I serve at the pleasure of the customer (except maybe when they annoy me?)

by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2011/02/05 07:01 -05:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2011/02/05/10125236.aspx

He was referring to a conversation going on in the comments of a blog of mine from over 4 years ago titled Is MSLU still supported?.

I was pointing out how in the specific case of MSLU at that time, if people asked a question of PSS it would make its way to me eventually, and if people asked me directly then it would also make its way to me.

I know that some people are more comfortable with one way, some with the other. They both work, so really I was slightly annoyed when the same request got to me via many different channels but I really did not judge one channel as better than the other.

I mean, I serve at the pleasure of the customer (except perhaps when they annoy me?), so why should I judge them for which way they like to talk unless their way is every way? :-)

Now this is going back half a decade ago, when the landscape in PSS was pretty different.

These days, when I send notes to specific folks in PSS about writing a KB article on a particular topic, they tell me that someone else does those now. It is no longer PSS writing them based on specific cases where they provided assistance (and KB articles became a way that the help could get to others, whether by another PSS engineer finding it or a customer finding it directly).

And I suddenly realized it had been a while since I had received email from a PSS engineer asking me about a customer question.

Over the past six months I had probably had more interaction with the VP I mentioned in Are you Mr. Kaplan? (and he is now in customer and partner advocacy) than I had with anyone in PSS.

I know product support still exists, thouh now the only trace I see of it is in PSS folk asking questions of some of the distribution lists I'm on.

So perhaps this change, this shift, this (dare I say it?) re-organization has not impacted Product Support Services in a negative way.

So while I would have used to have said "ask any way you like!" about MSLU or topics I know about, maybe now I'd say "if you think it is something I know about and you want an answer from me, you should probably ask here, via the Suggestion Box." Because otherwise I may never see the question, and I am probably less likely to be a significant contributor to the response.

if I don't know the answer I'll point you to PSS. And if you ask the question via multiple routes I am less likely to even know about it so perhaps the annoyance factor isn't a factor for me anymore.

So I guess you can just ask whoever and how-many-whoevers you wish to, based on your own personal preferences. This may be the most efficient org structure yet built for customer satisfaction via support.

It's so interesting, my first 5 years with MSFT was with PSS. After leaving that org, so many things changed. Probably the biggest being that they don't call themselves PSS anymore - it's CSS now.

I know about the CSS thing, but I don't think I'll ever stop thinkin of it as PSS. :-)

Please consider a donation to keep this archive running, maintained and free of advertising.
Donate €20 or more to receive an offline copy of the whole archive including all images.