Within the MakerBot offices, you’ll find our 3D printers whirring away in just about every department. So we know what it’s like to go through all the right steps before a print, only to end up with a long, eerie silence or a discordant beep. For when all doesn’t go according to plan, we’ve revamped our industry-leading support site to keep you printing and making.
Organized into two sections, Troubleshooting and Learning, the support site is designed to help you learn about MakerBot products, quickly solve issues, and minimize downtime. While the Learn section offers a wide range of information on our products, the Troubleshooting section is streamlined to easily guide you to the right solution through a series of simple questions.
“This approach to Troubleshooting offers an improved customer experience that complements our best-in-class customer support team” says Gil Maman, Vice President of Customer Advocacy and Business Development. “All told, the new support site reflects MakerBot’s continued commitment to facilitate close relationships with our customers and users by putting their needs first.”
Intelligent Troubleshooting
At MakerBot, we continuously rely on customer feedback and usage data to inform our decision-making. Based on this information, we have identified the top support topics and refined the experience of how you can diagnose issues through the support site. Now you can intelligently troubleshoot by answering a series of simple questions that will either lead you to a solution or eventually ask you to open a support case.
If an issue requires a call to support, you will need to sign-in with your MakerBot account. Once you call, your history of going through a line of questions will be logged, and your support technician will already know what steps you took to resolve the issue. That’s a bit less time explaining, isn’t it? To date, no other 3D printing company offers such an intelligent, targeted approach to working through issues for customers before they have to pick up the phone or email support.
Go with the Flow
To understand what we mean, you have to go with the flow. Here’s how it works. For resolving issues, click on Troubleshooting, find your product, find the relevant category like “Print Quality”, click on an issue, then answer a series of simple questions. Let’s take a look at a real-life example:
Choose Trouble Shoot.
Choose the Product: the MakerBot Replicator® 5th Generation.
Choose the Category: Printing
Choose the Topic: I Received a Homing Error.
Choose “How Do I Resolve a Homing Error?”
Let’s say the build plate is installed correctly. Choose “Yes”.
Let’s say the build plate tape is applied evenly. Choose “Yes”.
Let’s say a print cannot be started with receiving a homing error. Choose “No”.
Let’s say the printer still cannot be started without a homing error. Choose “No”. You’ll notice on this page there’s a product video. Throughout the flow, there are instructional documents and videos to help.
You are then prompted to open a support case. Since we walked through just one particular sample flow, your results will depend on how you answer the questions. You can also find the solutions to your issue.
The Impact of Streamlined Support
For anyone looking to purchase a MakerBot 3D printer, our revamped support site gives you essential resources to get you started 3D printing, to keep at it, and to minimize downtime as much as possible. Beyond troubleshooting, the Learn section also offers a wealth of information about our products and the search engine at the top of the support site allows you to pinpoint whatever interests you. Once you run a search, you can narrow down the results by product with the filters on the left side of the page.
As the 3D printing industry evolves, MakerBot is dedicated to constantly redefining what’s possible for our customers. Our new support site and the recent release of the Smart Extruder+ are all about providing an improved customer experience to ensure that you can make things better, faster, and smarter with MakerBot.