From http://www.laptopmag.com/articles/microsoft-tech-supportThere's a ton more to the article -- check it out: http://www.laptopmag.com/articles/microsoft-tech-supportMicrosoft is a new addition to our Tech Support Showdown for 2015. Although not historically known for making PCs, the company that Gates built now offers four 2-in-1 laptop/tablets. That prompted us to wonder what sort of technical support consumers can expect from the company.
I started with a Surface 3 and a small selection of questions. To put Microsoft's tech savvy to the test, I scoured the company's website for answers, directly asked for help on Twitter and Facebook, and made a few old-fashioned phone calls to tech support. Specifically, I wanted to know, "How do I get Cortana up and running?" and "How do I reverse the scrolling direction of my touchpad?" (We asked these types of questions of all of the PC companies in our Tech Support Showdown.) Then, I got Surface-specific by asking, "How do I pair my Surface Pen to a Surface 3?"
I started off by looking for answers to each question based on materials available on Microsoft's website — and boy, there was a wealth of resources to go through! Microsoft has FAQs, forums, instructional guides and more, which answered many questions before I needed to reach out for additional help.
The heart of Microsoft's support system is its online support portal, which you can reach simply by going to Microsoft.com and selecting your specific product from the drop-down menu on the top and then clicking Support. If you scroll down a little more, you can click the Answer Desk link to be connected to a live agent. After logging in with your Microsoft account (which is required), you can select a device, describe your problem and then choose between live chat online or a phone call.
For this round, I tasked Microsoft's online chat support with helping me reverse the direction of two-finger scrolling on the touchpad. I was connected immediately to an agent named Nino, who was friendly and direct in dealing with my problem. There was a long, 8-minute wait while he attempted to find the answer to my problem, but when he came back, he gave me quick and precise directions on how to fix my issue by directing me to go to the Settings menu and then open the Mouse and Touch options under the Devices section.
For social media, Microsoft has two accounts for Surface owners to choose from: @MicrosoftHelps and @SurfaceSupport. I started off by asking @MicrosoftHelps about turning on the Windows 10 "Hey Cortana" voice recognition. After an hour, a representative responded, but unfortunately, the link provided was incorrect and pointed to instructional videos about Windows 8.1 (which doesn't even have Cortana). After I pointed out the error, the rep came back with an appropriate response, but the @ForDummies Twitter account beat the rep to it.
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An hour, eh? Calling Apple they warn you about a long wait but invariably their long wait for a human response is about twenty seconds. . .