How can I escalate issues in Office 365?

[Mark Weusten]

I have had a support case running with 365 for a couple of weeks. They close the ticket over the New Zealand weekend because of time differences, I reopen it and then have to provide the same information again. My question is, how can I escalate poor service?

Cheers

Mark

[#2]

@Russell Read - hoping you can help me out. We've had a case open for almost two months now. It's a really important issue where a key member of our team isn't able to view anyone else's calendars to schedule meetings. The ticket number is 12902981. Can you help get this escalated?

[#3]

Hi @aghabheegy,

Thanks for taking the time to share this feedback. I sent this over to the team who are managing your ticket and they told me that they've since been in contact with you.

Let me know if things don't improve.

-thanks, Russell.

[#4]

Hi @TC_Verity,

Firstly, I'm sorry that you've been waiting on us for a response. I shared your feedback with the team manager and they are following-up with the team to ensure we maintain regular communications with customers on all open tickets.

It looks like we've now moved your ticket over to another team who are better placed to assist you.

Let me know if things don't improve.

-thanks, Russell.

[#5]

Hi @ankitmathur,

Thanks for sharing this feedback. Sorry to hear that this ticket has been open for so long. I read through the ticket and I can see that you've been in contact regularly with our support team and that they are actively trying to assist you.

I've asked them to review the current troubleshooting plan to confirm that we're on the right path.

If you need additional assistance to work through any of the troubleshooting steps that have been provided, let the support ambassador know.

-thanks, Russell.

[#6]

Hey Russell,

I'm having a really tough time with Ticket #:14044081.

We were splitting one tenant into two, and now it seems there's an internal MS DNS entry missing or incorrect. Mail is being delivered to the mailboxes in the old tenant.

Apparently this was "escalated" about a week ago, but we are not "allowed" to communicate with the escalation engineering team. Michael, the support agent working the case, is doing a less than stellar job of communicating with us, and our clients are now without proper mail functionality for over a week.

Can you help?

Thanks!

-- Brian

[#7]

@AriZoNaiCe 

Hi Brian,

Thanks for sharing your experience and sorry that it's taking a while to get this one fixed.

I reviewed your ticket and can confirm that the ticket was escalated.

When we say "escalated", it can mean a few things. Sometimes it means that the person who owns your ticket is out of knowledge or needs help from another subject matter expert within the support org. This will generally be somebody from the same team, but could also be somebody from another team at Microsoft. In either case, the person who owns your ticket will generally continue to own the communication with you.

In your case, the escalation is to our engineering team. These are the folks who write the code and ensure the Office 365 service is running as it should. Whenever things aren't working correctly, if our support teams determine that there are no changes that you, or they, can make that would resolve the issue, they will engage our engineering team to investigate.

On the upside, your ticket is with the right team. The downside is that your issue is unusual and might require further information to be collected to allow the engineering team to continue investigating.

All communications will continue to flow via the support ambassador.

I've sent your feedback over to the team who owns your ticket.

-thanks, Russell.

[#8]

@Russell Read 

Hey Russell -- thanks for the quick reply on this and for you passing along the info to the team that owns this ticket.  As you said, there's both good and bad here.  It's the amount of time between communications that concerns me, often going 24 hours or more before we get replies.  Is it not possible to have a working session with a member of the engineering team to get this resolved more quickly?  We're talking about e-mail for an organization...they literally cannot survive without it working properly.

I am a software engineering manager at a top-200 Fortune 500 company, so I understand this process well.  One 15-30 minute working session would ensure that the engineering team has everything they need to resolve this quickly, rather than back and forth for days at a time.  As it stands, we're at over two weeks.  Considering the importance of e-mail in the workplace, I'd hope for a higher priority when it's not working properly.

Thanks!

[#9]

@AriZoNaiCe 

Hi Brian,

Yes, it's always possible to have a working session to troubleshoot with our support folks. I understand that we called you yesterday to discuss and provide some additional steps for you to work through. I hope this helps to get you back up-and-running.

If you need further support or guidance, just let the support ambassador know that you'd prefer to discuss via the phone, and they will call you.

-thanks, Russell.

[#10]

@Russell Read once again I want to express my thanks for your involvement in the MTC and this thread. I know for a fact how frustrating the support experience can be and simply having a person like you available to review a ticket (even though you are not directly responsible) is immensely helpful. 

[#11]

@Russell Read Hi Russell, I, too, would like to say thank you for being available to us.

One of the things that I am currently struggling with is getting escalations on tickets.  There was a case where I opened a ticket and since it wasn't resolved in several days time, I went on scheduled vacation/holiday for a week, and then when I returned, the ticket was already closed.  I wanted to reopen the ticket but there wasn't a way from within the portal so I called in, which created yet another ticket.  I then waited weeks for them to finally open a new ticket with the same ticket owner where I was able to continue troubleshooting.  When I have asked to speak to a manager after calling in, they get a manager but they inform me that the manager of the other ticket is in "another area."  I translate that to meaning that I spoke with one contractor/company the first time and then the second time I spoke with another contractor/company the second time.  Neither has any control over the other one.  It would be extremely nice if there was a way to contact someone like yourself who has so generously offered to help us via a phone call that works for Microsoft and can truly get it sorted out.

I have seen in the forums where it stated that you could buy Premier Support, but when I inquired about this, we didn't have enough spend to qualify.  I think we're at $35,000 and we need to be at $55,000 a year.  I found this site https://products.office.com/en-us/business/office-365-for-business-support-options from this one https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4341255 but neither really explains how to get additional escalated support.  Do you have any suggestions?

Thank you again for your willingness to help!

Ryan

[#12]

@RyanBlake 

Hi Ryan,

Having a ticket "escalated" or to get "escalated support" is an interesting topic, and one that I'll frequently hear from people. When people are asking for escalation, really what they are asking for is for their problem to be resolved faster.

As you mention, Microsoft has a mix of in-house and outsourced support teams delivering support across all of our products and services. In Office 365 support, we have thousands of people across the globe providing support to customers. Regardless of which country these folks are in or which team they are a member of, the end goal is always the same - to resolve problems quickly to enable our customers like you to get back to realizing value from the service.

While we do have teams who are responsible for Premier support, this doesn't necessarily equate to problems being resolved faster. All of our Office 365 support teams have access to the same training and readiness resources, they can collaborate with subject matter experts, and they can escalate to the same engineering teams. Our goal is to deliver a great service to everybody - regardless of where you enter the support experience.

I have to admit, I'm not familiar with the details of the costs and full benefits of our current Premier support offering, but I can certainly find somebody who can provide those details if you are interested. It's generally a support offer that makes sense if you have a complex hybrid/on-prem environment or if you need additional engagement with Microsoft via a Technical Account Manager (for example). For most Office 365 customers, the no-charge support that we provide as part of the service is usually the right choice.

Whenever you are working with our support teams, make sure you tell them if you aren't happy with the progress that's being made. While this doesn't magically deliver a solution, it helps the folks in support to realize when they might need to ask for help.

A side note on what happens when we "escalate" tickets. This simply means that the frontline support person is asking for help from somebody else. Maybe somebody more experienced, maybe somebody with a different skillset, and sometimes, assistance from our engineering teams - the folks who write the code and keep the service running. We always try to keep ownership of the ticket with the frontline person. This avoids tickets from "bouncing" from person to person and maintains a single point of contact for the customer, but it also helps the frontline support folks to learn and upskill so that they can better assist customers in the future.

I hope this helps to provide a little insight into what happens when a ticket lands with our support teams.

-thanks, Russell.

[#13]

@Russell Read 

Hi Russell,

I appreciate the thorough and thoughtful response.  For the most part, the support I receive from Microsoft is sufficient.  However, there are times when I seemingly ask about more complex or different requests, I get push back.

I admit that I am writing you again because I am facing an issue with an open ticket where tech support is saying that the issue is not a problem and trying to close the ticket.  They also effectively hung up on me at the end of our call, likely from frustration (which I can somewhat understand from his perspective, but from the customer experience perspective, below ideal).  They also just pointed me to UserVoice, which I believe is not for break/fix issues, but more for enhancements and overall experience with the product.  If I'm incorrect on this, please let me know.

So, here's the quick synopsis (I can send you the ticket number via direct message):

When I go to Mail Flow -> Dashboard, I see an Outbound and Inbound Mail Flow tile.  For outbound, it shows 100% uses TLS and inbound it shows less than 100% uses TLS.  However, I know this to not be true because not all e-mails going out from us have TLS enabled.  When I drill down and click on View Details, Connector Report, select Show data for To the internet without a connector, and then click on View data by TLS usage, I get below 100%.  I would expect both the overview to show the same data as the more detailed report, but it doesn't.  Isn't this a bug that needs to be escalated to Microsoft engineers instead of closing my ticket and saying "good riddance"?

While I completely understand that this is more of a cosmetic bug than something that is actually causing an outage, I would still expect to see my ticket created into a problem report that gets submitted to the developers and linked to that problem report on your backend development system (e.g. Github) so that I can check on the progress of the issue and see it's eventual resolution.

Below are screenshots of what I am reporting (with some personal details redacted):

Dashboard Overview Image:

Connector Report:

I sincerely appreciate your involvement in the community and any assistance or insight that you can provide.

Thank you.

Ryan

[#14]

@RyanBlake 

I've asked one of my colleagues to take a look. I'm just heading out on vacation and haven't had a chance to review the ticket. I'd agree in principle with your message, although I'm not an expert in this area.

-thanks, Russell.

[#15]

@Russell Read Thank you!  Hope you have a nice and enjoyable vacation.

[#16]

@Russell Read So I was working with someone for a while on this ticket but I don't think they fully understood the issue?  I'm not sure because they just closed the ticket and said I needed to put in a UserVoice.  As mentioned, I don't think this is a feature request, it's a break-fix as data/information is wrong.  Any insight or assistance you could give would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Ryan

[#17]

@RyanBlake 

Hi Ryan, I'll follow-up with you via e-mail.

-thanks, Russell.

[#18]

@Russell Read Hi Russell. I have a case open for 2 weeks now and its going around in circles. Can you take a look for me please. Getting little to no communication back on it. Ticket number is 17500746

[#19]

@thegift06 

I replied to the e-mail you sent me a few minutes ago with a short update. It looks like the support team escalated your issue to our engineering team who are investigating.

It seems that the support team called you yesterday to provide you with the latest status update. If you need something from them that they aren't delivering, you absolutely should let them know.

For now though, the support team are waiting to hear back on the escalation and will update you as soon as they have news.

-thanks, Russell.

[#20]

Hi @Russell Read,

I have a ticket open with O365 support and while the techs are responding to my ticket I am not getting a resolution fast enough for the severity of the issue.

The ticket number is 17752282, one of my Customers is having lots of troubles receiving emails (Roughly 50% of emails sent to any of their addresses appear to be bouncing from any external domain) Each time the NDR shows the same error message.

Error Details

Reported error: 550 5.4.1 Recipient address rejected: Access denied [SY3AUS01FT013.eop-AUS01.prod.protection.outlook.com] DSN generated by: SY2PR01MB2731.ausprd01.prod.outlook.com Remote server: SY3AUS01FT013.mail.protection.outlook.com

The issue has been occurring for over a week now and I don't seem to be getting anywhere close to a resolution. Email is very important to this customer so I really need to get this resolved ASAP. Hopefully you can help me light a fire under support to get this issue resolved.

[#21]

Hi @Martin50,

Thanks for sharing your experience. I'm sorry to hear that we haven't been able to resolve your issue yet.

I forwarded your message to our delivery manager and he's going to get somebody to follow-up with you to see how we can move this forward for you.

-thanks, Russell.