Raising support requests

[Peter Longley]

Not sure what is going on but with the admin centre now if you raise a service request I can only request that someone calls me.  Then aside from that I cannot raise a second request until that one has been closed.

Also the View Service requests just takes you back to the same screen and does not show any old requests or anything.

Very poor if they are now limiting a Global Admin to just 1 request at a time.

[#2]

Thanks a lot for your feedback, everybody. This is very insightful and I've shared it with our engineering team who is currently working on how to further improve the support experience in Office 365. Good news: a lot of the features mentioned by you are already on our roadmap. We're working on a broader blog post about the support experience to share with you what is coming. In addition, we'll of course also take a look at your suggestions that we don't have on the roadmap yet.

[#3]

@Anne Michels

I think the unanimous message here is: a decent support experience has been replaced by a poor one.

Most of these features that "are in the roadmap" existed in the previous support experience, and the fact that Microsoft removed these and claim that they are now "in the roadmap" (plus a roadmap that we have no visibility of) gives us very little confidence that Microsoft has our best interests (i.e. the interests of their paying customers) in mind.

[#4]

I agree with Pedro, 'further improve the support process' isn't really what is going to happen. We had a decent support process, which Microsoft have destroyed with no consultation, and then some of this support process may be put back, but we're not sure what parts because the roadmap is not available.  I don't want you to 'share' what is coming in the future, I want Microsoft to provide a decent support process now. I'm endlessly frustrated with the incomplete, badly thought out and untested products that Microsoft toss out to paying customers and the support 'process' is just part of it.

[#5]

Hi everybody,

First of all apologies as my response wasn't very clear. I can see how my statement about new features did come across in the wrong way. So let me clarify: there are some customers who currently are experiencing a limited support functionality that might not allow them to see their support history or to open multiple tickets. We're working hard to bring that functionality back for everybody.

We're working on additional support improvements and functionality that has not been available in the past - these are the improvements that I was referring to being on our roadmap.

We acknowledge that we have not been communicating clearly enough about the changes coming to the support experience. We will improve our communication around this in the future - leveraging various channels including roadmap.office.com, the Message Center and the Office 365 blog here on the Technical Community.

And thanks to all of you again to provide your feedback here. I've shared all of it with the respective engineering team and they'd like to thank you as well.

Thanks,

Anne

[#6]

Hi @Anne Michels

Thank you for engaging with us on this issue.

What I understood from your previous post is that some customers are experiencing a limited support experience. Speaking with some engineers I have been informed that Microsoft has the ability to enable these features on an individual basis (open multiple incidents, see history of incidents), and I have been snubbed before by support representatives when I asked to have these features enabled. The representative had the audacity to tell me that I our reasons to request this feature weren't good enough. I have witnessed fist fights taking place for less than this ;)

If possible I would like to have that option enabled once and for all.

Best Regards,

P.

[#7]

Thanks for continuing to talk with us Anne.

The first post in this thread regarding the limited functionality was though raised 3 months ago. Can I ask why this is not fixed for all users now? Is it as Pedro says something that can be enabled and isn't?

Thanks,

Susie

[#8]

I am pretty convinced at this point that Microsoft is taking us, paying customers, for fools. Little to nothing has been done to address our concerns.

[#9]

I actually had a telephone call with someone that Anne had put me in touch with to explain the issues, they were very helpful and said it is being looked into and will be addressed.

Fingers crossed that things will get better soon..

[#10]

Thanks PEter.

Unfortunatelly this has been going on for months now and I have also heard the same sort of promises from my end.

What I simply cannot accept is that we had all of the requested features. Microsoft took these away from us and now are promising them 'in due course'. These should have NEVER been removed from the start.

[#11]

I totally agree and I made that clear to them on the call, they are investigating how this happened and how they can improve things, I explained that way back when it was known as BPOS it was better than it is now and totally unworkable currently.

Shame it is taking so long, I was the one that started this thread but good to know they are starting to listen to us even if we are yet to see many\any changes.

[#12]

Thanks everybody for your continuous feedback on the support experience. We take your feedback very seriously and we're actively working on bringing functionality like history view and multi-ticket creation back to all customers. We apologize for this taking so long!

[#13]

Oh they are investigting are they? This must be such a hard case to crack!

Pretty simple. Whoever designed this new 'support experience' should be fired, and the previous support experience should be reverted back. Microsoft DO have the ability to provide the previous support experience to individual customers, as I was told -- they are just REFUSING to do this because, as I was also told (at least in my case), I don't have a good reason to request it.

[#14]

Just opened new Support Case from Admin Portal using the 'new support experience' and I have to say it is the worst I've seen for awhile.

I have no way to select which O365 product my issue is related. This was possible with the previous support experience. I cannot add screen shots. I don't wan't or I might not have time to log the issue on phone. Now I can write some random text to text box and then wait for support engineer to contact with email and asking 5-10 general questions like:

1. Can you please tell me a little more about the case?
2. Who is the username (sign in account) that is affected?
3. Did you try from another pc and also another network?
4. Do you get an error message, if yes please add a screenshot.
5. Since when are you experiencing this issue?

Here is my general response to those questions:

1. I would like to tell ALL and EVERYTHING I know of the issue on the same time I open the ticket.

2. Usually we have multiple users who are experiencing the issue before we open support case with MS support.

3. Yes, we troubleshoot, test and try with other browsers, PC's and user accounts before we open support case with MS support.

4. I could add my screen shots already to initila support request.

5. This also could be logged during the initial opening of the support case.

[#15]

Hi Teemu,

thanks a lot for your feedback. Our goal is to provide all customers with a fast and efficient support experience and we apologize that we didn't meet your expectations. Your feedback is highly valuable as we continue to evolve the Office 365 support experience. We're currently working on bringing the ability back to add attachments like screenshots. We're also looking into ways how to enable you to provide more information about the issue up front to allow you to kick start the conversation with the support engineer. We'll share more information shortly.

Thanks,

Anne

[#16]

I had a chat with the team running support for Office 365 about this situation. I think they understand the problems and the frustrations of tenant admins as Microsoft does what it needs to do to make support better... The chat that I had led to this article, posted today:

https://www.petri.com/microsoft-problems-office-365-support

[#17]

I still think the biggest issue here is how Microsoft (failed) to communicate this.

[#18]

I think the biggest issue here is trying to fix something that wasn't broken and antagonising customers in the process.

[#19]

I tend to agree with @Vasil Michev when he says that the problem was communication. If Microsoft had told people that they were going to change the support process and why (to make things better), then it is easier to accept when things go wrong. After all, we have all seen IT projects that ran into unexpected problems. 

But they didn't (and acknowledge this fault) and tenants ran into the new support experience without warning. Surprising people is never good, especially when they are your paying customers...

[#20]

@Pedro Innecco, similar to Tony, I've had a detailed session with MS folks on the changes in support experience. Having also worked as frontline engineer, I can say I completely understand their reasoning, and I'm sure most customer would agree to that. If they bothered to explain it prior to launching the changes, that is.

Now, the execution itself is another story, and you can trust me when i say the MVPs are even more unforgiving with their feedback on this. I can go on for hours on the issues with support (as I see them), both old and new experience, but I can also appreciate the fact that MS is trying to change things. Well, at least their intention was good.

[#21]

@Vasil Michev

Sorry but I don't buy it for a second that Microsoft's intentions were good -- and the issue to me is way beyond a simple matter of communication. The fact that they removed something that was working fine before for us (regardless if its UI was pretty or not) would be bad enough. But on top of that, treating customers with disdain by telling us that we 'do not have a good reason to revert to the previous experience' is simply unforgivable. And I will make sure as the CTO of my organisation to remember that.

I have a strong background in IT Service Management and there nothing I can think of that justifies the implementation of a new portal that removes fundamental service management features such as: a) cancel an existing case; b) open an additional case; and c) see past case history.

Whoever is responsible for this new portal experience should look for a career change.