Chapter 15. Customer Service and Support


Philosophy: It has been my observation that the bottom line of every feature, bug, hotfix, or design change request always comes down to the question, "Will we (Microsoft) support this?"

Vincent Maraia

It is interesting how after almost 30 years, Microsoft has realized that the name product support services (PSS) might not be an accurate representation of what the support organization's goals are. After all, supporting the customer is what they really do, so the name was recently changed to customer service and support (CSS). Because my first job at Microsoft was interning in the PSS hardware team in 1989, I experienced a lot of the support pains firsthand. Back in 1989, when every personal computer ran MS-DOS, and later in 1992, when the Windows logo was flashing, whenever people had problems with their machine, they figured that they should call Microsoft support. On the surface, this seems like common sense. I mean, if you have trouble with an Apple computer, you call Apple, right? Not really. A lot of phone calls back then were focused on figuring out where the customer was having the problem and then redirecting them to the appropriate company. Hence, we would always let the customer know that we were supporting Microsoft products not everyone else's.

From my research, except at the early days at Microsoft, the support group has always been the single largest organization in the company (the most employees worldwide). So you can see why support is a big part of the decision of whether a feature or bug is implemented or fixed. Ultimately, the cost of support services is passed back to the product teams (as discussed in more detail later in the chapter). To the customer, whether it is an end user or business, the true costs are never seen. Microsoft still believes in "free" support on its current shipping products although, if you need constant help, tutoring, or advice, it'll cost you. Companies and occasionally end users who need more in-depth support, quicker turnaround times for a solution, or support for older versions of software can choose to buy some of the offerings mentioned later in this chapter.

Figure 15.1. PSS call.


What I would like to show in this chapter is an overview of how Microsoft's support organization works and then tie it back to the effects it has on the new features and fixes that go into the future releases of our products. It is worth pointing out that although the CSS organization tries to standardize the way support communicates with development, there are no hard rules on how this happens at Microsoft. Thus, some groups have different processes in place than others. This is necessary because of the level and quantity of help each particular product group needs.



The Build Master(c) Microsoft's Software Configuration Management Best Practices
The Build Master: Microsofts Software Configuration Management Best Practices
ISBN: 0321332059
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 186

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