On hold with Microsoft. What a waste of time. What a way to irk customers. Steal their time with faulty products, lack of service and put them on the phone with an untrained macho Philippine young man with a fake name. “Jared” he called himself. His lack of English belies that fact. I am glad that most Indians are now allowed to use Indian names. Anyway what I learned is this:
Microsoft = Hypocrisy.
The 22 minutes I wasted today are better than the 6 1/4 hours it took last time. Today I got nothing resolved, but gave up quicker. Yet, I am so upset. My cortisol levels have sky rocketed, my adrenaline level is in need of rigorous exercise to get them back down. CX is the future. Everyone including Microsoft agrees.
I ask Jared: “How long have you worked at Microsoft. 2 Years. Are you an expert on Excel.”
Jared claims that he was trained for more than 1 year. However, he cautioned me right away, that he is not trained on using the product. He is merely able to provide help with the installation of Microsoft 365’s program. Not with solving anything that may go wrong with it. When I described the problem he first explained that it is Facebook’s fault. While there are many things Facebook could improve about themselves, I don’t agree with him that being able to save Facebook Analytics xls documents sometimes, but not always is a Facebook issue. The conversation immediately went beyond the young man’s scope of understanding. I asked for a supervisor. He never came. Maybe he was never notified. Who knows? Well, we only know that Microsoft doesn’t care about my Customer Experience. I am having a terrible one.
If the program is already installed, he explains, then Microsoft can’t help. He told me that I am welcome to ask other Microsoft users in the “community.” I asked him, if there is a glitch with the product, such as many times I can save a document but sometimes I can’t – I am on my own? He assured me: “No, no, you are not on your own, I am suggesting that you speak with others in the community. Often other users who have similar problem can talk to you and listen to you. I can’t. ” When I told him that this is preposterous, he said you can also try to find solutions by watching YouTube or by going to a support site, like ansheishlscam. I said I beg your pardon. he repeated ansheishlscam or something like that. I suggested the he spell it for me since I could not make out the answer. He seemed entirely stumped at that point. Apparently they didn’t teach him how to spell word aside of not reaching him how to pronounce them.
I asked him where he is from. He answered that he is in the Philippines. I have had wonderful experiences and philosophical discussions with a Philippine Art professor and his mom in the past. I know that Jared is not the only person representing the Philippines, but he is certainly representing the CX experience of Microsoft.
I can’t understand his accent. I had asked to speak to his supervisor. He had kept me on hold for 16 minutes and then told me that his supervisor was busy with another disgruntled customer. No, he didn’t really say “disgruntled” he said “valued.”
The problem with Customer Service contracts is that people get paid by the minute. The companies, Microsoft in this instance, don’t seem to care if the customer gets help or if you are merely put on hold. I imagine that “big data” shows that calls in the Philippines are shorter than those in India. I know because last time when I didn’t have to luxury of hanging up because I needed the software installed – I was on hold for over well over 5 hours – only to be told that they wanted to call me back in an extra 22 hours.
I asked whether he could help with a Skype glitch while I was waiting. Realizing that I was being silly as soon as the sentence came out of my mouth. Since I joined this 365 subscription, my Skype credits disappeared because my email is in use for this account already. Completely irrational frankly, since I have been a customer with Microsoft since 1980 and used Skype since 2004.
Microsoft touts their AI capabilities and how it provides “finished services to customers” – but clearly Microsoft is not using their own AI platform or it doesn’t work at all. My service was neither “finished” nor did it exist. Clearly Microsoft can’t keep track of customers, like me. Sad. Or, probably, Microsoft just doesn’t care. I has the credit card booking the money out of the bank account each month. So there is no more need to actually give a functioning product. They refer me to the “community” whatever the heck that is? I googled Community & Microsoft and got this:
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum – a place where frustrated people who don’t have a clue can vote up and down of how frustrated they are with the non-existing answers. Swell.
I actually think it is not a technology problem, but an attitude problem. The new Indian born CEO Nadella doesn’t give a hoot about his customers. If he did they would not have all these issues. They want those issues to complete the retreat from consumer based business. HP tried that and shot themselves in the foot, big time. They did the opposite. They focused on the printers and stopped supporting their techies sub contractors who built their company in the first place. Not realizing that most people are both – consumers and business people. Love that Epson Printer after years of using and recommending HP for everything and my clients. I use a MACs now. Love Apple’s customer service, I really do. They genuinely care, they speak English and are culturally “with it” and highly trained. Love them.
Microsoft, certainly is not the only US bred tech company, that seems to suffer from hypocrisy. They are just one of the largest offenders. And it is not that the company as a whole doesn’t know that customer service is important. In their blog they sing the praises about importance of a positive Customer Experience. In reality however they clearly don’t care at all.
What they say:
Social media can have a positive influence on your brand and your product. It can also drive a stronger bottom line. Case in point: loyal customers spend 67% more than new ones.1 Customer relationships that lead to loyalty and trust are the foundation of a brand’s success. At Microsoft, the Customer Experience Center (CXC) is dedicated to building deeper customer relationships. etc.
My Microsoft customer experience was horrible and the company clearly has no interest in walking their talk. What goes on my nerves is when people talk one way out of this side of their mouth and the other way out of the other side. I can’t stand hypocrisy.
I prefer people who are consistent. Microsoft is in decline – angry and upset customer are not a good sign for their future health. As an angry and upset customers I probably will share my story with more than the average 15 people for negative, and 5 people for positive experiences.
Well, the health advice is working. I feel much calmer now. I wasted an awful lot of time. Maybe I should start working with better customer experience experts and show Microsoft and those other phony companies, how it’s done. Maybe in the end this frequent and horrid customer experience is just the inspiration I needed.
PS: Special thanks, to Yussuf. You were great last time we spoke and you solve my install problem in 33 minutes flat. Microsoft should promote you over these uncultured, untrained stone-age macho men who wasted 6 hours and 15 minutes of my time, before I played CX roulette and found you. If people like you, Yussuf, were in charge of Microsoft, the company would have a chance to thrive again. The way it is run right now, it will go down as a mere footnote in history.
