A word or two about Exchange PSS hold times…
It is something we hear quite often these days here in PSS, Exchange specialty: "I had to wait a few hours to talk to you". "I called in, waited for an hour and the they told me I'd get a call in 4 hours".
Yes, unfortunately, this is what happens these days.
This is, understandably, very frustrating for customers that call us in need. It is definitely frustrating for all of us here too. Why is that? Well - for us - it is the customer that needs to be taken care of first, and the help that we provide needs to be both expert and quick.
So - that being said - why is this, what does one do, and what are we doing about it?
Why is this? There are several reasons for this situation. For example - we have seen more Exchange 2003 deployments sooner than expected. On the other hand, Exchange 5.5 call volume has not slowed down, really.
What does one do? There are a few tips that might give you a better experience when getting Exchange support:
- if at all possible, call for support on Wednesday or Thursday - as those days are typically "lighter" in our support queues during most weeks; while you might still have to wait, there is more chance that your issues will be handled more quickly on those days
- if the issue is not critical, it might be easier to open up a Web support incident rather than call into the support queue; additionally, you might want to use our Newsgroups to get help on the problem
Microsoft Communities (Newsgroups link is on this page):
http://www.microsoft.com/communities/default.mspx
Web Support incidents (Please go to "Contact Microsoft" and then to "Submit a Request for Online Help" links):
http://support.microsoft.com/
Of course - the above are just "workarounds" which brings us to:
What are we doing about it? We have worked quite aggressively on addressing the situation. We are in the process of hiring new people. We have a lot of training going on. It will take some time though, but the situation will be improving.
So there you go - it is not much, but - I thought we should acknowledge the problem for what it is and shed some light as to what we are doing about it.
Nino Bilic
