Welcome to My Entrepreneurship World!
Business Tools and Technical Support -struggles-
Hello, world I am Scarlett Marcel Vantedeschi´a I am an engineer in telecommunication and computer science old school and I mean old. I started learning about computers with dinosaurs like Honeywell then later with dinos like MVs systems working for HSBC bank at mainframes technical support department. Wow! A long time ago. Now you just open a window in a Mac or any Windows system and voila! It’s done!
Almost done! Today, everything has changed for good or evil I wonder. Well, this is another topic for my blog.
I was introducing myself. After many years of having experienced jobs as an engineer, I looked at myself as divorced at the age of twenty-seven with a baby girl. Yes! This was an event that made me an entrepreneur. So, this first article is about the path as a customer (user) of technology and tools I have been crossing to build my business since I opened my first in the year 2001. Finally, today I got an amazing business partner, my talented and gorgeous daughter.
To give you an idea of what to expect in my upcoming blog posts, just think about the path and all you need to build a wellness business as a solopreneur single mother.

Can you really avoid that nightmare when you need technical support from companies that sell business tools?
When you are creating your business doesn’t matter if you want to create a local or online business, you will need tools like licenses of every kind: office, hosting, specific apps, camera or phone camera, video editors, sound editors, website editor, antivirus, internet, courses platforms, computers, payment platforms, inventory systems, taxes/books systems, etc.
Allow me to tell you that something more critical than their costs is their technical support. Dell for example, in my case, they are taking until today more than eight months to replace my equipment due to a general mal hardware function, I am still waiting. Their LATAM technical support is regular, but the EXG department is totally inefficient. Their USA/Canada support will not assist you if you bought your computer in any country of LATAM. Their support assistants in general can be rude and very inefficient.
In the LATAM case, they have a “FREE support phone number” that cost me over 100 USD.
However, their USA online sales support is very good and efficient. From this point, you must be very careful, or you will get into a nightmare during your journey of building your business. You need to be very clear about what you need your computer for otherwise, they will sell you any expensive equipment that you are willing to pay for. This can be solved if you contact the USA online sales support, they will give you the right suggestions to cover your needs besides they will offer you a discount probably. So, you can buy it with them or in another place. Read the red flag here if you are in a LATAM country be careful about importation requirements and costs.
I used to be a fervent DELL user for decades but since this experience I am seriously thinking about Apple, if you have something to share about them respecting their technical support and warranties, please go ahead I am open to listening. About this point, something similar happened to me about cell phones.
In Microsoft’s case, they have very complicated online technical support. Their chat is always unavailable, again LATAM location. I haven’t been able to receive the support I am requiring.
Stripe has very bad technical support. They take a lot of time to answer back if they answer back, and they look like mistakenly mixed LATAM and USA/Canada technical support assistance in their chat app, they use Espanglish (Español and English mixed) - Click funnels suffers of something similar about their Spanglish version chat-, and due this I suppose their automated support have errors, bringing you some problems that take your time. Besides, in my personal experience, they have a lack of knowledge about the bank’s connections and requirements in other countries, and for third-world countries, they have a lot of restrictions. You must solve these issues on your own but while you are solving this they will block (disable) your account because you are not using it. And you will have to invest more time to test your platform-stripe-bank connection asking them to reconnect it to make tests, the hen, or the egg loop here. Another bug, if you want to name it like that, is, if you are establishing USD as your currency, you won´t be able to accept credit/debit cards from your country, crazy right? Again, LATAM case.
Something important to notice here is that depending on the platform you are using with Stripe (for PayPal was different) you must use the same email in both Stripe and the platform you are trying to connect it with, or this will cause your Stripe account connection blocked.
And doesn’t matter the security process you did before (ID, face recognition, etc.). Security is super important I know that, but they need to look for a way to make it easier, like PayPal, having a previous account with them makes it easier, the situation with them is that of course they are more expensive. Paypal, maybe they have a more sophisticated security system that allows them to make it easier for LATAM.
All companies’ objective number two is to reduce costs, they are trying to do this by implementing automated online support and chat robots and I am not against it, I am in fact planning to do the same with my business soon but reviewing more consciously about the processes and procedures they require to program, that will help. They reduce costs with this absolutely, but the customers; we live in a constant nightmare with any product we buy if we need their support. If the customers are technical medium experienced customers, they can go with the flow a little easier but waste their time, and time is money, but non-technological customers will suffer to the level of giving up. Or with the option of hiring help. In any case, this is becoming expensive for customers. I am judge and part, an equilibrium could be healthy for both sides. And this probably is making businesses lose money as well, money that they don’t see they are losing.
Processes and procedures reengineering must be constantly and meticulously implemented in the whole company more about the customer’s technical support but from the user´s perspective. In my country we use this quote: you can see better the bulls from the grandstand.
Yes! I have had good experiences as well, I am very satisfied with my online course’s platform technical support, and Thinkific has amazing technical support. They are fast, efficient, and polite. Even if they are very good at it, a non-technological customer can suffer a little less with their online technical support but depending on your license you can have access to a chat or/and email personal support.
See you in the arena...
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