Microsoft needs to improve customer support | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft needs to improve customer support

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9 pointstanto8 comments

I am struggling hard to book Microsoft 365 as I need Powerpoint for a single occasion and get reminded on every corner why I switched to Google + Apple a long time back.

Waiting lists in chats? Seriously? I am not supposed to loose focus of the chat window? Holy cow.

Did you consider for a bit why they "need" that?

Maybe the browser will stop the js running in that tab from sending the ping and their backend might lose track of you wanting to chat with them.

I can imagine 100 ways to do it better apart from the fact that their are 100 better solutions which they could use without developing it themselves. It feels like a year 2000 solution.

Coming at this from the other side, it is incredibly frustrating and uneconomical as a customer support representative to have to deal with users who don't respond promptly on chat, of which there are a HUGE percentage.

As a result, most organisations have either automatically or manually implemented procedures to cancel a chat after a set period of inactivity.

This may just be a gentle nudge to try to avoid that.

I've got a suggestion for that - offer to send a text message simultaneously when the chat window is active. The thing is, we all switch tabs, move away from the computer, etc. We may even forget about it, if the wait is very long. But these days we generally keep our smartphone at our side even if we move into another room to do laundry, etc. Potentially even allow the chat to shift over from the computer browser to the phone browser, as well.

I get your point and agree with you from a user perspective... but from a customer support perspective, why?

YOU want help, if you can't be bothered to sit attentively to receive it, why should I send you text messages?

Oh, I imagined it would be automated so as a customer service rep you don't even think about it.

As does Google, Airbnb, Amazon, Facebook... This seems to be a recurring theme here on HN of late.

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