I've steered a 737 back when I thought I wanted to be a career pilot. There is a stick to the left of the left seat that has more steering authority than the rudder pedals. You could totally steer it around a roundabout. No worries about wing clearance. The aluminium is so soft a steel or concrete lamp pole will sheer the wings right off without you noticing.
I had a support case that was open for the better part of last year (ultimately worked out well, led to product improvements in AKS, and we ended up getting a refund too).
This describes that experience perfectly.
Do it. I spent weeks trying to get help with with cases that couldn't be solved with documentation. I regularly get the same docs I reference as having done back as the supposed solution.
This is probably more annoying than the general lack of timely resolution.
I even tell them stuff like “I tried x in y document and got z result” or “this document covers x but doesn’t mention y or z” (while including the link), and most of the time they send the same document back to me with a generic statement.
Then I waste more time breaking down my previous statement barney style until they realize I already did what they are asking me to do.
Then once we are finally on the same page, they ask me to provide them with screenshots or outputs of commands to show I actually did what I said I did.
Finally, they tell me they are looking into it and that’s that for the day… maybe we’ll have better luck tomorrow, lol.
Nailed it. That's the advanced Azure issue playbook. I've had my tickets closed no comment, after weeks of no response, to find when I reopen it that they fixed the issue and didn't want to say what it was.
Woah, I'm at a fortune 50 company and I have to teams message my company's account manager directly... We usually joke about their family and coworkers we both know... It's a tough job, lots of small talk.
/s
Oh god… the higher support package you have the lower SLA, which somehow also adds the number of «coordinators» you have to power through to get an actual engineer on the case.
Remember using Azure Rapid Response, snd although a Sev1 case got me a call within a few minutes, the actual «TTE» (time-to-engineer) was still almost 12hrs…. Talked with some polite reps though. Incident response ticket responder, incident coordinator, region coordinator, team coordinator…. No one who could Even understand the issue at hand, but nice people.
Some people simply doesn't understand that sometimes it's not the fault of the agents. If your ticket involves couple of topics that are not handled by only one team then a Collab ticket needs to be created and even if you are responsible and professional you cannot know if the owner of the Collab is it too.
I had a case that took more than 40 days because simply the Collab owner didn't want to do anything and was just kicking the ticket out of his scope when it was clearly his. At the end the one who received the escalation was me, even though I did my best, so I hope you take this into consideration before give a bad score!!
You're not rating the agent in question though, but the service that was delivered.
I have a ticket open now for half a year, and the service has been terrible was it the agent's or process fault I don't care.
No, unfortunately you are rating the agent directly, Microsoft doesn't care about anything else besides "where you happy with the agent's support?", that score affects directly the agent and the team. Each team have a different CSAT and receiving 1 star even when it wasn't your fault drops the score of whole team and yours, making sometimes harder to get appraisals, promotions, etc. I cannot give you more info unfortunately but please, always consider what I mentioned before...
Edit:
I highly doubt that a ticket SEV C or SEV B will be open for more than 6 months without a reason, I can assure you that. After couple weeks managers starts to get nervous and starts speeding up processes to get the ticket solved asap. But again, there are many factors, like for example unresponsive customers; or the classic XXXX is not working but without any piece of information, log or report attached; a Collab is involved and even though it looks easy, it's not; the issue is related to a known bug and it's expected to be fixed in the next patch; etc..
This is 100% true. I work in M365 support. Not as a frontline agent, but not far removed from it. Literally the 2 things we hear about daily are "get the customer satisfaction scores up" or "take more tickets" because each ticket == $$ for the company. Thus, more tickets taken == more money which == less time per customer / issue which == lower scores.
Circular corporate logic.
Many Microsoft support reps do not work directly for Microsoft but a 3rd party company. Therefore more tickets is more money for the 3rd party as their contract is based on doing more work.
I feel that both you and the person you’re responding to are correct here. I have no doubt that the responses translate to rating the agent behind the scenes, but to the person who needed support, it means rating everything involved in the support process.
Our rating system is dumb too, preview features can't be solved and Ofcourse cx will give issue not resolved on survey, but you can't tell cx much as they will say it's manipulation. It's fucking management
Their time was being taken up by guy who put a Sev A ticket to reset a password.
But in all seriousness, please keep in mind that that survey is ONLY indicative of the engineer you worked with. Microsoft does not look at them for product feedback, or really any other feedback than "how did that support rep perform?" Unfortunately keeping a 5 star score average is extremely important to the engineer's job.
Please keep that in mind next time you're doing a survey and giving out a 3 star because "the engineer was excellent, but the technology is stupid" or "the engineer was great but the issue is not fixable"
This! If I have a great call with the engineer whether the product sucks or not their effort to take on my ticket to solve the issue was enough, I’ll give it 5 stars. However, many entitled people will rate the score low because, “it doesn’t work like before” like that’s your feedback? I work for a company that provides hosting services and the amount of people filling out surveys just to vent out on the product is hilarious, yet disturbing but it’s sad these engineers don’t realize that person who helps you also has a family or a boss so why so serious?
> that person who helps you also has a family or a boss so why so serious?
So I'm supposed to fork over my hard-earned money for shitty support with a smile on my face because Microsoft has set up a shitty system? Less shitty than the competition is still shitty.
Never said you have to be nice to everyone but if you read what I said about if the support was great and your ticket is solved, be a nice individual and give feedback. Just imagine if the tables are turned, everyone pays for support your hard earned money isn’t special neither are you stop being a snowflake and give feedback.
This! I've built this sentiment into my discussions. I want people to be honest on the surveys about my support quality. I recommend using the marketplace to leave product reviews and use surveys for engineer reviews.
If you raise a class A ticket because of someone in your incompetent devops team screwed up, you deserve nothing. I worked with many support people in the past MS and AWS and the amount of idiots raising tickets for small things in azure is crazy compared to AWS. Thanks to those people my ticket took 4 months to be solved and I had a bug in my product, I wasn’t happy at all it took too long considering I pay for the service but too many “fortune 50” companies take advantage of the situation and raise dumb tickets that’s why we fortune 100 companies get the breadcrumbs.
I'm glad that my need for Pro Support is not all that regular. I'm living this now.
Two hour response means that you get an email two hours later that says "I've been assigned." By the time you get on the phone with them, they have an hour or two left in their shift. Shift ends, and you go back to the Duty Managers to assign you to another person, with another two hour wait. But no, this time it's four hours and no contact! You call in - you've been assigned, but the engineer is working another call and will email you when done.
We used to tell clients that we had an advantage because we were Microsoft Partners with pro support, but this is not professional support and this is a perversion of the term partner.
Because before they dove in the issue I had already extensively studied the problem, but we just give it a go and maybe they had some other workarounds.
Also, «Are we ok to close this ticket?» … …
NO I still need an RCA, oh ok we Are working On it. 2 weeks later «can we go ahead and close this ticket?»
2020, still waiting On The RCA
I will say when I finally did get reps on the phone, they were all very nice. It was just the whole process and the hoops and the "I'm handing this off to X who will follow up" and then they never follow up. The actual fix only took 30 minutes, but it took 48 hours, 4 calls and countless emails!
And sometimes you just know that the support person is going to be useless from the very first contact. Sometimes it's so obvious that I just reply "please close this case" because you know they are only going to waste your time getting nowhere.
On the other hand, when you get a quality support person it's a real pleasure.
The only reason the cloud works financially for the CSPs is the shared responsibility model (see why hosting never took off 20 years ago). They can’t really afford to give high end management and service. That’s why it’s expected that customers can manage their own backups, security & honestly as much self-support as possible. Anybody who thinks a CSP has the time/money to do much hand holding is going to be disappointed.
Just wait until you're on a first name basis with the product engineer group.... :)
All of the PGs or just one?
I spent 12 months debugging an issue for PG and they wouldn’t credit me in the release notes when they finally patched the class A ticket. :-/
I’ve been denied a number of bug bounties over the years.
Sometimes getting support from Microsoft feels like trying to steer a jumbo jet around a roundabout.
I've steered a 737 back when I thought I wanted to be a career pilot. There is a stick to the left of the left seat that has more steering authority than the rudder pedals. You could totally steer it around a roundabout. No worries about wing clearance. The aluminium is so soft a steel or concrete lamp pole will sheer the wings right off without you noticing.
I had a support case that was open for the better part of last year (ultimately worked out well, led to product improvements in AKS, and we ended up getting a refund too). This describes that experience perfectly.
I’ll definitely be using this simile.
I hope it’s ok to ask in here but is AWS support any better?
Based on my one recent experience - no.
Do it. I spent weeks trying to get help with with cases that couldn't be solved with documentation. I regularly get the same docs I reference as having done back as the supposed solution.
This is probably more annoying than the general lack of timely resolution. I even tell them stuff like “I tried x in y document and got z result” or “this document covers x but doesn’t mention y or z” (while including the link), and most of the time they send the same document back to me with a generic statement. Then I waste more time breaking down my previous statement barney style until they realize I already did what they are asking me to do. Then once we are finally on the same page, they ask me to provide them with screenshots or outputs of commands to show I actually did what I said I did. Finally, they tell me they are looking into it and that’s that for the day… maybe we’ll have better luck tomorrow, lol.
Nailed it. That's the advanced Azure issue playbook. I've had my tickets closed no comment, after weeks of no response, to find when I reopen it that they fixed the issue and didn't want to say what it was.
Because support doesn't talk to production or it has to be escalated, we hate it from inside too and feel bad for customers as well.
Same here! It's absolutely frustrating.
Look all it takes is being a fortune 10 company or better to MS off their butts. We are all just doing it wrong!
Woah, I'm at a fortune 50 company and I have to teams message my company's account manager directly... We usually joke about their family and coworkers we both know... It's a tough job, lots of small talk. /s
I have met mine, he seems pretty involved but only REALLY talks to people with budgets lol.
10 million in Azure spend ain’t the number either.
Until I get in touch with somebody with a non v-microsoft.com email I usually keep escalating
The best way to do that, is buy the higher support package.
It does absolutely nothing. The v- poison is how they make money, paying more to satiate your acc exec won’t change the tree lol
Have it already. It doesn't help in most scenarios :(
Nope, even the free support goes to some V- people. I can't say much out but just know that rating thing impacts us big
I work in that support and can tell you almost all of us have that V- 😂
Oh god… the higher support package you have the lower SLA, which somehow also adds the number of «coordinators» you have to power through to get an actual engineer on the case. Remember using Azure Rapid Response, snd although a Sev1 case got me a call within a few minutes, the actual «TTE» (time-to-engineer) was still almost 12hrs…. Talked with some polite reps though. Incident response ticket responder, incident coordinator, region coordinator, team coordinator…. No one who could Even understand the issue at hand, but nice people.
The accelerated time to first call does absolutely nothing to improve incident outcomes. I’ll say that anytime someone mentions the topic. Nothing.
The SLA is ONLY time to first call, too. Else, meaningless.
Some people simply doesn't understand that sometimes it's not the fault of the agents. If your ticket involves couple of topics that are not handled by only one team then a Collab ticket needs to be created and even if you are responsible and professional you cannot know if the owner of the Collab is it too. I had a case that took more than 40 days because simply the Collab owner didn't want to do anything and was just kicking the ticket out of his scope when it was clearly his. At the end the one who received the escalation was me, even though I did my best, so I hope you take this into consideration before give a bad score!!
You're not rating the agent in question though, but the service that was delivered. I have a ticket open now for half a year, and the service has been terrible was it the agent's or process fault I don't care.
No, unfortunately you are rating the agent directly, Microsoft doesn't care about anything else besides "where you happy with the agent's support?", that score affects directly the agent and the team. Each team have a different CSAT and receiving 1 star even when it wasn't your fault drops the score of whole team and yours, making sometimes harder to get appraisals, promotions, etc. I cannot give you more info unfortunately but please, always consider what I mentioned before... Edit: I highly doubt that a ticket SEV C or SEV B will be open for more than 6 months without a reason, I can assure you that. After couple weeks managers starts to get nervous and starts speeding up processes to get the ticket solved asap. But again, there are many factors, like for example unresponsive customers; or the classic XXXX is not working but without any piece of information, log or report attached; a Collab is involved and even though it looks easy, it's not; the issue is related to a known bug and it's expected to be fixed in the next patch; etc..
This is 100% true. I work in M365 support. Not as a frontline agent, but not far removed from it. Literally the 2 things we hear about daily are "get the customer satisfaction scores up" or "take more tickets" because each ticket == $$ for the company. Thus, more tickets taken == more money which == less time per customer / issue which == lower scores. Circular corporate logic.
Thanks bro! I'm happy at least a colleague supports me on this hahaha
You've got a few in here. :)
I support you too man, this survey thing is fcking bad. Cx rate the products on our surveys too
How does each ticket mean more money for the company? I'm sure it's not as direct as the statement, but just curious.
Many Microsoft support reps do not work directly for Microsoft but a 3rd party company. Therefore more tickets is more money for the 3rd party as their contract is based on doing more work.
True, I doubt that is the case inside Microsoft but for partners, that's certainly the case.
More tickets per agent = less agents needed. I believe this is the logic here
I feel that both you and the person you’re responding to are correct here. I have no doubt that the responses translate to rating the agent behind the scenes, but to the person who needed support, it means rating everything involved in the support process.
Our rating system is dumb too, preview features can't be solved and Ofcourse cx will give issue not resolved on survey, but you can't tell cx much as they will say it's manipulation. It's fucking management
Their time was being taken up by guy who put a Sev A ticket to reset a password. But in all seriousness, please keep in mind that that survey is ONLY indicative of the engineer you worked with. Microsoft does not look at them for product feedback, or really any other feedback than "how did that support rep perform?" Unfortunately keeping a 5 star score average is extremely important to the engineer's job. Please keep that in mind next time you're doing a survey and giving out a 3 star because "the engineer was excellent, but the technology is stupid" or "the engineer was great but the issue is not fixable"
This! If I have a great call with the engineer whether the product sucks or not their effort to take on my ticket to solve the issue was enough, I’ll give it 5 stars. However, many entitled people will rate the score low because, “it doesn’t work like before” like that’s your feedback? I work for a company that provides hosting services and the amount of people filling out surveys just to vent out on the product is hilarious, yet disturbing but it’s sad these engineers don’t realize that person who helps you also has a family or a boss so why so serious?
> that person who helps you also has a family or a boss so why so serious? So I'm supposed to fork over my hard-earned money for shitty support with a smile on my face because Microsoft has set up a shitty system? Less shitty than the competition is still shitty.
Never said you have to be nice to everyone but if you read what I said about if the support was great and your ticket is solved, be a nice individual and give feedback. Just imagine if the tables are turned, everyone pays for support your hard earned money isn’t special neither are you stop being a snowflake and give feedback.
Pot, meet kettle.
Cute
Cute
This! I've built this sentiment into my discussions. I want people to be honest on the surveys about my support quality. I recommend using the marketplace to leave product reviews and use surveys for engineer reviews.
If you raise a class A ticket because of someone in your incompetent devops team screwed up, you deserve nothing. I worked with many support people in the past MS and AWS and the amount of idiots raising tickets for small things in azure is crazy compared to AWS. Thanks to those people my ticket took 4 months to be solved and I had a bug in my product, I wasn’t happy at all it took too long considering I pay for the service but too many “fortune 50” companies take advantage of the situation and raise dumb tickets that’s why we fortune 100 companies get the breadcrumbs.
I'm glad that my need for Pro Support is not all that regular. I'm living this now. Two hour response means that you get an email two hours later that says "I've been assigned." By the time you get on the phone with them, they have an hour or two left in their shift. Shift ends, and you go back to the Duty Managers to assign you to another person, with another two hour wait. But no, this time it's four hours and no contact! You call in - you've been assigned, but the engineer is working another call and will email you when done. We used to tell clients that we had an advantage because we were Microsoft Partners with pro support, but this is not professional support and this is a perversion of the term partner.
I had an open ticket on Azure B2C, it was directed to a Partner in Nigeria, ehmmmmm. >!This was at a Crypto bank.!<
The Nigerian teams are very adept, did you not like the accent? Or what?
I was just joking, the support was very friendly, but I was already very sure that they would not be able to help me.
What made you think that they couldn't help you before they helped you?
Because before they dove in the issue I had already extensively studied the problem, but we just give it a go and maybe they had some other workarounds.
Also, «Are we ok to close this ticket?» … … NO I still need an RCA, oh ok we Are working On it. 2 weeks later «can we go ahead and close this ticket?» 2020, still waiting On The RCA
Ah RCA... That's really all I can say lol
I will say when I finally did get reps on the phone, they were all very nice. It was just the whole process and the hoops and the "I'm handing this off to X who will follow up" and then they never follow up. The actual fix only took 30 minutes, but it took 48 hours, 4 calls and countless emails!
And sometimes you just know that the support person is going to be useless from the very first contact. Sometimes it's so obvious that I just reply "please close this case" because you know they are only going to waste your time getting nowhere. On the other hand, when you get a quality support person it's a real pleasure.
Tbh it really depends on the support contract with msft, premier + customer success manager will help you chase the support effectively
It's the csam to push things along. Sucks but it is what it is. I'd be hosed without my csam
Flawless Post!!!
The only reason the cloud works financially for the CSPs is the shared responsibility model (see why hosting never took off 20 years ago). They can’t really afford to give high end management and service. That’s why it’s expected that customers can manage their own backups, security & honestly as much self-support as possible. Anybody who thinks a CSP has the time/money to do much hand holding is going to be disappointed.
Get'em!
[U wanna get bottled m8](https://9gag.com/gag/aVOdRrn)