AV-Comparatives tests helpdesks of antivirus vendors for politeness and knowhow

Users of antivirus software who encounter problems and then call the helpdesk of the vendor are helped fine in most cases, according to tests performed by the Austrian AV-Comparatives. The tests covered several components such as how easy it was to find the phone number of the helpdesk, how long it took before someone was on the line, whether the helpdesk employee was polite and professional and whether the problem was solved correctly.

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Each antivirus company had to answer three questions in total. The first question was about scheduling a system scan. Then a question on how to activate a trial version with a license key followed and the last question was how to re-enable a disabled virusscanner.

The helpdesks of Avast, Avira, Bitdefender, eScan, ESET, F-Secure, G-Data, Kaspersky Lab, McAfee and Symantec took part in the test. Other antivirus vendors could not be included because they didn't provide phone support in the United Kingdom and Germany from where the tests were performed.

The German helpdesk from ESET, Bitdefender and G-Data took too long to take the phone, while in the United Kingdom all calls were answered very quickly. All phone numbers were easy to find except that of McAfee for both German speaking and English speaking customers. All vendors were polite and solved the problems correctly, except Avast whose English help desk employee was both less friendly than others and didn't solve the problem as expected. Another exception was the German support of Kaspersky Lab which didn't resolve the problem of the disabled virus scanners.

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The best helpdesk for German speaking customers is that of eScan, while the English support of Bitdefender, ESET, F-Secure, G-Data and Kaspersky Lab didn't fail on any point.

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