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Laptops by a mile. The flexibility to leave your desk, to work from home or a coffee shop, to have a “working vacation” (when not on *actual*, unplugged, and frequent vacation to truly get away, which should happen)… all of these things far and away outweigh any risk about the message it sends. Just be clear about what the expectations are, and demonstrate that by insisting they leave their laptops at the office when they’re off-duty.
Get them the computer they want (within reason, of course). If they aren’t happy with their equipment, they won’t be happy working for you anyway.
Also, I’d strongly argue that a PC with comparable specs (and therefore, comparable “workable lifespan”) is either very close or even more expensive than a Mac. Yes, you may save money with a sub-$500 laptop today, but that laptop will need to be replaced far more often. I’ve been working support for over five years and have used two laptops (early-2008 MacBook and mid-2011 MacBook Air) running close to stock configurations (just extra RAM). In addition to using fewer computers, I’d bet anything the resale value of my MacBook laptops make the “added cost” minimal at most.
Good questions! I’m definitely a fan of the laptop for all of the reasons mentioned. I also think Macs are the way to go (but then again a lot of our customers are startups, which tend to be Mac shops). Another reason to go Mac is if your product works on both Windows and OSX. Sometimes you need to troubleshoot on a specific OS, and you can run Windows in a Virtual Machine on a Mac, but not vice versa.
@Ted - The Windows/VM thing is a great reason to suggest OS X over Windows. I don’t know why I never realized that before!
@MaxSwagler - Laptops all the way man! We could totally have the PC versus Mac discussion but we don’t have to. Macs always win anyway.
Regarding the wrong impression of “take your work home with you”, I think this is a good topic in and of itself. There is something to be said about about the kind of team member that naturally wants to take their work home with them.
Say a team member has been working with a customer on an urgent issue such as a deadline the customer needs to make. Say the customer reaches out with just one last minute request to wrap everything up around dinner time. ..The agent reply would likely only take a second or so.
I personally would want to stay available just in case something like that does happen. It’s not as though this is something that’s scalable day to day. But when the opportunity like this with a great customer happens, I like to capitalize on it. With laptops that your team takes home, or at least can if they choose, you open up the playing field for a true bond between your company, your customers, and those that are working to grow your business and set yourself apart from the rest.
As for the cost element as pertains to cutting into the agents pay - I think if they are aware of this it might be a hard sell. But in the end, $500 over a year after taxes doesn’t equate to much. I think the lure of a sexy, reliable piece of hardware is worth it.
Seems that laptops are winning on this thread.
A solid laptop has my vote too. There’s been a lot of great reasons for posted by the gents above. I’d add that having a laptop means your online quickly when something goes wrong. If your app goes down in the middle of the night or a server upgrade goes wrong, you’re able to jump right in rather than racing to the office to login to your computer.
As far as PC vs Mac, just let them choose as long as the job can be done on either.
We allow our remote support team members a certain budget, tell them what they’ll need to be able to do, and let them make their own decision on which machine they get.
For myself, a more capable computer that I find more enjoyable to use would be soooo much better than $500 in cash. You’ll use that computer all day every day, so even a small improvement would quickly add up.
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