Troubleshoot and Learn: MakerBot Revamps Their Support Center

After hearing customer complaints of printer glitches and malfunctions, MakerBot has taken notice. This week, the company has unrolled a new and improved support center for their users, promising to make customer support and troubleshooting “better and faster.” The Support page has now been streamlined, with two sections: Troubleshoot and Learn. The Learning section offers detailed product information, while the Troubleshooting section takes users through a step-by-step problem solving process, asking a series of questions to direct them to a solution as quickly and easily as possible.

“This approach to Troubleshooting offers an improved customer experience that [complements] our best-in-class customer support team,” said Gil Maman, Vice President of Customer Advocacy and Business Development. “All told, the new support site reflects MakerBot’s continued commitment to facilitate close relationships with our customers and users by putting their needs first.”

Based on customer feedback, MakerBot identified the most common support topics and designed a series of questions that will, hopefully, lead users to a solution without requiring a call into the support center. The nice thing, however, is that if you have to make a call, the questions you already answered on the website will be logged and made available to the technician taking your inquiry. Without having needed to use this particular feature, I already greatly appreciate it. I’ve had to spend over an hour on the phone, on more than one occasion, explaining the same issue to at least six technicians who carefully listened to every detail of my problem before transferring me to someone else who needed me to start from the beginning. Every. Single. Time. That particular Internet provider shall remain nameless, but I suspect you’ve all encountered this kind of infuriating “customer service” at one time or another.

So MakerBot definitely gets points for making every effort to get you through customer service as quickly as possible, but the online support center looks to be comprehensive enough that the need for phone calls should be relatively rare. Once you’re on the Support page, select “troubleshoot,” and then choose the product you’re having issues with from there. The next page will bring up the most common issues with that particular product. For example, if you select the MakerBot Replicator 2, the next page will offer you the following options: electrical, mechanical, setup, extruder, printing, or print quality. Choose one of those, and additional choices will be presented to further narrow down your issue. It’s pretty simple, and there are a lot of instructional videos and documents offered throughout the process. You can play with it a bit even if you’re not having a problem; you may still learn something new.

The new system certainly looks easy to use and efficient; I commend MakerBot for taking the time to make things as easy as possible for frustrated customers. Now if only every company would adopt similar tactics.  Discuss this story in the MakerBot Support forum on 3DPB.com.