Just When You Thought it Was Safe

Last week I told you that the issues with our OfficeLive account were finally resolved. I actually got a call from a technician and got a general explanation of what went wrong. (see the details here). I thought to myself that the folks in Redmond were starting to grasp the importance of happy customers. There were a couple of things that we wanted to resolve - duplicate entries (LOTS of duplicate entries) in the "synchronized" contact info, and the inability to create new documents in our Workspaces. So I figured I'd get with the support folks once I got caught up from all the time I wasted trying to get them to resolve the main problem.

This morning I got a call from a girl who seemed to have a very tenuous grasp of the English language. She had extreme difficulty reading the script (and even more trouble with my name), but she finally managed to tell me she was welcoming me to OfficeLive and wanted to know if I had any questions or needed any help. So I mentioned my problems. She puts me on hold for a couple of minutes and then comes back to tell me that OfficeLive doesn't support these features. She tells me I need to go to the microsoft.com site for help/

Excuse me? Isn't OfficeLive all about synchronizing contacts and sharing documents? And shouldn't the person calling me to welcome me be a little more familiar with the product?

Maybe I just need to lower my expectations when it comes to customer service. I heard a quote today that perhaps the non-existant Customer Service Manager for OfficeLive could take to heart: If I can't do great things, let me do small things in a great way. They did such a poor job in a big way when this thing tanked last week. I would have hoped a simple welcome call would be handled a little more professionally.

So who has some great sories about support successes? I'd like to see if we can turn this tide around and tell some happy stories. After all, we want to do business with people who get it. Don't we?

A Chip of Gold

I've been having some real issues with customer service (or lack thereof) at Microsoft all week. Major problems. I haven't been able to access my OfficeLive account - or any account that requires me to log in with my Windows Live password. No one seems to be able to tell me why. And the response I'm getting from the support team has been largely "just relax and quit calling us - we'll get back to you at some point." Most of the people I've spoken to even tell me that there's no one I can even call or write to if I want to complain! That's just so wrong.

There's a local guy, Brad Worthley, that gives great seminars on customer service. He's a sharp guy who could really inspire this group to make customers happy, not angry and posting angry blogs. I was really hoping I could talk to a manager when I called yesterday. But then a funnt thing happened: I talked to someone who got it!

I called for my daily update and gripe and got a young woman named Carrie. I explained my problem for the umpteenth time and she said "I can help you with that!" I just about fell out of my chair! Brad would have been so proud! That was the first time in probably a dozen calls to this group that someone has said "I can" without the word NOT behind it. I just wish I could tell her manager how refreshing that was. Of course, that might get her fired. And, like Derek tols me, there is no manager to talk to.

Best of all,she did get me logged in! Something no one else has been able to do since I got locked out this past Sunday. Unfortunately this didn't last. I was locked out again this morning. And my call to tech support got me the usual response: "I can't help you with that - you'll need to wait to hear from our escalation department." tick tick tick

Microsoft - you need another Carrie!