One of the areas we know can be costly for our customers is the cost of having a large helpdesk staff to investigate and resolve issues reported by users. We've done an extensive scrub of MSIT's helpdesk data (pivoted by root cause rather than symptom) and have identified several areas where we can improve in future releases of exchange. For example there are a couple of key NDRs that repeatedly cause problems for users and so we're working on reducing the frequency of those where possible, and where not, having better ways of helping the end user or helpdesk engineer resolve the problem.
We've completed our analysis of MSIT's data, and now we'd like to crosscheck that information with helpdesk data from other organizations to ensure that we aren't designing a product only for ourselves [:)]. The key information we need is:
- Preferred: Helpdesk call data specific to exchange & outlook end-users, with volume information (e.g. # of calls for each issue + length of each call), organized by root cause (example: size restriction configured incorrectly on connector resulted in NDRs)
- Acceptable: Helpdesk call data specific to exchange & outlook end-users, with volume information (e.g. # of calls for each issue + length of each call), organized by symptom (example: user received 5.2.2 NDR)
So if you are willing to share your helpdesk data with us (please filter out any personally identifiable information first though!), we would really appreciate it – email us at exblown AT Microsoft DOT com if you're willing, and we'll work with you to figure out the data format (excel or CSV is preferred).
What do you get in return? The chance to have a clear and direct impact on the next release of exchange and um... our undying gratitude? [:)] Seriously though, although we know this will probably entail some work for those who participate, we really encourage you to do so, I can't tell you how many folks inside the product team are chomping at the bit to have more data on what are the pain points for helpdesks. When we have a more complete picture of what we're going to do to solve these problems, we'll also post it here.
- KC Lemson
