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When irate product support customers demand to speak to Bill Gates

devblogs.microsoft.com

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Re: When irate product support customers demand to speak to Bill Gates

#2

Post by malfist »

This thing isn't uncommon. You email a CEO and get put into "executive escalation" if you don't seem like a crackpot. I've done that once before and it was useful to cut through the armies of outsourced CSRs that read from a script and refuse to deviate and send you in circles.

It does help if you start your email with your value to the company (i.e., I spent $X over $Y time period at your company)

Re: When irate product support customers demand to speak to Bill Gates

#3

Post by dooglius »

malfist wrote: post #2

This thing isn't uncommon. You email a CEO and get put into "executive escalation" if you don't seem like a crackpot. I've done that once before and it was useful to cut through the armies of outsourced CSRs that read from a script and refuse to deviate and send you in circles. It does help if you start your email with your value to the company (i.e., I spent $X over $Y time period at your company)

I think the post is about the ones who _do_ seem like crackpots

Re: When irate product support customers demand to speak to Bill Gates

#6

Post by ErroneousBosh »

breppp wrote: post #4

the blog is full of other ways to trick your support cases while not showing at all you deem yourself superior https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20040303-00/?p=40...

When I worked for an IBM helpdesk looking after point-of-sale systems, we used to ask them to check if the power cable had a black or a blue bit of plastic surrounding the pins.

"It's black? Okay, it's not that then, I was hoping it would be easy. Right, plug it back in again and... oh it's working now? Cool, ring me back if there's anything else then!"

Re: When irate product support customers demand to speak to Bill Gates

#8

Post by gist »

dooglius wrote: post #3
malfist wrote: post #2

This thing isn't uncommon. You email a CEO and get put into "executive escalation" if you don't seem like a crackpot. I've done that once before and it was useful to cut through the armies of outsourced CSRs that read from a script and refuse to deviate and send you in circles. It does help if you start your email with your value to the company (i.e., I spent $X over $Y time period at your company)

I think the post is about the ones who _do_ seem like crackpots

Could be crackpots or could be regular people who are so frustrated they express themselves that way.

And the truth is if the 'Bill Gates' had to deal with this frustration himself (most likely let's say he doesn't he has people who deal with it for him when he needs something from another company or his own) he'd implement changes to keep users happier. Noting of course that you are always going to have a segment of people that will both get angry and have edge problems.

Did or does 'Bill Gates' ever actually try to be a regular user of Microsoft support actually waiting in the call queue on hold for 10 minutes to an hour and even getting disconnected?

Does anyone at the company (in a position to order improvements) ever do this?

(This applies to many companies obviously 'bill gates' and 'microsoft' are just placeholders.)

I think it's underestimated the amount of psychological pain that some of the software (of Microsoft and other companies) has caused people over the years.

Re: When irate product support customers demand to speak to Bill Gates

#10

Post by gist »

moioci wrote: post #7

Flip side is the well-known story of when billg actually answered a customer service call: https://www.entrepreneur.com/leadership/that-time-bill-gates...

That is such utter bs it's amazing that Microsoft PR thought that somehow that shows anything of benefit to the suffering users.
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