Technical Support Providers
Small businesses that offer tech support will turn out better results than a big tech support company offering global support. Having worked in tech support and worked with providers of various sizes, I have come to the opinion that small departments offer more meaningful support, better customer service and have superior knowledge.
When working with the large tech support providers the first person you work with has limited support experience and lacks knowledge of your system. To get a representative with some experience and knowledge it usually takes 3 or 4 escalations before you get to a person who can assist you to a resolution. If you have a specific question about specialized software, forget about it, a large tech support firm might not even know what you are talking about let alone be able to legitimately troubleshoot your issue.
With a small business support provider chances are the first Support Technician you talk to has worked with many different platforms and will have years of experience working with client systems and troubleshooting. They will have seen the issue before (because they have run into it before with their own test environment). More than likely the engineer you are working with works in a small room with 5 other support engineers with various backgrounds and areas of expertise to help troubleshoot and resolve the issue. The support engineers with the small firm will have more invested in your experience with their assistance and take pride in their efforts.
Jeff Martin
ImageSource, Inc.