Telstra and Microsoft to blame for woeful support, says Microsoft.
Microsoft has initiated a review of its Australian phone support for Office 365 in the face of scathing criticism from customers. Microsoft and Telstra were collecting complaints from customers through blog posts and email and reviewing support-ticket histories to discover recurring problems.
“We’ve noticed in the social media that there are elements of support that aren’t matching up to expectations,” said Isabel Boniface, Microsoft Australia’s product manager for Office 365. “We want feedback from customers and we’re hoping that by evaluating cases one by one we will be able to identify two or three main areas that we can make changes to.”
Office 365 customers have described support failures in several interviews with BoxFreeIT and in technology forums such as Whirlpool. Issues with Telstra T Suite’s support have included phone calls going unanswered, no reply to multiple emailed requests for support, delayed escalation of support requests, and untrained staff unable to answer basic queries or perform simple procedures.
Jon Ryall, a Melbourne accountant, said it took several days and many phone calls to support to set up an Office 365 account for his new accounting practice late last year. The account was switched off without warning after he missed an invoice and Ryall lost access to his email.
“When we rang up their support it was outsourced to Telstra and the Telstra staff weren’t trained. I’m ringing up saying, Can I please pay this invoice so you can unlock my account and I can access my email. And they said, we don’t know how to do that,” Ryall told BoxFreeIT.
“Luckily it was right at the start of the business and I said I’ve had enough, I’m going to Google.”
“I am steering all customers away from Office 365 due to the communication breakdown within Telstra and their support services,” wrote forum poster NazDog in Whirlpool, who claimed to be an IT reseller. “Email is the most valued communication method and to have support cases go for over 3 weeks without any communication on a paid service to me seems not good enough.
“It’s very dissapointing (sic) that in Australia we pay an absolute premium for the service and receive no support because we have to deal with Telstra.”
Microsoft admitted the problems and said both companies were responsible for the poor support.
“We seem to be having some communications challenges between the customer and Telstra, but we absolutely have communications challenges between Telstra and Microsoft as well. So I would hate to put this on Telstra and say it’s purely a Telstra problem because it’s not,” Boniface said.
“It’s a joint problem between our support organisations and only by identifying those key pivot points where it’s breaking down are we going to be able to resolve it.”
Boniface claimed the problems were limited to a handful of customers and that she and her counterpart at Telstra were contacting most of them individually. “The only (unhappy customers) we’ve seen are the ones on the blogs where I’ve responded. It’s only a handful I’ve spoken to to date. It’s very limited,” Boniface said.
Boniface encouraged customers with poor experiences of support to contact her via email (isabelbo@microsoft.com) or Steve Day, Telstra’s general manager for cloud services support (Steve.Day@team.telstra.com). Customer feedback would be added to the review process, Boniface said. “That offer is available not only to Telstra customers but also to our partners.”
“If there’s any specific issues we’re very open to listening. I can’t commit to calling every customer personally but I am trying to get across as many as possible,” Boniface said.
Microsoft and Telstra were asking disgruntled customers to provide their service support ticket numbers they received when logging their calls with Telstra. “We can go through those histories and we can get a very extensive view of what the customer has experienced,” Boniface said.
Remedies
Microsoft acknowledged there had been problems in communication between Telstra, which provided first and second level support, and Microsoft.
Telstra received continuous training as a syndicate partner from Microsoft’s partner support account manager, part of whose duties was skilling up Telstra staff, Boniface said. Microsoft had decided a dedicated person was required and had hired a full-time training officer who was due to start in April, she added.
“That training officer will have the sole duty of making sure the Telstra staff are adequately trained and skilled up in Microsoft products and services,” Boniface said. “I think just by that investment we are going to see a massive improvement.”
Senior support staff from Microsoft’s Singapore office were travelling to Australia to train local Microsoft and Telstra staff, Boniface said. The two companies planned to hold a workshop to map out the support experience and work out where to make changes.
Telstra had also made changes to its support team, said Rod Bruem, Telstra’s corporate affairs manager. Telstra was happy with its support for Office 365 “given it’s a new product”.
“Considering how new the product is and the team structure is fairly new we think it’s travelling well. The data I’ve seen shows that call waiting times are tracking above 90 percent. It’s not ideal but we’ll continue working on that,” Bruem said.
“If someone’s had a bad experience repeatedly I’d apologise to that customer and hope that when they call again they don’t have that experience,” Bruem said.
High price for support
Microsoft defended the quality of Telstra’s support and said it was worth the premium charged for Office 365. Telstra charged up to twice the price paid in the US for an equivalent Office 365 licence despite the fact that the service was internet-based.
The small business licence was 30 percent cheaper in the US ($7.90 vs $US$6) and the enterprise E3 licence cost was 52 percent less ($40.10 vs US$20).
Telstra has previously justified the premium partly on the basis that it provided phone support for Office 365. Office 365 for Professionals and Small Business (known as a P SKU licence) in other countries only had access to Microsoft’s support forum and no phone support.
“Telstra does provide level one and level two support to our customers which is over and above the support you would receive in the rest of the world. Your P SKUs are not supported by Microsoft, it’s supported by community support. So you would go into a forum and ask a question and other users will answer your question,” Boniface said.
However, Telstra T Suite charged more than double the price for Office 365 enterprise licences in the US even though 24×7 phone support was included by Microsoft.
“I absolutely do believe that Telstra is providing the value that is offered by Telstra exclusively over and above what’s offered in the rest of the world,” Boniface said.