Service and Support Satisfaction for Laptops and Smartphones 2019

At the time of analysing the results, we had over 1,000 completed surveys from NotebookCheck readers available to us. The survey was made available on our website in English and German and contained 13 questions. These questions were predominantly multiple-choice, with the ability to rate various aspects of the reader's experience from 1 to 5 points. Participation in the survey was completely voluntary with no compensation or incentive (such as a competition or similar).

Just over 2/3 of the participants gave their location as within Europe, with the majority of those coming from Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The following article and analysis focuses only on these participants as well as the manufacturers with a substantial number of survey results in order to have a larger data set to better evaluate each. The largest manufacturers included Lenovo, Dell, Apple, Asus and HP.

The highest proportion of consumer laptops were reported to be from Microsoft, Acer and Asus, whereas business laptops were predominantly Dell, HP and Lenovo devices. Gaming laptops were more strongly represented from MSI, Schenker/XMG and Asus. For smartphones, Huawei, Samsung and Apple were the most common brands.

As we found last year, the number of customers who chose to opt for an extended warranty was especially high with Dell customers (around 30%). It's noteworthy however that compared to last year the overall proportion of customers who opted for an extended warranty has dropped significantly.

Next we aimed to discover what difference there was between business and consumer laptop support. To do so, we compared results from the top 3 business laptop manufacturers. The fastest phone response time was achieved by Dell, with HP and Lenovo customers having to deal with somewhat longer waiting times on average. An interesting result arose from this comparison though - HP business laptop customers actually had longer waiting times than consumer laptop customers. This was not the case in last year's survey. Certainly, the expectations of HP's business customers are not being fulfilled here.

New to the survey this year is the smartphone category. The 5 most reported and relevant manufacturers in the survey were Samsung, Apple, Huawei, Sony and LG. Customers were most happy in terms of waiting time when phone support was required with Samsung and Apple phones. LG smartphone owners were especially dissatisfied.

Customers of HP consumer laptops were especially satisfied in terms of ease of comprehension with telephone support. With Dell and Lenovo, their consumer and business hotlines were very different experiences and HP's business customer hotline lagged behind that of the consumer hotline.

The largest proportion of satisfied smartphone customers with regard to ease of comprehension was claimed by Apple's hotline. Bringing up the rear was LG.

With the business hotlines we see the same pattern as before. Customers who utilised Dell's phone support reported high levels of satisfaction, and HP's business customers were once again critical in contrast to the experiences reported by HP's consumer customers who were predominantly (very) satisfied.

With smartphones, Apple once again put in a good showing with good ratings. LG again failed to impress.

On the subject of at what point in the device's life service or repair was required, the survey results were very similar to last year for consumer and gaming laptops. The highest proportion of defects occurring during the timeframe of an extended warranty belonged to Apple, followed by HP. The most instances, by a large margin, of devices being repaired outside of a warranty period was claimed by Apple. Whilst most laptop manufacturers offer two years warranty as standard, Apple only provides a one-year base warranty. Apple users who want to protect their, usually very expensive, laptop for a longer period have to purchase an additional protection plan, which is strongly suggested when ordering online with Apple. The comparatively high out of warranty repair rate can also be explained by the generally very high initial device cost, and also market value stability of Apple laptops. Whilst customers with Apple devices will often opt for expensive repairs, with other brands a major issue often means the end of the line for the device.

By comparison, the survey responses regarding business devices shows that Dell had the lowest rate of repair incidents within the base guarantee periods. There were no incidences at all this year for HP business laptop users whose devices required servicing during the extended warranty/outside the base warranty.

Due to the fact that Apple users tend to opt for an extended warranty, it is not surprising to see that many repairs were performed within the extended warranty timeframe.

On the business laptop side, owners of Dell machines rated the on-site service as most simple, followed by HP. Lenovo once again took last spot and the positions were unchanged from last year. An interesting point - users of consumer laptops from Dell, HP and Lenovo gave many more 5 (simple) ratings compared to last year, whereas HP business laptop owners scored them lower.

With smartphones and repairs, Sony and Huawei received the most responses showing that they had a simple and easy process. The least satisfied were LG phone owners.

When your device is defective, naturally you want to get it repaired and back in service as fast as possible. For professional users this is essential, but private users also don't want to be without their device for weeks at a time.

As we saw last year, Dell here impresses with a seemingly well-oiled and efficient system and a high count of customers who opted for the optional next-day on-site service. At the same time however, Dell had a large number of respondents, more than 25%, who reported that their device repair took longer than 14 days. Without a suitable service plan then, it seems that with Dell it can take a while. With the highest proportion of customers reporting that their device repair took less than 7 days, Apple, Microsoft and Schenker came out looking very positive in this area. Disappointing: MSI, Asus and Lenovo (consumer) had a high proportion of reported repairs taking up to 14 days and beyond.

Dell seems to not differentiate between consumer and business devices with its service options, at least not in terms of the optional on-site service. With more than 30% of repairs being completed in less than a day with both business and consumer laptops and more than 50% of consumer laptops/more than two-thirds of business-laptops within 3 days, it would seem to be indicate that the extra cost is well worth it. HP as well as Lenovo are quite some distance behind, although the responses for Lenovo devices showed a significant improvement compared to last year.

Huawei seems to be extremely fast with dealing with a required repair, followed by Apple and Samsung. It could be that Huawei's service centres play a large role here, found in many of the large cities, which are able to provide a same-day repair depending on the defect.

Customers of Apple, MSI, Acer and Microsoft rated their satisfaction with completed repairs very highly - although MSI and Acer have an equally high proportion of very dissatisfied customers. Asus looks very bad regarding satisfaction of completed repairs - the manufacturer received the lowest number of very satisfied customers, and the highest number of very dissatisfied customers.

Dell was able to increase its customer satisfaction rating compared to last year, both with business and consumer laptops, whilst HP as well as Lenovo lost ground in the business segment. They both were able however to increase their showing in the consumer area.

With the exception of LG, the leading smartphone manufacturers were able to demonstrate high customer satisfaction with completed repairs.

Whilst around 75% of consumer device customers of HP, Apple, Lenovo or MSI reported being satisified after the first repair attempt, over 25% of Acer, Dell, Schenker and Asus customers reported needing 3 or more repair attempts. Compared to last year, Lenovo customers reported an increase in satsifaction, whilst Schenker customers were less satisfied.

In contrast to Dell, where once again users of business laptops reported less required repair attempts than consumer owners, there was a reversal in trend with HP and Lenovo - with these two manufacturers business device owners provided criticism for multiple repair attempts in higher numbers than consumer owners.

Once more LG takes last place in our survey for smartphones. More than half of all responders reported three or more repair attempts being required in order to have their defective device brought back to working order.

To close out, we asked our survey respondents to provide a final overall rating for their service experience with their notebook or smartphone for their respective manufacturer. Similar to last year's results, Apple and Acer were able to claim the top two spots, whilst Lenovo and Asus took the last two places. Losers this year include Schenker, who fell from the top of the field to the middle.

On the business laptop side, Dell was able to repeat its showing from last year with top spot. HP's business service fell considerably however - with its consumer arm achieving higher satisfaction. It was a similar picture with Lenovo; customer satisfaction with business devices fell, whilst consumer device satisfaction rose somewhat.

In the smartphone arena, the number of high satisfaction responses regarding Huawei device was a standout. Less pleasing is the result for LG, which took the dubious prize of having the highest number of dissatisfied customers.