etc. etc. Real people with real problems is better than tech support any day. YMMV.