If you call BPOS technical support for anything but a password reset, be prepared. With a few exceptions, the person you are talking to has had less technical experience than India call centers that are following a script and telling you to reset your computer.
After at least 100+ phone calls over the past six months, I've learned a few things that will hopefully be helpful to others:
1. If you get a hold of someone that has helpful quickly and effectivly, get their names. Next time you call in for another issue, ask if they are available or can call you back. The call center reps have a chat client (probably communicator) that they can lookup and chat with other employees.
2. The older your ticket gets, surprisingly, the less attention it appears to receive. You would figure that the ticket would show up as a higher priority on their system, but it doesn't appear to be the case.
3. If a ticket you create ends up getting pushed to "operations", don't relax. Usually the ticket will get kicked back with little or no information. You will end up getting a call from a different representative than you originally worked with, and he/she will know little to nothing about your issue. If the issue isn't resolved, make sure to ask to be put back in touch with the original representative that you opened the ticket with (see #1). Otherwise you are more than likely going to waste an hour repeating everything that has happened with the ticket, and the new representative will probably repeat any mistakes already made that the original rep would have at least skipped past.
God this is so true!!
ReplyDeleteI spent half of my life this year on a phone (and tons of emails) to BPOS support and with literally 2 exceptions, the majority of staff I've been dealing with (over 50+) appeal to be pulled off the street while walking a dog and chained to the chair in the call centre.
Complete waste of time: most of the time after your ticket is circulated you are being asked irrelevant questions or asked to try irrelevant steps - all to get the ticket "Assigned to you" while they're trying to figure out what to do with it or who to pass it on.
It's not even the lack of technical skills - they surely have a third and fourth line support - it is the lack of procedures and a complete chaos within the organisation where nobody knows anything and noone can give you any timeframe.
When you have an issue that goes for weeks to months with no sign of a resolution you will look like a prat in the eyes of your bosses.
With BPOS for 1.5 years, <1000 staff organisation. We're far too deep in the cloud now to pull out but would not do it again with Microsoft, probably try Google Apps for a change.
I've been reading that Google Apps has it's own set of problems when it comes to resolving issues. It is unfortunate that changing is such a difficult endeavor, or a lot of us would be jumping companies until we found a cloud solution that has both the functionality and the tech support to back it up.
ReplyDeleteI'm actually holding off moving to Office365 for as long as possible as a result of the lack of confidence I have in Microsoft (Online) technical support. Hoping that by being one of the last ones to migrate, they will their migration procedures worked out and technicians more trained.