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]

there is no support for O365.

I wrote an e-mail everyday for 4 months before giving up.

In parallel actions I also chased for SMEs.  The environment is changing so quickly that even the people at Microsoft don't seem to be able to keep up with their own thechnologies.

Good luck figuring things out yourself!

[#3]

@Kaushal Jora - that's not the primary intent of this forum, but if you send me your ticket number, I can get somebody to take a look at what's causing the delay.

-thanks, Russell.

[#4]

@Leslie van der Hoek sorry to hear that you had such a struggle. Is your issue still open/active with our support team or did you ask for it to be closed out? Either way, if you are still having problems, I'd be happy to help follow-up on the ticket for you.

[#5]

Hi Russell,

This is the ticket no. which is getting delayed [Ticket #:10836975]

Also,

We are customers of Microsoft and I guess we have every right to ask for the escalation matrix. when you can share SLA publicly, similar way Microsoft should share the escalation matrix as well.

[#6]

Hi @Deleted,

Sorry to hear that you didn't have a great experience when you contacted our support team.

Our global Office 365 support teams work with thousands of customers each day to resolve their issues. In many cases, customer issues are resolved on the same day - but we know that this isn't always possible.

I'd be happy to take a look at your long-running ticket - especially if your issue isn't resolved.

-thanks, Russell.

[#7]

Hi @Kaushal Jora,

I just took a quick look at this ticket which was logged on Friday. It looks like our support team contacted the admin who submitted the ticket within minutes of the ticket being logged to ask for additional information. They then called that admin and discussed the issue on Monday and again today.

I'll send a note over to the team, but it looks like the support team are actively talking with the person who submitted the ticket.

-thanks, Russell.

[#8]

@Russell Read

Hi Russel,

I appreciate the initiative, the ticket number is SR 10147948. Latest reply is from the 1st Of June

[#9]

Thanks @Leslie van der Hoek.

I can see that this ticket is currently closed, and from reading through the case notes I can totally understand why this has been frustrating for you.

I've sent a note over to the folks who lead this team and I've asked them to get somebody to help you.

Unfortunately, I'm not an EOP expert so I can't tell you why action center is missing from your EXO admin center; but I hope one of our EXO support folks will be able to help you out.

-thanks, Russell.

[#10]

This seems to be a popular discussion.  I can't reiterate how frustrated I am that I get a different level of service EVERY TIME I open a ticket.  Some techs say they can't see other related tickets, others never reply, and today I have one saying they can't commit resources until 3 PM EDT.  WTH? When I become a decision maker, I will be thinking twice about MS/O-365.  Your anxiety level should not go up when there is a hiccup in your 365 tenant, but mine does.  I am sitting on one three open tickets and stuck. 

[#11]

No doubt.  What surprises me is that Microsoft would even try to target support for both enterprise license subscribers and SOHO subscribers with the same tier 1 support.  Surely they don't refer their OWN tier 1 support calls to such a service?

Bottom line - I need someone answering my call who doesn't spend most of their day helping people who don't know what MAPI stands for.  Even if such a person has the technical skill and resources to support both me AND someone who has to be talked through finding the Start button, I find that their attitude tends to be very focused on "This is a user error and you don't know how to describe what you're seeing, or how it's supposed to work" and it takes over half of the support time just to convince them that there's an issue.

[#12]

Hello,

I just setup a client with a new Office365 and I am running into problems with inbound email bouncing.

The issue seems to be two problems.

First email are bouncing due to:

"Host or domain name not found. Name service error
    for name=XXXXXX.mail.protection.outlook.com type=AAAA: Host not
    found"

Upon further investigation it looks like XXXXXX.mail.protection.outlook.com DNS is not always resolving.
I tested this with MxToolbox.

Another bounce I'm receiving is 550 5.7.64 Relay Access Denied ATTR36.
Per Microsoft I should should only be getting this if I have connectors configured which I don't.

I have been on the phone with support for hours and so far no luck.
First I was told by support that there is an outage.
Upon looking at the health page the outage was with voicemail not email.
Then I was bounced around between a few technicians until I found one that was able to understand what I was telling them.
He confirmed that he sees the issue (the email he sent me bounced back with the "550 5.7.64 Relay Access Denied ATTR36") and will call me back but so far nothing.

Ticket# 11057754.
Any assistance would be appreciated.

Thank you,

Avrom

[#13]

 We are also experiencing email issues #11068933.

After switching our email suffix to our newer re branded one, a good majority of our email is being marked as spam even before it leaves our exchange server by being forced through the HRDP. Email server instances are showing up on SORBS blacklists, and I have received numerous bounce backs from remote servers rejecting our email outright for being spam.

We are on week 3 of the issue and I feel no sense of urgency from the Microsoft team in resolving the issue. I have played phone tag with them almost each day, and any time I return the call, I'm left waiting for them to call me back. For example the call this afternoon came in at 12:18, and I returned the call at 12:59. Literally if I get up from my desk and get a coffee and miss the call. I am pretty much unable to contact support for the rest of the day. Absolutely silly at this point.

[#14]

Hi @Jeff West and @ERIC WELLER,

Thanks for taking the time to provide feedback and sorry I couldn't reply sooner; I was on vacation with the family.

@Jeff West - you certainly shouldn't get a different level of service each time you open a ticket. It's possible that your ticket will land with a different support team, but all of our teams generally operate to the same service levels and processes. I hope that your tickets are all resolved now, but if they aren't - or if you're stuck on others, PM me and I'll get somebody to take a look.

@ERIC WELLER - we have different teams supporting different customer types. The full picture is more granular than I'll describe here, but in simple terms we have a team supporting consumer Office 365 customers, another team supporting our small business Office 365 customers, another team supporting our enterprise Office 365 customers, as well as other teams who support partners and customers with Premier support contracts.

If you aren't happy with the support you are receiving, please let the person who's supporting you know. If you are still unhappy when the ticket is closed, please take the time to provide your feedback using the star-rating system and by telling us what didn't go well. We review all of this data and feedback and use it to drive improvements. If you want to share specific feedback on any particular ticket with me, please PM me and I'll be more than happy to send this over to the respective management team.

-thanks, Russell.

[#15]

hi @Russell Read, my team has been sending followup emails and we do not get any update yet from MS. are you able to help?

Ticket #:10627176

Much appreciated cause our customer is chasing for updates.

[#16]

Hi @Harvey Tey,

Sorry that the team hasn't responded to you. I've sent a note to the team to ask why this one has stalled and what's needed to get this resolved for you.

Let me know if you don't hear back from them soon.

-thanks, Russell.

[#17]

Russell, I have a ticket opened for about a month: 11204913, which is for an O365 issue with focused inbox.  Other users in the tenant don't have the issue, but the issue is reproducible for the user in question on multiple installations of O365.  I've responded with all the screenshots and run the powershell, etc - and ultimately I've run into a wall with the support "ambassador" staff who are basically just reiterating and re-requesting the same steps.

So at this point, as someone who has supported Microsoft products (including O365 solutions) for several years now, I'm frustrated at not being able to get to a manager to complain about 2 things:

1) the inability for the 2nd level to understand the nature of the problem, even though it's clear that the issue isn't software client related (it seems this is a default position by 1st level support to go through a lot of client-centric machinations, which sometimes is useful, but at this point is spinning wheels)

2) the lack of proper escalation procedures - it's one thing for a customer to automatically go to the "let me speak with your manager" solution on the first call, but after a month+ of calls, there should be a team and/or manager that can field where the support is breaking down.

There is a cost to all involved - not only the client and the associated support (me), but for Microsoft that will not realize a cost savings if the support  model is unreliable and/or doesn't resolve issues.

The main differentiator in a cloud based world is going to be SUPPORT, which the smart folks at Microsoft (and Google, and Apple, etc) realize.  Cost vs benefit, you can ask many tools that thought they'd be around forever that were migrated away from in record time due to a poor support model.

Any assistance would be appreciated (and apologies for my frustration, hopefully it came across as frustration with the process).

[#18]

Hi @David Jolly,

Thanks for making me aware. I reviewed your support case and understand your frustration. Sorry that we didn't manage to get a solution to you sooner.

I can see that the case has been escalated today, so hopefully we're now on the right path to getting this resolved.

I've sent your e-mail and case number over to the folks who manage this team and asked them to review why it took us so long to escalate the case and what that team can learn and do differently in the future.

-thanks, Russell.

[#19]

This.

[#20]

Thanks so much!

[#21]

Russell,

We finally have gotten resolution to the issue that we had, however, it was not based on the recommendations EVEN BY the "escalated" methodology - who had me working on "client based" troubleshooting when the issue was not to be reasonably assumed to EXIST on the client end (as we were able to replicate the issue on multiple boxes).

So it goes without saying that perhaps there was a software update that got pushed that finally resolved the issue.  

All that said, the methodology employed to get expert support in the VERY PRODUCTS supported is not (in my experience) sufficient to some percentage of the tickets that come in - certainly there is stuff level 1 can handle.  There does not seem to be a sufficient, reasonable escalation methodology if the issues are over a level 1 tech's head.  

This is revisited when I have questions about said updates as it pertains to an RDS environment and the correct practices - the level 1 folks have rightly suggested that GPO or the ODT are the right METHODS to look at as it pertains to updates, but they have NO expertise as that applies to an RDS environment, which is the specific (and Microsoft supported) environment, and thus cannot answer questions relative to how those would work (as you know, updates on a RDS box are not the same as others as you have to change modes).  O365 licensing is profile based, while the Office 2016 code is machine based and thus generates questions on HOW does one update an RDS box without causing issues.  

I am not going through a similar run around with existing support to get a person with at least SOME direct knowledge of the tools to offer assistance.

What do you recommend?  And should folks need to chase you down in this manner to nudge support in the right direction or IS IT TIME for Microsoft (O365 in this case) to again re-visit the support model.  It saves NO one time, nor money (including Microsoft) to have tickets stay open for more than one or two bites at the apple.  It's unfortunately becoming commonplace for it to take repeated efforts only to be rebuffed in speaking with someone with even basic expertise in the issues that are coming up.