Last week, I had a very distasteful experience with Microsoft Support which involved my day job. I’d scheduled an outage to some of our production servers to do some work on SharePoint. I’d also scheduled a call with a member of the SharePoint Support Team, to ensure smooth sailing through a tight maintenance window, doing some stuff that could potentially screw up our SharePoint farm.

So far, so good. At the appointed time, the support technician called me. I’d brought down the servers and begun a database backup, to make sure I could restore SharePoint to its previous state in case things went wrong. The database backup took longer than expected, and in the middle of it, the technician told me that his shift is about to end and he needs to go. He reassured me that it wouldn’t be a problem, that I could just call the support line right back when the backup is done, and another technician would pick it up where we left off.

When the backup completed, I called, and guess what I was told… “SharePoint support is offered on a callback basis ONLY. You will need to schedule a callback, which given the current queue, will happen in approximately 24 hours.” That was a nasty surprise! I thought they were joking, but they weren’t. There I was, in the middle of an outage, with my production servers down, and Microsoft couldn’t care less about me. They didn’t care that I needed to go through with the operation, that several hundred users depended on me to bring those servers back when I promised, that we’re a Gold Partner with them, that I was entitled to an appropriate level of support, etc. They cared NOTHING about those things. I asked to speak to a manager, and was told the very same thing. But what really got my goose is that both the employee and his manager used the word “unfortunately” a lot with me, but the tone of their voice was snide and uncaring. There was no mistaking it. They couldn’t care less about me as a customer.

The two customer support reps I spoke with weren’t at some call center in India. No, they were American, located right here in the States somewhere, and they couldn’t give an American damn about the fact that they (Microsoft) were about to completely fail a customer. I asked them to do something, to forward my call to SharePoint Support, that I’d be willing to hold on the line, but they refused to do any such thing. Then I told them fine, I’ll blog about it. They couldn’t care less about that, either. That’s okay anyway, I’m blogging the experience right now, and we’ll see what comes of it.

I hung up the phone, furious, and started working on the servers myself. I knew what needed to get done, in big picture terms, and I wanted to stick to my promise and deliver results for my users. I also penned a quick email to the rep whose shift had ended, telling him what had happened, and also pointing out that I still had a problem — a big one. As I was almost done with the work on the servers — which proceeded successfully without Microsoft’s help — he responded back, promising me that he’d call a colleague of his on the late shift, and that I’d get a call from someone within 15 minutes. Even though I was pretty much done, I appreciated this very much, since it would give me a chance to verify that what I did was correct. Our SharePoint farm is used at all hours of the day and night by many users, and so I absolutely must make sure that things work properly, and that the servers stay up.

Sure enough, one of the technician’s colleagues called me within 15 minutes, and she confirmed that what I’d done was right. I thanked her, wrapped things up, brought up the SharePoint farm, announced the outage was over — just as the maintenance window expired — and went home for the night.

You want to know the kicker? The SharePoint Team is somewhere in India, at a call center. That’s right! American Microsoft employees couldn’t give a damn about my case or my problem or customer service in general, but Indian Microsoft employees, who are often ridiculed for their accent and lack of proper support (I’m guilty of this myself) came through in a big way and didn’t let me down. That Indian technician’s shift really ended, no kidding there. He actually checked his work email from home and arranged a callback with his colleague on his own time. That’s dedication. That man should get a promotion or a salary raise. Meanwhile, those two American Microsoft employees should get demoted or censured for showing how little they cared about a customer with a critical case on his hands.

If you’re a regular reader, you may remember that I blogged previously about Microsoft’s poor customer support experience here, where I talked about their maddening hold music. They seem to have improved that aspect since I wrote my post, so I’m hoping that someone at MS will take this post to heart and change things up. A good place to start would be to revise the “callback only” policy for SharePoint Support. Another would be counseling for American MS employees about the value of customer service. The Indian guys get it better than Americans. Now that’s a surprise to me!

You want to know the best part? Today, Monday, I get a call from a confused SharePoint support technician, offering to help me with my case. So I guess that if I’d have waited for Microsoft support to work through its layers, my production servers would have been down from Thursday to Monday (almost five days), even though my case qualified as critical. Great job, Microsoft… You get another F from me.

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