Apple retains top spot on Laptop's tech support rankings for third year straight

For a third consecutive year, tech publication Laptop has once again awarded the best score in its Tech Support Showdown to Apple, commending its support via phone calls, online chat, and social media accounts.

The company scored 93 out of 100 overall, Laptop said. It managed 56 out of 60 for its Web score, and 37 out of 40 for phone support, with an average call time of just 6 minutes in undercover investigations — over 2.5 minutes faster than second-place Acer, which actually scored 38 on phone support but only 50 on the Web.

Apple's website and support app are "loaded with helpful, step-by-step tutorials," and backed by "knowledgeable and friendly" workers on phone and chat lines, according to Laptop. The company also reportedly replied to Twitter messages "quickly and accurately."

The worst companies among those ranked included Asus, Samsung, and MSI. Asus' chat and website were described as "especially disappointing," while staff at Samsung were said to have kept mistaking the Notebook 7 for the Galaxy Note 7. The very bottom company on the list, MSI, had representatives that were "shockingly unfamiliar" with products.

In gauging Apple's phone support, Laptop made three separate calls in which it tried to test staff's knowledge of more recent Mac technology, including Siri, iCloud Drive, and the Touch Bar on the MacBook Pro. Only in the iCloud Drive call did an Apple representative make a tangential mistake, claiming there was no way of turning iCloud Desktop and Documents off without disabling iCloud Drive.

To improve support, Laptop suggested only that Apple should make sure workers learn about all new features, and provide direct answers on its Twitter account, rather than linking elsewhere. In November, @AppleSupport picked up a Twitter #Customer award.

Apple has often counted on its support as a selling point, including not just phones and online but Genius Bars. A person with a faulty Mac or iPhone can get first-party help if there's an Apple store in their city, whereas people with a Windows or Android product are usually dependent on remote or third-party support unless they have Microsoft hardware.

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14 Comments

Rayz2016 8 Years · 6957 comments

About 7 years ago

For the folk who don't know what Angela Ahrendts does… She does this.

macxpress 16 Years · 5913 comments

And for anyone who wants to continuously bitch about the price of Apple's laptops...well you get what you pay for here. Support like this isn't cheap and its just one of the things you get with the Apple experience.

wood1208 10 Years · 2938 comments

macxpress said:

And for anyone who wants to continuously bitch about the price of Apple's laptops...well you get what you pay for here. Support like this isn't cheap and its just one of the things you get with the Apple experience.

Chilled brother, we know that apple provides the best service for it's products. but, Apple needs to expand it's bottom consumer base(highschool and college students and casual users) to become the largest segment of laptop users attracted by decent performance and at price point that it becomes no brainier to buy the Macbook Pro. All bells and whistles and high price upgrades to be targeted to business, enterprise and pros. For example, Macbook Pro 13"(without touch bar) should have decent performance and price between $1199-$1299. And don't cripple that low end with only 2 USB Type-C ports.

Soli 9 Years · 9981 comments

wood1208 said:
For example, Macbook Pro 13"(without touch bar) should have decent performance and price between $1199-$1299. And don't cripple that low end with only 2 USB Type-C ports.

You would like ≠ should have or anything else you think Apple should be obligated to give you because it's what you want. If you don't like the Touch Bar with all its expensive components and lengthy R&D, then don't buy it. Chances are the price will come down dramatically with the next MBP update just as we've seen in the past, like with the Retina display (4x the number of pixels and an IPS panel with an LED backlight) where people said Apple "should have" sold it for less money because they didn't want to pay more for the MBP because they didn't need that many pixels in a display when 1080p would've been sufficient for them.

lkrupp 19 Years · 10521 comments

wood1208 said:

Apple needs to expand it’s bottom consumer base (highschool and college students and casual users) to become the largest segment of laptop users attracted by decent performance and at price point that it becomes no brainier to buy the Macbook Pro.

No, no it doesn’t. Apple is doing just fine by staying out of the race to the bottom. You are flatly wrong, and frankly, repeating the same gibberish that analysts have been spewing for decades about Apple and how it should go low-end..