Doing the Little Things Wrong: Microsoft’s customer service

A company in a competitive environment cannot thrive without the support of its customers.

To make customers happy requires great products and great customer service. Great customer service is made up of lots of little things. There are many little things that other companies do right that Microsoft does wrong.

Over the past few months I have encountered Microsoft’s customer service several times, and nearly all were disappointing. I did not set out to find problems with the company. As you will see below, in a couple of cases I tried to give business to Microsoft that would have been easy to give to others. I am a shareholder of Microsoft, and I would like to give them my business whenever I can.

Answer the right question
Microsoft’s website provides a good comparison of the different versions of Visual Studio, and after determining which version is best, the web site offers to help find where to buy it. Clicking on “Locate a reseller” will provide a list of every retailer that sells any Microsoft products. Rather than making me read through the dozens of retailers that sell any Microsoft product, they could just tell me the couple that sell Visual Studio.

Provide updates for books
Microsoft Press publishes a book called Programming Indigo, the only book available on the Windows Communication Foundation. Because the book is based on a very early beta version, a lot of its examples no longer work. The download page for the book continues to provide only the old version of the examples.

Deal with customer problems
I used the Microsoft Certified Professional logo builder to create a file in the format the site’s documentation recommends for printing. The file generated appeared to contain no image. I sent an e-mail to MCP support, explaining my problem, and listing the programs I had used to try to view the file. Someone from the site responded, asking for more information. I wrote back with the answers, but I never heard from MCP help again. The printer was waiting on me, so I could not follow up and had to settle for a lower quality file format.

Anticipate customer wants
Microsoft is trying to compete with Google selling online advertising. Google offers a program called “Google AdSense” which allows people to host ads selected by Google on their web pages. I could not find any indication on the MSN website that Microsoft offered a similar service. I sent the question to one of the contact e-mail addresses for MSN, they suggested I contact some other department, and I let the matter drop.

There may be good reasons for not offering such a program at Microsoft, but there is no excuse for not having a response for people who want to advertise for them, especially when their chief competitor in that market has such a program.

Take suggestions from customers
I have an idea for a new software product. I searched all over Microsoft.com for a place to give them my suggestion. None of the categories under the “contact us” section seemed to apply, and I don’t remember which one I chose. I did get a response, but all it did was suggest that I submit the suggestion to another department, and gave me their web address. I was not able to find an e-mail address for that department.

Summary of problems
Microsoft has failed to anticipate some pretty obvious customer needs, like current information on a product they are changing or the availability of services similar to those offered by their competitors. They have not made it easy for people to make suggestions or to allow customers to collaborate with the company. Some e-mails went unanswered, and others were answered only with “talk to someone else.”

One ray of hope
I did have one interaction with Microsoft where the company’s performance was excellent. The MSDN Library has an in-work version of the documentation of the Windows Communication Foundation. Because the documentation is still being created, much of what is there is incomplete. I did find an example though, that had some syntax errors, and I decided to report them.

On every page in the MSDN Library there is a link to report problems. I very quickly got a reply from someone on the documentation team thanking me for my report, agreeing with my diagnosis and telling me that the problem would be fixed shortly.

Conclusion
Microsoft is a generally a well run company. They are good at setting targets and measuring progress. They need to apply that ability to their customer service.

As their competition increases, Microsoft needs to generate customer satisfaction and take advantage of customer collaboration if their future is going to be anywhere near as successful as their past.