Social media to replace first line of tech support?

Over the past few months social media saved me from two computer-related disasters that normally would have sent me to the repair shop or placed me at the will of a tech call center. By employing a variety of social media tools I was able to resolve both issues without a considerable investment in either time or money, something I've come to really appreciate and something that got me thinking about the value of tech support and call centers.

A few months back my wife's cousin spilled an entire glass of wine on her laptop and I thought for sure it was fried. After draining the excess into the sink and wiping up what was still visible, I decided to hop on Google and search for "spilled wine on a laptop." Much to my surprise my cousin-in-law wasn't the only one to carelessly waste an entire glass of good red wine (Boxhead). In a few short minutes I was watching a video on how to save the laptop without a huge investment. Two days and $29 later I replaced my keyboard on my own and my wife was back in business. Thank you techeblog.com.

A few weeks later I received the dreaded "Unmountable Boot Error" message. After several unsuccessful attempts to reboot in "Safe Mode" I called tech support to see what was up. The initial quote was $295 so I hung up the phone and hopped back on the internet. In a few short moments I found the following post on Twitter "@huabs How to Resolve Unmountable Boot Volume Error in Windows XP http://bit.ly/SttaF" and was on my way to recovery. Fortunately, I was able to repair my computer without any issue and was up and running within the hour.

These two examples got me thinking of how valuable social media has become to saving both time and money and how, on certain occassions, it can replace the first line of basic tech support offered by most companies.