Apple Gets Top Marks on 'Tech Support Showdown' List

Apple continues to dominate when it comes to customer support, according to Laptop Mag's annual tech support showdown, which is designed to help customers determine which companies are offering the most reliable customer service in the tech industry.

Apple received an aggregate score of 91, earning 54 points for its web-based tech support and 37 points for its phone-based tech support. Laptop Mag says that Apple's support staff are among the "fastest and most knowledgeable," offering up "accurate answers" to Mac questions across live chat, social media, and the phone.

appletechsupportshowdown
In a more in-depth breakdown of Apple's score, Laptop Mag says its editors queried Apple about Dark Mode in macOS Mojave, disabling automatic updates, and turning off the webcams (something not possible).

Live chat was determined to be the best Apple support experience, and it took between 4 and 9 minutes for live chat staff to walk Laptop Mag through answers to its queries. Phone support was also quick, thorough, and helpful.

Larry was surprised when I told him I wanted to disable the MacBook Air's webcam. After saying he typically just puts tape over his webcam, Larry asked me to wait for 3 to 5 minutes while he checked to see if anything else were possible. Two minutes later, Larry was back on the call to walk me through the System Preferences app and show me how to disable webcam access, app by app. He also noted there might be a "fancier" way to disable the webcam via the Library (it's actually in the Terminal program), but that this was easier.

Few companies even came close to beating Apple's score of 91 in the Tech Support Showdown, but Razer, the number two company, scored an 88 and Dell scored a 73. Apple competitor Samsung earned a score of 73, while Microsoft got a 64.

As always, Laptop Mag arrived at these scores by posing as everyday PC and Mac users to get answers to three questions from major laptop manufacturers. Both the online and telephone support systems were tested. 100 points total were possible, 60 from online support because it's a more popular way to get help, and 40 from phone support.

Top Rated Comments

TheBing1980 Avatar
65 months ago
I would have to say, I agree with this 100%.

I have only reached out to them a few times ....For some reason I prefer searching thru forums to fix things myself. ;)

But when I have contacted them, they have always been pretty knowledgeable and very polite.
Score: 11 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Harthag Avatar
65 months ago
Razer at #2...LOL.
Score: 9 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Classie Avatar
65 months ago
The few times I’ve reached out to Apples support they’ve been very professional and polite; always solved my issues.
Score: 8 Votes (Like | Disagree)
alpi123 Avatar
65 months ago
Dell doesn't deserve to be in the top 100.
Score: 8 Votes (Like | Disagree)
nvmls Avatar
65 months ago
Hilarious chart, Razer and Dell? epic troll. Also, Apple's service is very inconsistent when outside of the U.S.
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)
kemal Avatar
65 months ago
Then there is the cost of what should be reasonably priced repairs.
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)

Popular Stories

maxresdefault

Apple Announces 'Let Loose' Event on May 7 Amid Rumors of New iPads

Tuesday April 23, 2024 7:11 am PDT by
Apple has announced it will be holding a special event on Tuesday, May 7 at 7 a.m. Pacific Time (10 a.m. Eastern Time), with a live stream to be available on Apple.com and on YouTube as usual. The event invitation has a tagline of "Let Loose" and shows an artistic render of an Apple Pencil, suggesting that iPads will be a focus of the event. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more ...
Apple Silicon AI Optimized Feature Siri

Apple Releases Open Source AI Models That Run On-Device

Wednesday April 24, 2024 3:39 pm PDT by
Apple today released several open source large language models (LLMs) that are designed to run on-device rather than through cloud servers. Called OpenELM (Open-source Efficient Language Models), the LLMs are available on the Hugging Face Hub, a community for sharing AI code. As outlined in a white paper [PDF], there are eight total OpenELM models, four of which were pre-trained using the...
Apple Vision Pro Dual Loop Band Orange Feature 2

Apple Cuts Vision Pro Shipments as Demand Falls 'Sharply Beyond Expectations'

Tuesday April 23, 2024 9:44 am PDT by
Apple has dropped the number of Vision Pro units that it plans to ship in 2024, going from an expected 700 to 800k units to just 400k to 450k units, according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. Orders have been scaled back before the Vision Pro has launched in markets outside of the United States, which Kuo says is a sign that demand in the U.S. has "fallen sharply beyond expectations." As a...
iPad And Calculator App Feature

Apple Finally Plans to Release a Calculator App for iPad Later This Year

Tuesday April 23, 2024 9:08 am PDT by
Apple is finally planning a Calculator app for the iPad, over 14 years after launching the device, according to a source familiar with the matter. iPadOS 18 will include a built-in Calculator app for all iPad models that are compatible with the software update, which is expected to be unveiled during the opening keynote of Apple's annual developers conference WWDC on June 10. AppleInsider...
iOS 17 All New Features Thumb

iOS 17.5 Will Add These New Features to Your iPhone

Sunday April 21, 2024 3:00 am PDT by
The upcoming iOS 17.5 update for the iPhone includes only a few new user-facing features, but hidden code changes reveal some additional possibilities. Below, we have recapped everything new in the iOS 17.5 and iPadOS 17.5 beta so far. Web Distribution Starting with the second beta of iOS 17.5, eligible developers are able to distribute their iOS apps to iPhone users located in the EU...