The Facts of Life: Technical Support

Let's have a frank discussion about technical support. This article may surprise you because in it we will openly confess that we are not perfect and that some customers have issues with M-Tech's technical support. We know - this is pretty unorthodox. The line you'll get from any other laptop manufacturer is, “Our tech support is perfect and you'll love it!” The truth of the matter is this: there is no technical support anywhere that satisfies everyone

There are two ways in which a manufacturer can handle technical support for their products. Each has its benefits, and each has its drawbacks. Let's take a look at each so that you can see why M-Tech chooses to handle tech support the way we do.

The Help Desk

The first way to handle tech support is to use a "help desk.” You all know what this is; you call a toll free number and after much hoop jumping you are speaking with someone in India or someplace else equally far away. Next you are asked a series of questions from a list – a list that is, by the way, written in their second language. Don't get us wrong – we wish we were all bilingual too, but it is unlikely that these employees comprehend the value of these questions as fully as you need them to. They read from a flow chart that goes something like this: "Ask this question, and if they say 'yes', ask the question to the right. If they say 'no' , ask the question to the left." Down the list they go until there are no more questions. Hopefully, your problem has been resolved - hopefully. They could have just faxed you the list of questions and saved you the call. It is true that some problems can be handled this way, and it certainly is nice to have a person available 24/7. However, you shouldn't have to feel like you know more about the subject than your technical support person does.

From a manufacturer's standpoint, these help desk centers are great. They never have to hear the complaints; some other company is fielding any issues their products are causing. This is good enough for some businesses. It is not good enough for M-Tech. We need to know what your issues are. We have the lowest failure rate in the industry because we insist on being on top of every issue and fixing every issue. To sum up, the help desk doesn't serve you well enough, so it doesn't serve M-Tech at all.

The Support Model

Next is the good old fashioned support model, which M-Tech uses. You call and speak to a trained expert about your laptop. This expert works for the actual manufacturer. This means he understands not only computer hardware technology in general, but he understands your specific laptop as if it was his own. The benefits are obvious; however, the negatives are too. Yes, you heard us - our method of support has issues. Help desk companies have ten, twenty, who knows - maybe hundreds of little drones to answer your call. M-Tech has "Wesley!" This should sound in your head as if we just said “Less Nessman” - perhaps we just lost some of you younger laptop enthusiasts. Your loss; go rent back episodes of "WKRP in Cincinnati" and it will all make sense. When you call our support number, you are not getting a switchboard with lots of lights and people and background noises; you're calling Wesley's company cell phone. Wesley has been trained by the actual ODM of our excellent laptops. Wesley knows his stuff. This means that when you call M-Tech support you get to talk to an actual person who was building laptops for years before running the support department.

These are all the good points about our technical support, but you'll recall there are negative aspects as well. While Wesley is busy being the world's greatest support technician to customer A, customer B is getting his voice mail and leaving a name and number. So in the exact same time frame we have two customers who may have exactly opposite opinions of M-Tech tech support. Mr. A says, "M-Tech has great technical support!" Mr. B says , "I had to leave a message and he still hasn't gotten back with me." Mr. A says, "Wes! What a guy! He spent an hour helping me." Mr. B says "I waited an hour before some guy named Wes called me, and by then I was in a meeting and couldn't take his call. What kind of support is this?" Off to the internet goes Mr. B to get revenge on poor Wesley and thus confuse future customers who have heard that M-Tech is the best.

We're Not Perfect – But We're Pretty Darn Close

The simple fact of the matter is that no matter which way we go, some of you will have legitimate complaints. All we can do is give you a view behind the scenes and hope you appreciate the sacrifices we make to give you the best. It isn't as if others have perfect support and M-Tech is struggling to find the way. Seriously, have you gone online and looked for complaints about other brands of laptops? They use the help desk method and have way more issues than M-Tech! So, when viewing the internet sites that give vent to the few customers who feel jilted because they had to wait for expert service, you are not seeing the thousands who either had support and loved it or never needed to make use of the support because out product is so awesome.

We have at any time over 20,000 customers and one guy can handle all the technical complaints. Isn't this better than having to own a laptop that needs twenty or more full time drones to answer your complaints? If our product was of lesser quality, we would be forced to use a help desk. No company could afford to pay for several full-time USA based professional computer technicians. If we did that, you just couldn't afford the laptops.

So M-Tech makes the choice to go with quality rather than quantity. Is this perfect? No! In an eight hour day we can only talk to so many people. On the other hand, the benefit to M-Tech and to you is more than obvious. We can track your complaint and look for trends. M-Tech repairs its own laptops rather than buying a warranty package from some third party company. Again, because we handle the support calls and the repairs, we can see trends and get on top of them before our 2% quality threshold is breached. No other laptop manufacturer views support and warranty repairs this way. Most of the other guys prefer to have someone else support their product so that they are insulated from the problems. M-Tech wants to know how our laptop are performing so we can enhance our strengths and fix our problems.

On a finishing note we want to say one thing, No matter what your problem is, if you give M-Tech a chance, we will always fix it. That is a promise!