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Your questions: is there free support for Windows Vista SP1 installation? In a word, yes

I woke up today and logged on to mail to find not one or two messages, but more than a few questions about support from Microsoft on SP1…



“Is Microsoft helping customers with SP1 installations?”

“If someone went to [Windows Update] last week and downloaded SP1 to a machine that person bought from an OEM, is MSFT providing free support if they need it?”

“where can i get help for Vista and how do I install it?”

“Can I get some help with getting the new service pack on to my computer?”


In a word, yes.

An article on Computerworld noted…


“Microsoft, however, has done little to broadcast news of the free SP1 support. The home page for the Windows Vista Solution Center, the operating system’s help and support starting point, makes no mention of it, nor does Microsoft’s main Windows Vista SP1 site.”


Well… good feedback, point taken, and I forwarded that suggestion to the support team just moments ago.  But IMHO, I think that the Vista support team is responding quite well to the feedback as it comes in.

For the story on support in the US, visit Windows Vista Service Pack 1 support page, where you’ll find the following notice…


Unlimited installation and compatibility support is available at no charge until March 18, 2009.


Support for Vista SP1I’d say that’s pretty clear. (Heck, it’s in bold, red type 😉


If you call in for support, listen carefully to the options on the line as you wait and navigate for support.  When you speak with an operator, be sure to tell the customer support agent that you would like support related to the installation of Service Pack one (or “SP1”) of Windows Vista.  I’ve also seen the wait time drop from 30 minutes for individual chat support to less than 10 just in the last few minutes.


This shouldn’t be a surprise, as Microsoft has previously provided free support on service pack installations (as noted in this Live Search).  But IMO it’s important to be clear and ensure that the message is out there.  I recall when I first moved to Redmond and we rolled out Windows XP SP2: Microsoft offered free, direct from Microsoft support for the service pack.  No matter the policy or how ubiquitous the message, we can always do more to get the word out, just as we’ve found on other areas (er, like daylight saving time and time zone changes ;).


For no-charge support requests for SP1, call (in the States) (866) 234-6020. The number for TTY/TDD help requests is noted on the same page.


[added 032408, 10AM PAC]  For more information on updating Windows Vista, please visit the Windows Vista Solution Center.  If you need more help, click on the link at the bottom of the page… 


Need More Help?  Contact a Support Professional by Email, Online, or Phone.

Tags: Microsoft, customer support, feedback, customer service, Windows Vista, Vista SP1.


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Hearing the voice of the customer: learning how to listen and respond

Before we prepared lunch for the kids yesterday, I was forwarded an article from Advertising Age this week, A Digital Conference With Some Humility: Day 2.  In it, editor Matthew Creamer highlighted some of the action at the recent Ad Age Digital Marketing Conference, including a brief report of Linnea Johnson’s comments in a panel session.  Johnson is an exec focused on consumer services at Unilever, the large manufacturer “of food, home care, and personal products including margarine, tea, and Dove soap,” as noted by Live Search.

“[Johnson] was on an energetic panel moderated by Nielsen’s Pete Blackshaw about the intersection of marketing and customer service, though her experience suggested that intersection maybe hasn’t happened yet. The very candid Ms. Johnson said she wouldn’t feel comfortable putting Unilever brand managers or agencies in a call center and that she even once offered her offices as a place for an executive committee off-site, provided the committee members manned a phone. “Not one of them did it,” she said.

“The flip side of things is Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos.com, a site I haven’t used but am now really curious about. He said Zappos takes the money it would have used on paid media and pours it into the customer experience. That means free overnight shipping, call centers and warehouses open 24/7. It’s a bet that growth will be driven by positive word of mouth and loyal customers. It seems to be working. This year, Zappos will do more than $1 billion in gross sales.”

I’ll also be willing to bet that Hsieh is in touch with what his customers are saying about Zappos.  In fact, I know he does, as noted in this interview…

“Most call centers measure average handle time and essentially what that means is people are trying to get off the phone with the customer as quickly as possible. At Zappos, if someone spends an hour on the phone with a customer and it doesn’t result in a sale, all we care about is that they went above and beyond for the customer.”

And as noted in Businessweek, “every new hire spends four weeks as a customer-service rep and a week in the Kentucky warehouse before starting work.”

Essentially, this is a question of how much of this is engrained into the way employees listen and respond to customers.  Ultimately, this attitude is in the DNA of the staff and the company: if you’re Unilever, or any large company, you need to find ways for the voice of the customer to make it to your ears at every level.  Employees need to feel and be empowered to act on customer feedback.  And such methods need to scale. 

Many companies have customer call centers (or contract the services out), and offer ways for employees to hear the voice of the customer as it comes in, or in an edited form. David Pogue of the New York Times recently noted in a blog post, Tech Support Gets a Reprieve While Users Take a Hit, about how customer service personnel will not only take calls from customers having some difficulties, they share them with others in the company.

“Several years ago, I had the chance to visit a tech-support call center for one of the big computer companies. The technician gave me a second pair of headphones so I could listen in on his conversations with the hapless users.

“I learned so much that day. I learned that all computer companies outsource tech support to dedicated call-center companies. I learned that the Users can be outrageously rude to these hapless tech-support reps, taking out their built-up frustration on somebody who had nothing to do with causing the problem.”

At Microsoft, we take our fair share of customer calls – via phone, web, mail – FedEx or UPS Overnight mail… And we try to do more than just listen to customers, and strive to listen and respond to customer needs.  Sometimes it’s difficult to see examples of this on a Microsoft-sized scale, but it does happen.    

Back in 2006 on Microsoft.com, there was an interesting story about how Kathleen Hogan, our corporate vice president of Worldwide Customer Service, Support and Customer and Partner Experience (aka CPE at the company) and the team in the “revamped its infrastructure and processes in the effort to improve the quality and supportability of Microsoft products.”  Kathleen said…

“While we’re very aware that we will always need to provide reactive support to customers, we also know that a customer’s favorite support call is the one they never need to make. From a customer perspective, there’s much to be said about proactively identifying support issues and trends to improve the health of our customers’ environments and the quality of our products.

“For example, we analyzed customer and partner support incidents related to Exchange Server and found that the majority of the support calls were related to configuration issues. These issues were difficult for customers to identify within their environments, and CSS responded quickly, working with the Exchange product team to create the Exchange Best Practices Analyzer (ExBPA) tool. Based on further implementation analysis and in partnership with the Exchange Server product team and Premier Field Engineering, the Exchange Risk Assessment Program (ExRAP) was established, which incorporates the ExBPA tool. This combination of service delivery program and tools provides best practices to our enterprise customers around how they should implement and optimize Exchange Server.”

(And more info on the Exchange Risk Assessment Program on Doug’s blog here.)

We’ve taken customer feedback in many different areas and in different ways. This coming week, I will highlight a few of the ways that we’re listening and responding.

Tags: Microsoft, Exchange, customer support, Kathleen Hogan, feedback, customer service, Advertising Age.

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Online search, ChaCha and customer service: there’s always room for improvement and innovation

In the article “The Future of Customer Service” on msnbc.com (from  – Entrepreneur.com), writer Sarah Pierce looks at the impact of the Internet and now-ubiquitous mobile technology on consumer expectations of customer service.  We’ve come a long way in the last few years since PC World’s report a couple of years ago that found “one in four online merchants either don’t, won’t, or didn’t answer basic product questions.”  But apparently there is still room for improvement.


Pierce notes that online chat and instant messaging systems have helped to connect customers eager to get some face time (or would that be screen time?) with knowledgeable customer service representatives and solve a variety of technical problems and answer their questions.  According to Nielson Mobile, more than 46 million people in the U.S. used mobile search just between July and September 2007.



“Whether it’s information on a product, questions about a service or simple driving directions, consumers want answers, and they want them now.”


I don’t think that the desire to get an answer ‘now’ is any different than it has been in the past.  My assumption is that we expect more as we are doing so many things and ultimately have more demands on our waking hours. 😉


Back to our story.  In this piece, Pierce takes a quick look at ChaCha, a web-based search and mobile text answering service that allows you to text 242242 (‘ChaCha’) on your SMS phone and get answers to your text questions from a <gasp> real, live person. 


ChaCha is the brainchild of serial innovator Scott Jones, the man behind Boston Technology (the voicemail system company) and Gracenote (originally Escient), a behind-the-scenes company that provides the Gracenote MusicID service to many providers, allowing the automagical recognition of CDs, digital music and streaming audio. (A personal note: Ty Roberts of Jam Session fame and my old friend Jim Hollingsworth from ReplayTV are both execs at Gracenote.)  Scott has 17 patents pending for ChaCha.


ChaCha’s search engine is provided by InfoSpace, and returns results from a number of different search engines, including Google, Yahoo! Search and Ask.com.  (Also visit the ChaCha Underground page to see the most recent ChaCha results.)



“It’s sort of like asking a really smart friend, except at the end of the day, you can ask anything and get an accurate answer,” says [Brad] Bostic [co-founder of ChaCha.com, a people-powered search engine that, unlike Google, uses real people to provide search results]. To test it, Bostic suggests asking an obscure question, such as whether or not camels have eyelids. The answer, three eyelids, is delivered within two minutes, followed by a single link to the source web page.

“Other mobile services like Yahoo! oneSearch, Google Mobile and 4INFO.net, use an analog search engine that provides a convoluted list of web links or answers, forcing the consumer to dig around for the answer they need.”


Let’s put that to the test. 

First, what’s an ‘analog search engine’?  Is that like the analogue recordings record albums, grainy 35mm films and cassette tapes?  😉

To start my quite unscientific test, I used the traditional Internet version of the ChaCha service, using a ChaCha guide.

image

For my query, I typed in “what is Microsoft’s customer support phone number in South America?”

Whoops:

image 


Contrary to IE’s advice, I clicked thru to the ChaCha web page, and found that I had to register for a new ChaCha account.  Registering will give me “access to searching with live guided experts and other great features of ChaCha.”


OK, done.


Now, another couple of minutes to check my email for an activation email that allows me to verify your account.  Unfortunately the resulting confirmation mail was found in my Junk mail folder, so some work to do here as I have my spam filter set to a very basic level. ;(


imageAfter confirming that I had a valid email address, I was able to quickly log on to the service.


I was welcomed to a “Guide Session” with Michelle.  After welcoming me to ChaCha and asking how I was, Michelle went about finding an answer to my question.  Assuming that this pretexting was a strategy to engage the customer and buy Michelle some time, I received an update to the real-time status noting that “Michelle has found results!” 


Quickly, the links popped up in the right-hand nav of the web page.  So, after only a couple of minutes, Michelle found the information I asked for, including this accurate one on TechNet.



“There ya go,” typed Michelle.


In my own effort, I found a link to the phone numbers on the Microsoft International Support using the Live Search Toolbar in just a few seconds.  I’ll admit that — as is often the case — you do have to hunt and peck for an answer through pages of search results to find the answer.  But often times the answer is in the top few results, and this result was in the top three.

As a further comparison, I entered the obscure question that Bostic suggested and quickly found the answer in a few seconds on my mobile device, using Live Search Mobile.  The answer was also displayed in the query search results on Live Search:


Howstuffworks “Do the humps on camels hold water?”

Do the humps on camels hold water? … maturity in five years, a female in three to four years. Camels actually have three eyelids!

OK, one more shot.  To try my best at a ChaCha version of stump the band, I asked a more obscure question as a follow up:

“Where can I find an English owner’s manual for the Sony DVP-CX850D?”


It took ChaCha about 15 seconds to find a guide to help me with this search.  My new guide, Sakina, asked: “Hello I will be helping you with your search? Just to clarify, what can I help you find today?”

I retyped my original question in plain English: “I am looking for an English owner’s manual for the Sony DVP-CX850D CD DVD player.”


Sakina is connected and finding results for you.  Your results will begin to appear below.


Each ChaCha guide has a ChaCha ID number, and Sakina’s was 53363.  First, ChaCha’s Sakina found the service manual for the Sony player, which also comes up in many search engine results.  But Sakina wasn’t done.

Sakina took just a couple minutes more to find the manual on Sony’s US site (which is not obvious, let me tell you) at Sony eSupport for the DVP-CX850D.  (In case you have one of these old tried and true multi-disc changer/players, the manual is available here for direct download as a PDF.) 



Results



  1. Service Manual free download,schematics,datasheets,eeprom bins,pcb,repair info for test equipment and electronics – Sponsored Listing.  This link has been recommended by a ChaCha Guide and Certified through our GuideRank process. ChaCha brings human power to search results.

    http://www.eserviceinfo.com/index.php?what=search2&searchstring=DVP-CX850D


  2. Sony eSupport – DVP-CX850D – Manuals / Specs / Warranty  – DVP-CX850D 

    This link has been recommended by a ChaCha Guide and Certified through our GuideRank process. ChaCha brings human power to search results.  http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/model-documents.pl?mdl=DVPCX850D


A little under ten minutes, Sakina wished me a nice day and we were done, with search results in hand (so to speak).  Both were “ChaCha Guide Recommended Results” — the first I noticed was a sponsored listing.  Not only are the search results listed on the results page, but they are also saved under “My Searches” in your ChaCha account, remaining there for 60 days.


imageI was given the opportunity to rate my guide, and I gave Sakina a “great” rating. 


And overall a thumbs-up on ChaCha based on this limited experience.  Once again, the power of a community to provide better service.


As a side note, I found this manual before Sakina did in a little under a minute using Windows Live Search.


Overall, I find that web search (no matter which engine you use) is much better as a whole than I have experienced in the past, as companies continue innovate and refine their services. 


But wait… there’s more. (with a nod to Ron Popiel)


On Scott’s blog in his post titled The phone number that changed the world…, he invites readers to “try experimental 1-800-224-2242 from your mobile phone.  ChaCha for your mobile phone, which returns results via a text message.


In short, it just works. Try it… it’s very cool.


As noted on the Live Search blog last fall, the Search team focused on some key areas to improve:


“We pored over your feedback, analyzed the data and talked to thousands of users.  How major is this?  It’s our biggest update since our debut in January 2005.”




    • Relevance, relevance, relevance.  We’ve quadrupled the size of our index, which means we can return the right results for your searches.  Improvements like enhanced ranking algorithms, auto-spell correction and better stop word handling help us return the best results. 
    • Speed.  Pages load much faster than before.
    • Streamlined look and feel.  We focused on the end-to-end experience from the homepage throughout the site.  For example, search results are now easier to read thanks to work on typography, contrast, colors and spacing.
    • More high-interest content.  You asked us for more in Entertainment, Shopping, Health, Local and Video search and we’re happy to deliver it.

For complex issues, ChaCha may be a step up, with 30,000 live, trained guides (each complete “a special training program called Search University to ensure their answers are as accurate and locally sensitive as possible”) to answer questions. 

In addition to the comprehensive corporate support websites that many manufacturers offer today, many companies offer online chat support.  These sites go beyond the basic hunt and peck approach for finding old manuals, drivers and FAQs.  I’ve written here about Dell’s online customer service and support, having successfully used Dell’s Hardware Chat to diagnose and get repair tickets submitted for hardware issues.  And I’ve personally had success with HP’s online support options and (as a customer) Microsoft online customer service and live chat. 

(A plug, in case you missed the link: Microsoft Online Chat is available for customers in the States Monday through Friday, 11 AM to 8 PM (Eastern); international customers, please visit our Microsoft Worldwide page to choose from our Microsoft sites worldwide.)

Some manufacturers are including real time systems built-in to their products.  Aside from the diagnostics packages and software built into many computers these days, I read in gizmodo’s CES coverage of the Sharp press conference of the new Aquos Net.  With it, customers can get online customer support via the Aquos Advantage Live tool: Sharp customer service agents connect directly to the TV and remotely optimize picture quality or diagnose problems. Very cool.

imageYou may also find the answer you’re looking for with a rudimentary Wiki search, which you can simply do by entering the search term in your favourite engine and appending the word “+wiki” at the end.  More often than not, this will turn up any Wikipedia articles on the topic, as my son found whilst researching Admiral Byrd.  

More info:


Tags: Microsoft, Customer Service, Customer Support, Windows, Search.


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“You got to know when to hold ’em…” and what to fold into great customer service systems

With a tip of the hat to Kenny Rogers 1979 hit, of interest is this article a friend shared with me this week, When to Walk Away from a Deal in the Harvard Business Review (below is a brief summary of the article on BNET.com) by Geoffrey Cullinan, Jean-Marc Le Roux and Rolf-Magnus Weddigen…

“Is your company prone to “deal fever”–getting so excited while pursuing acquisitions that it skimps on due diligence? Caught up in the thrill of the chase, many firms use due diligence to justify the deal rather than to uncover potentially serious problems.”

The article asks the reader to consider…

  • What are we really buying?
  • What’s the target’s stand-alone value?
  • Where are the synergies?
  • What’s the most we’re willing to pay?

All good questions.  Consultant Bain also offers an article summary, and surveyed 250 senior managers “with M&A responsibilities.” They found that…

  • “half said their due diligence process had overlooked major problems,
  • half also found that targets had been dressed up to look better for deals,
  • two-thirds said their approach routinely overestimated the synergies available from acquisitions, and
  • a third acknowledged they hadn’t walked away from deals despite nagging doubts.”

“Top corporate buyers take a similar approach: “When I see an expensive deal, and they say it was a ‘strategic’ deal,” says Craig Tall, vice chair of corporate development at Washington Mutual, “it’s a code for me that somebody paid too much.”

This made me think: when it comes to mergers and the way each company approaches customer service, systems and staff, you have an opportunity to ask…

  • Culturally, how different are the approaches to customer support?
  • Compared with what the acquiring firm offers currently, are there incremental services that customers get from the target firm?
  • How do the costs compare between our in-house support as compared with the target company?
  • What additional value does the company’s support staff provide vs. outsourced support? What are the incremental benefits when you consider the areas of overlap, if any? 

In the February issue of CIO in 2006, Elana Varon writes in the article “Enterprise Value Awards – A Brief History of IT Value” how Hilton hotels found an opportunity to integrate different systems in operations and customer service (as noted here)…

“… [Hilton integrated] the chain’s property operations systems with its call center, reservations and customer loyalty systems. Hilton’s OnQ suite of applications gives hotel employees access to a complete guest profile at check-in, allowing them to tailor welcome messages and anticipate customers’ needs. Hilton’s internal metrics credit the system with increases in customer loyalty.”

Hilton also offers an online training system through hilton-university.com in multiple languages to its employees for training on OnQ. 

At Microsoft, product lines and business units benefit by the centrally managed education systems we offer through Engineering Excellence on subjects that are of importance to employees, such as the Security Development Lifecycle (aka SDL)… and not to be confused with the Microsoft spoof training videos (in two parts here and here).  Businesses and employees new to Microsoft get the benefit of this packaged training and guidance.

A lot of companies overlook customer support and services when considering how different companies approach dealing with customer calls and queries.  I’ll put these question to a couple of recently integrated business units and see what they have to say.

Tags: Microsoft, Customer Service, Customer Support, acquisition.

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Great customer service on a snowy, Sunday afternoon… and they called me

This afternoon whilst on vacation (and yes, the kids were accessing the Internet after playing in the snow) we had a problem with the DSL connection at the house.  Of course, it necessitated a reset of the DSL modem and wiped the account info and password to the ISP.

Great.  I could imagine the cries as the kids were unable to access their favourite Weird Al videos online.  And having the broadband access allowed me to work with our super folks around the world over the last few days as a South American country decided to change their daylight saving time settings… with only a couple of days advance notice.

So, after scouring the house for an inkling of the account name, password, ISP settings and the like with no success, I fired off a mail to the from my trusty Windows Mobile phone (the HTC 8925)… at least my AT&T Internet access was reading two or three bars…

“We are staying with our family at <a snowed in address> in <a small snowy mountain village>, telephone # <local phone number>. We reset our dsl gateway connected to your service and wiped the account name and password on the modem and are unable to access the ‘net. Could you help us get back on line?”

OK, I thought, perhaps we’ll hear from someone tomorrow after they get down from the slopes and before they head off for a New Year’s Eve party.

Or not. 

Fear of dread and an inability to log on and get the latest tunes for a festive countdown from Zune.net struck me, or more importantly print our boarding passes before our flight

Then, less than 30 minutes later, the phone rings:

“Hi, this is John… I read that you need to reset the settings on your DSL modem.”

I was floored.  Sunday afternoon with still enough daylight to see the ski runs, and a tech is calling me via his mobile to help me out.  How cool is that? 

As he spoke, I typed the information John provided into a Word document and followed along, editing the settings via a direct cable connection to the DSL modem and wireless router.  A few minutes later, after running through the setup, the IP settings and DHCP Server configuration, we were as good as new.  And I set it up so that future guests could access the wireless Internet via a secure key, posted to the side of the router.

As noted, I compiled the directions that John rattled off in a document to leave at the house for our hosts to enjoy the next time their network settings are wiped clean, complete with screen shots.  John noted that the basic configuration and setup information (sans account info) is available on their web site: sure enough, that web page proved a good basis for my brief tutorial.  With that, I have a neat step-by-step instructional document to leave at the house on how to access the internet, coupled with account information… and the telephone number for tech support should it be required.

Great customer service from Vail.net – kudos and my thanks to a super support tech.