This is a crash course on how to navigate the resources available as well as get your issue resolved in the most efficient, expeditious manner.
Here are the best practices for getting effective support:
If your Thunder Laser USA products and accessories fail within the warranty period of the equipment please email support@thunderlaserusa.com and describe the issue in as much detail as possible. If your issue requires parts covered by said warranty we will ship you the parts and walk you through how to replace it and send the failed part back to us.
We stock the most commonly utilized parts at Thunder Laser USA HQ in Texas as well as our Support & Innovation Lab in Tennessee. If we do not have the item(s) in stock, we will source the parts from our China factory and possibly other 3rd party vendors. Here is the Thunder Laser USA Supply Chainfor your reference.
This is ALWAYS the first place to start. Over 90% of the questions posed are already answered in our self-help resources. The documentation is updated to reflect the most recent content. And we continuously publish new articles to address issues as they arise. The Solutions Knowledgebase should be the first place to look for answers. If you cannot find what you are looking for, then proceed to the next step.
Be proactive! Use the search features to find a solution. Check our YouTube channel and Thunder Laser China's site. There is a good chance your issue is already documented. Not only do you learn about the problem(s) but you reduce our service burden by eliminating queries that have already been answered, which affords our team the opportunity to effectively assist in more complex support functions.
There are many different groups, forums, and pages that are specific to Thunder Laser. These are great places to find answers. We monitor many of them and sometimes there are delays because they are researching and finding the best solution for you.
Posting the same question in multiple places sounds like a great idea to get the widest range of responses in the shortest amount of time but it's not... Social media is the worst possible place to conduct support. Questions and answers fly around all over the threads so it's impossible to manage and aggregate the information. This is especially troublesome for the support community because a great deal of their time is used trying to provide the correct information across all the channels to mitigate any possible dissemination of unintentional misinformation.
Also, Thunder machines are very different from 'other lasers'. We have proprietary systems and specific documentation and data for them. Asking thunder-specific system questions in a non-thunder-specific 'generic' group may not be the best way to get answers. they are often misleading or incorrect.
We are utilizing enterprise-grade service and support management systems complete with a client portal. This system allows us to monitor support history, failure rates, and other data by a client, machine, part, etc..., keep complete user and machine histories, provide digital assets in almost real-time, schedule or even initiate instant remote sessions/phone calls, and much more from within the system so nothing gets lost in translation.
Thunder USA clients can access this knowledgebase, place tickets, see all of their service records in one place, and interact from the portal, or they can simply email suport@thunderlaserusa.com to generate a ticket. The more we utilize this support system as the first point of Thunder USA technical and warranty support, the more efficiently we can remedy your issues.
It is terribly inefficient and difficult to provide personalized technical support on social media, text, private message, etc... We can and do answer questions on social media and other forums but those are usually more general in nature and good info for the community.
if you email a thunder 'personal' email or use any of 10 social messaging apps, we miss them because our focus is solely on the support portal and associated systems. thunder laser china engineering also monitors and responds in our system so it's practically manned 24/7. And if you CC everyone at thunder, we will all be working on your issue and against one another while pulling critical resources from other clients.
If we try to troubleshoot your specific issue on social media others may inject information that takes away from our highly developed diagnostic workflow or even give you the wrong information which causes us to have to police the comments and take away from our core functions.
We do offer phone support as well but it is also extremely counter-intuitive and negatively affects efficiency and resolution time. All of our information is digital and often there are tutorials to watch, steps to perform, etc... Additionally, unless we record or transcribe the calls in some way, the team cant see the collaboration.
It causes a significant strain on our service burden if we have to sit on the phone with someone while feeding them info through the emails and waiting while they read, watch, and perform the steps. and none of it is in the service history.
Calling in can mean delays in response too, as we are typically on scheduled training and support sessions most of the time. We have implemented a system to email all tech support voicemails into the ticket system so a ticket is generated. This also takes more time because we have to search for the client in our databases to find an email address associated with the client.
The fastest, best, most efficient way to get tech support is by emailing support@thunderlaserusa.com
LightBurn questions can usually be answered by using the resources in the HELP tab in LightBurn. Their only official support channel is their forum found here: https://forum.lightburnsoftware.com/. And you can email support@lightburnsoftware.com to submit a ticket.
Rotary questions will come through the Support Ticket system just as any other issue. This will allow the OEM, as well as the rest of the Thunder team, to collaborate with you in real-time.
FiltraBox questions will come through the vendor:
We maintain regular business hours Monday through Thursday 8:30am to 5pm and Friday 8:00am to 4:00pm Central but still try to respond outside those hours because we truly do want to offer our Thunder Laser USA family the best experience possible. Just remember that our team needs time outside business hours too so bear with us and we will get back to you as quickly as possible.
NOTE: if you email support@thunderlaserusa.com, all of the agents can collaborate on the ticket. This includes Thunder China so tickets do get answered at all different times. Please feel free to email support at any time.
We will always offer you our stellar lifetime support as expected. There comes a time, however, when personal instruction may need to be throttled so we can focus on maintaining the highest level of support on the most critical issues.
If your solutions cannot be provided in a reasonable amount of time expending a reasonable amount of energy then you may need specialized support. This premium support is time and resource-intensive and you get the sole attention of our team.
If these best practices are not congruent to your situation then reserving a block of time for one-on-one tutoring may be the answer for you. This is also a great option for teams, government, education, compliance, and train-the-trainer scenarios.