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]

Hi Russell,

Our tenant is currently suffering from outlook search issue with delegated mailboxes.

More than 1500 users are affected and I think it is a bug on Microsoft Outlook.

All troubleshooting steps were already performed but the Engineer handling this case doesn't seem to understand the urgency of this issue.

Our ticket number is 17890067, we'll appreciate if you could help us push this case to be escalated to backend team.

Thanks,

Ron

[#3]

Hi @Ron_Rufo,

From reading the case notes, it looks like the case was escalated yesterday. I see a note from the first phone call you had with our team saying that you wanted to escalate.

It looks like the escalation engineer you are speaking with attempted to contact you yesterday and again today.

Now that you've responded with the information they requested, I'm sure that troubleshooting can continue and, if needed, the support team will escalate if it's believed to be a bug or problem that requires our engineering team to get involved.

Just to be clear, no part of my official job is related to looking at or dealing with escalations and nor do I have a special way to get cases escalated. But it's a great time to remind people who I am and why I try to engage in some of these community discussions.

The following text is an edited/updated version of a post I previously posted in this thread and is a good place to start if you found this page because you need help with an active support case.

If you found this thread and are thinking "Oh great, if I contact Russell he'll be able to get my case escalated for me", sadly no, this isn't the preferred way to get support or get a ticket escalated :)

We receive thousands of support tickets every day and we have thousands of folks in our support teams across the world who are working hard to resolve those tickets to get customers up-and-running as quickly as possible. Sometimes, it takes longer to resolve some cases than others. At times, it takes our teams longer to respond to customers if we see increased volume of cases.

I participate in the community because I'm genuinely interested to hear feedback - good and bad - from customers who are engaging with our Office 365 support teams. My core role at Microsoft is to ensure our teams are ready to support customers. My work is primarily focussed on partnering with our engineering and marketing teams to stay close to new feature development to ensure we've got a plan to get our teams ready to support those new features when they are deployed. Of course, I don't do this alone - my immediate team and a host of folks in our global virtual teams work together to make this happen.

When I hear that the support experience hasn't met the high bar we set for ourselves, I want to know why. Was it because we didn't equip our teams with the right information? Did one of our processes break? Do we have an issue with our tools? Whatever the problem, I want to know because if there's an opportunity for my team to do something differently to avoid the problem in the future, we can address that.

Then, of course, there are issues that aren't within the immediate control of my team. In these cases, I send the feedback over to the folks who manage the support team. These folks will then take action so that the feedback gets to the right team or individual allowing us to learn and hopefully do better next time.

As I don't work 24x7 and have a day-job and family, I'm not always as present in the community as I'd like to be. When I'm deeply involved in projects or development work, or out on vacation, it might be a while before I see a message. Therefore, if you need "immediate" assistance, contacting me isn't the best plan.

So, what is the right way to get help? For the majority of our customers, they get the help they need very quickly and have no cause to need to "escalate". However, when things don't go to plan, the first avenue should be to work with the support team who's working on your support ticket. Ask them why it's taking longer than expected to resolve your issue. Ask them what their next steps are to assist you. Ask them to help you understand why they are asking you for certain information or why they are asking you to complete certain troubleshooting steps.

I'll often have customers say to me "I don't know why support asked me to do x, y, or z because I knew that it wouldn't make a difference" or "I know that this problem is a bug in the product". In reality, the steps that you are being asked to follow often help customers to resolve issues, or serve to collect valuable information that can be used to inform the next steps or escalation.

If you don't think you are getting the help you need, ask the support ambassador what's needed before they will escalate the ticket. Every person in the support organization wants to resolve your ticket as quickly as possible. If you don't get what you need or things don't improve, you should see the e-mail address for the tech lead and/or manager for the support team listed in the e-mail signature of the person who e-mailed you. You can contact the tech lead/manager to tell them that you aren't getting what you need.

That said, I'm always happy to hear from anybody who's engaged with our support teams and am happy to chat privately or in this forum to respond to feedback.

-thanks, Russell.

[#4]

@Russell Read 

I appreciate your comments and helps. Many times you have given others a suggestion and it will get their case moving for them. I have had this case open for over 6 months. I am attempting to create a user and it shows that the user already exist. We have created another address so this user can send and receive emails but we would like to resolve the conflict in the system. I'm sure that a lot of notes exist in the ticket notes. It is [Ticket #:14448181] Deleting of Alias for Kyle.  Without warning, the MS support closed the case Dec 1. I did leave a 'disappointed' feedback when I received the 'close' notification by email and left a request for a callback in the notes. I've waited 1 month and thought you might give me some suggestions. Thank you very much!

[#5]

@beeman 

Thanks for your note. I sent you an e-mail so that we can follow-up on this one.

-thanks, Russell.

[#6]

Hi @Russell Read ,

We are facing create file/copy file/move file issue with Power-Platform(MS-Flow).  I think it is a bug on Microsoft power-platform.

All troubleshooting steps were already performed but the support engineer handling this case and they are also waiting for another backend  engineer for respond from last 1 month.

They doesn't seem to understand the urgency of this issue.

Our Support request number: 120012121000227,

we'll appreciate if you could help us push this case to be escalated to backend team.

Thanks,

Santosh Kalange

[#7]

Russell, I need your help with this case and I wish to escalate:

120022821000966

A pingpong case between Intune support and Azure support. Currently speaking with Azure support but they are again asking me to close down the ticket and raise a new one with Intune support.

FYI I also came from Microsoft support background, so I definitely understand how complex issues like this is handled. But the way they handled my cause is soooooooooooooooo disappointing! 

[#8]

I need to add my case to this list: #21350853

After being promised a callback from a manager this morning, 40+ hours of my billable time and several tickets, I am in damage control mode with 2 of my clients. One of them because following a migration many of their email contents and attachment are missing (and each failed attempt at migration causes further disruption), and the other because I have had to put off starting their migration due to trying to fix this mess.

I never received a call from a manager as promised, but instead the ticket in question was simply closed with no comment.

My view on this is that engineers are just trying to sweep the issue under the carpet and hope it goes away. They are basically out of their depth, and unwilling to take responsibility for that.

I am amazed at how Microsoft can create such a culture.
The level 1 support is usually less than useful, because on frequent occasions I have been given not only advice that would waste my time, or fundamentally failed to grasp the requirement, context and utilise any kind of common sense; but often that advice would lead to disruptive results for my clients.

The fact that there is no proper system for having a manager step in to mediate expert advice is incredible. I can attest that the level of knowledge, expertise, and attitude of engineers varies massively.

More often than not I have been pointing out things to engineers that they would have missed, or discovering next steps that actually lead somewhere useful through my own research.

This is simply not good enough.

[#9]

@optimystery650 

This is very scary. I have been working and depending on Microsoft support for 3 decades, help on SEV1 and 2 incidents, and always got a response within 20 mins, escalation within 30mins. With all said, depending and recieving break-fix solutions and reports from Microsoft helping companies with runbook solutions for technologies. Having an existing case, getting unheard of responses, and first experience of no knowledge base support of the technology offered by MSFT, then reading this post is absolutely scary. I am a Microsoft house, I support big IT/10,000 seat+ that are also Microsoft houses. To know this is the direction of support by Microsoft is not only shameful but also scary that is the direction of Microsoft and can lead or teach other dependent global application companies to go the same direction. My case number is 23650870, I haven't created a ticket in more than year, but for the first time I have doubts about being a Microsoft house now and future-tense. 

[#10]

@Russell Read, Hi, I opened a supported ticket [Case #:26080129] for mailbox move failed from on-prem to O365 but its morethan 24 hours didn't get any response from O365 support. Could you please assist 

[#11]

I am sorry I am desperate I heard you could maybe help. I have two tickets that have been open for over 1 month each that is directly affecting all my 130 users. The techs on the ticket have not escalated them and won't let me deal directly with the real techs they are talking to. So all they do is keep suggesting to check the same settings again and again. Then they don't reply for a few days then it's another suggestion that usually does not even really apply to the issue something that they spent 5 minutes googling then they reply back with something like "have you looked at this " and then they supply a Hyperlink to whatever article they found. Their is no progress..

Case #: 26909889 and Case #:26910254

[#12]

@despich - I've sent you a private message and will follow-up with the team now.

[#13]

Hello Russell

I opened a support case ( Ticket #27672544 ) but I'm not very happy of how it's been managed 'til now, I explained clearly what's my need but the support is not giving me a real resolution , could you help ?

Thanks a lot
Regards

Antonello

[#14]

Support from Microsoft has been more worthless over the years and its disgraceful. we jeaporize our clients to use their many platforms with confidence only to be face with support that can not speak clearly nor handle technical issues from even a tier1 level. I tried Google apps but is not compatible with clients needs.

[#15]

Hi @Antonello69,

Sorry to hear that you aren't happy with the response from our support team. I reviewed the case notes earlier today and have asked the team to follow-up with you.

I believe the suggestion from the support team to try changing the password was based on the fact that it wasn't clear you had already attempted this. From your description, I understood that you weren't actually changing the password, but rather just changing the password last change date property.

I agree that the team could have better scoped the issue and helped you understand why the troubleshooting step was being suggested.

Hopefully, the team will be able to help get this question answered for you soon.

-thanks, Russell.

[#16]

Hi @TomWCPU,

Sorry to hear that this is your experience with Microsoft. If you've got some more examples of poor support experience with our M365 support teams, I'd be happy to take a look and share your feedback with the teams.

We speak with thousands of customers across the globe every day, and the majority of our customers tell us that we delivered a great support experience. We know that there are times when things don't go to plan, and we learn from those experiences to improve for the next time.

If you - or any customer - is unhappy with the progress on an active support ticket, let the support person you are working with know and let them know your expectations to get things back on-track. Where possible, the support team will do what they can to help. It's in their interest to resolve issues quickly and leave customers satisfied - because these are some of the key measures we use to track the health of the business.

-thanks, Russell.

[#17]

We have the same issue where we as tenant are not able to send outbound. Our case is 27991967, and there is a broader incident EX292301. Root cause of this is "an upstream metadata issue is causing anti-spam services to incorrectly block your organization from sending external email."

It has been crickets in terms of status updates since last night. We're coming up on 24 hours since the anti-spam service went off the rails and shut us down. I've requested updates on resolution on the case, but haven't heard back. Any chance we could get some info?

[#18]

@bbaker8 sorry to hear that the team weren't able to update you as quickly as you needed.

Good to see that the incident is now resolved and mailflow is restored.

-Russell.

[#19]

Hi Russell

Thanks a lot for your help,
support suggested me a solution that works, although I'm not completely satisfied
because of I'm required to change the user passwords on prem to get the last change date property synchronized with Azure AD .. In my mind changing the "pwdLastSet" attribute to "0" and in turn to "-1" actually modify the attribute to the current system date and so this change must be reflected to the Azure AD corresponding attribute , with no need to trigger an on prem password reset.

Regards

Antonello

[#20]

Hi, I have opened the ticket with MS Ticket # 28734669 on 7/12/21 and still have not gotten the support.
They Just simply replay, We are working on your request.
I am really disappointed with the support from MS.

[#21]

@ankit_ON 

Thanks for your note. Since you submitted the ticket in December, it looks like there has been a lot of activity and communication - both between you and support, and the support team and other internal teams.

Sorry that it's taking a long time to resolve this. In this case, the support team are dependent on some other internal teams to investigate and resolve the issue. I appreciate this must be very frustrating for you.

I followed-up with one of the team leads and they've already started discussions to review how the internal processes work in situations like this so that we can reduce the time it takes to make things right for our customers. I know that this is of little comfort to you in this instance, but hopefully somewhat reassuring that we are working to improve in the future.

While I can't do anything to get you a speedier resolution to your ticket, there are people working on this. And they will get things fixed as soon as they can. Thank you for being so patient.

-Russell.