Ever wonder what happens behind the scenes when you call Xbox support? Head over to Channel 9 and listen ‘The Voice of Support’ which has a show featuring Doug Park who manages support for Xbox.
Grab the WMA or MP3 from the bottom of the Channel 9 post.
Hey Doug, I have a little audio show too…how about you come and join me sometime!
With the latest round of POOR support I've been receiving, I'm definitely going to check this out.
Too bad it's not a 2 way conversation. I think Mr Park needs to know that when the system works, it works well, but when it falters, it fails the customer miserably.
Check out my public blog of my story. I'm just one of MANY unfortunate souls put through the ringer.
http://blackfish95.blogspot.com/
Thanks Major.
About the Support on Xbox
I made a poll at Denmarks largest Xbox site, asking how many people having problems with their Xbox after the Fall Update. As it is right now 25% answered that they got the problem, and 10% not sure. I dont know how close to the real figures this is, but it is quit alarming, dont you think? I personally are on my second Xbox, the first one took 6 weeks to replace, and I know there's a lot of people including my self that is not very happy to be without the consol for so long time. Can we even count on having in back before the christmas holiday is over?
You telling us the European market loves the Xbox - well I have an feeling that there can be up to 25% of this customers that is not very happy right now.
Please give us an downloadable update, or make the replacements go as fast as never before seen!!!
We already know what happens...
... our call is routed to India.
funny that when i phone im either stuck on hold or put through to some indian who doesnt even speak english. I noticed you dont do a feature on Inram.
haha the funny thing in New Zealand (unless things have changed) is that when you ring support you are getting a guy in Texas, if you have to send your Xbox away it goes to Australia for servicing lol
Such is the way for a country of approx 4 million people.
My launch day Xbox died this morning. 3 red lights.
I have been waiting for Microsoft to send me a box for 2 weeks (it had been acting up for the last few weeks- not loading certain games, DRE's, "revving" disc drive as it reads the disc, etc). But now it's completely, totally, dead.
Why is it so hard to get the shipping box from Microsoft (for those of us who don't have to pay for shipping- i.e. pre 2006 360's)? Every time I call, there was a "computer error", or the order "didn't go through" or there's "no record of your call".
There's pages and pages of people on xbox.com forums with the same problem.
Microsoft realised they had a problem with early defective machines, and extended the warranties- thank you. But why is it so hard to actually take advantage of the warranty?
Every time I have called Xbox Support I have received awesome service. Only called twice though, once because my Comcast crap wasn't working the first day I got Xbox Live (ended up being Comcast not activating the modem, I had no idea) and second was to get my Diamond Card.
I made a poll at Denmarks largest Xbox site, asking how many people having problems with their Xbox after the Fall Update. As it is right now 25% answered that they got the problem, and 10% not sure. I dont know how close to the real figures this is, but it is quit alarming, dont you think? I personally have my second Xbox now, the first one took 6 weeks to replace. I know there's a lot of people including my self that is not very happy to be without the consol for so long time. Can we even count on having in back before the christmas holiday is over?
Now Support telling us that the European market loves the Xbox - well I have an feeling that there can be up to 25% of this customers that is not very happy right now.
Sorry for triple posting! (Soooo embarrasing...)
Thanks for the post--I was looking at a job post for an escalation manager position in that group and this will be a good way to check out the 'environmental fit'. Thanks Major!
Do they talk about how Microsoft expects its customers to pay to repair a system that is known to break down frequently and cost them $400? And do they explain how it's highway robbery to take advantage of people when Microsoft should be like Sony and replace it for free?
there is xbox xnd xbox 360 support here in the Philippines for US/Canada, UK and Australia although ms will not admit that.
They are so boring to listen to Major, maybe you should get this guy on your show so it's worth listening to! Emergence day in Australia, though i got it Early due to an incident in Melbourne, love that game, go Epic, fix the MP Lobbies but! Great blog Major and all involved.
Desbie.
P.S. My 360 used to come up with the 3 lights of doom for a few months, but after the 2nd or 3rd time i rebooted it, it would work each time. Now it works everytime, hooray for my luck! My friends just crashed 4 days before Gears, I don't know that he will survive the next few weeks.
Sometimes I call and I get an American rep. When I do, the support is great. Other times, however, I get routed to some moron in India who doesn't know jack.
Does anybody remember the days when you would call for tech support, and the support representative was actually from your country? Outsourcing is terrible, and all it does is give the middle finger to the customers. I would rather be on hold for 20 min. than to speak to an Indian rep. Seriously, the Indian reps put you on hold more than anything else. It's like every other sentence spoken, they need to put you on hold to figure out what the heck is going on. I give the Indian Xbox support an F-.
Also, have all the issues been worked out of the fall update, b/c there are many people who are having random freezing issues.
I was actually an xbox 360 technical support rep but resigned 1 week after training since training was very bad as well as our trainer. Its just too bad since I thought I will enjoy working for this outsourced company since I just love the 360 and had 1 4 months before joining.
I know this topic wasn't made to pile on customer suport. Buuuuuut......
...I called CS because I was having problems with my Gamertag (could not/cannot look at others achievements) Talked with a supervisor who mention that "Oh you recently went from a Gold account to a Silver, that must be it" Yep a supervisor told me that. But that's ok I only waited 45 minutes on the phone to hear that. That's it!!
*sigh* I know at this time of year tech support is swamped and I have had positive experiences with them, but the way I see it, it's a crapshoot when you call. Will the person speak English? Maybe. Will they know what they are talking about? Maybe.
What support?
Info for Pete copied from a forums post of mine:
Well, your xbox is probably fixed by now but I just wanted to comment about their new system. Today I was helping a friend get his 360 repaired since I've had experience (and good ones) from fixing my unit twice before.
Well anyway it seems in October they changed the way they handle repairs. No longer do they send you a nice pre-paid box to your door, instead you find your own box and pay for the shipping. I am disappointed, after someone shells out 170$ to fix a defective unit thats under a year old, they could splurge a little on sending out a box :(
Pete: U should probably call them about that box, cuz they dont send boxes anymore.
heres a post of mine from the forums:
[...] I just wanted to comment about their new system. Today I was helping a friend get his 360 repaired since I've had experience (and good ones) from fixing my unit twice before.
OMG, BORING>>>>>......
Major Nelson, you need to interview this guy, no other pod/blog cast can compare to the Major Nelson blogcast.
why's that, its because You Major Nelson put effort into your blogcast and its actually nice to listen to.
every one else either tries to hard, or has a voice so boring that you wanna sleep.
like the chick in that podcast, she sounded half asleep, or maybe high on something lol.
i tried to listen to the whole thing but got way to bored, so if someone could bullet point the important things that would be great =D
otherwise i'll just wait till Major Interviews this guy lol
How about allowing people to change their accounts region? Right now i'm an american stuck with a canadian account because my canadian wife bought a 360 when they were released and decided to pay for live with her canadian credit card.
I live in NYC and can't access half the content on live because of this silly region stuff. I've already called "Support" and their brilliant solution was for me to cancel my account and lose my gamertag that i've had for like 4 years. I'm hoping you guys can fix my account or come up with a real solution that doesn't involve screwing me over even more.
Now i know you guys are worried about people abusing region changes for stupid reasons, but you also need to remember that you have customers that MOVE and actually need to change their region because they no longer live where they first setup their live account. Losing our gamertags because you guys did not have the foresight to think about customers doing something as commonplace as moving is beyond ridiculous.
"Ever wonder what happens behind the scenes when you call Xbox support?"
I used to, but now I know. A phone rings in india and I get pissed off.
It's ironic that this would be posted today considering my 360, in the middle of a session, decided it didn't want to keep a firm grip on discs anymore. I could hear the CD break free inside the drive and just vibrate the hell out of it. After a little testing I confirmed it was in fact not engaging the CD properly and was causing it to basically just turn the disc loosely in the drive causing it to vibrate and probably damage the lazer/disc itself.
So, I call the support number! Great stuff, the automated phone guy spoke english at least. The first person I get "Chris" had such a thick accent I couldnt understand my own name when he said it back to me. He then went through the idiotic check list after I very succinctly explained what my issue was and asked him to register me and check my warranty. I bought the xbox on september 27th and apparently 90 days have passed since then since I was no longer under warranty. When I explained all of this some more he asked me if I had downloaded the latest update.
After 45 minutes of explaining the disc drive was physically screwed up, he wanted to know about my latest software update and thought that might actauly fix my problem.
I've got no problem with outsourcing, and I've worked a desk before, hell I still do on rare occaisions when our network center call guy is out and none of the new guys are available, I understand what he was doing. What I don't understand is how I could get absolutely no intelligent help even when I explained the issue in great detail. I also don't understand how some one who can think a software issue is why the disc drive is no longer properly engaging the disc can manage to sit behind a phone and 'trouble shoot' the issue. You might as well call them the gateway to mailing the box back center. The only people getting help from these guys are the folks that slap the disc in upside down, are havn't put the batteries in their controller, or legitimately need to send their box back. Even some of the folks who need to send the box back might be getting screwed by the lack luster support due to the fact that this guy had issues even registering my xbox so that it showed under warranty. (less than 60 days old on a 90day warranty....)
But hey, that's not all. After I hung up on that nice fellow and called walmart (thank god for receipts) I called back to figure out how to handle my game saves and purchased content. I was told to buy memory sticks to back everything up on and that I'd have to get support to refund some MS points to rebuy my arcade games.
lets see, I have 80megs of 'stuff' I NEED to copy over... do I go spend 80 bucks on 2 64 meg memory sticks?... 100 bucks buys you another 12gig hard drive.. I'm having issues comprehending some of the price points but lets move past that...
I do a little research on my own and realize that I'm going to have to buy the sticks, come back, load em all over, return the xbox, come back, load them back on, then my arcade games still wont work if I'm not signed in. Hey, instead of blowing another 80 bucks on 128 megs of storage (seriously... wtf) I just talked the nice ladies at Walmart into letting me swap my HDD for the new one that was in the replacement box. It's against policy but they were nice enough and could tell that I was a tad disgruntled after dealing with your support.
I'm invested into Microsoft at this point with high hopes I'm not being a retard. I've got my 360, a year of Live, I'm using my Live Spaces, bought a zune and will be subcribing to the Zune pass soon, and will be installing Vista as soon as its commercially available. I'm the fan you want, the honest guy that buys your products and puts money in your pocket and the last few encounters with prices, services, and support are making me eyeball other products and wondering how I can wiggle the same functionality out of them without having to deal with the absurd prices of storage, proprietary lock down on peripherals and storage options, and DRM out the wazoo.
I don't want to get off on more of a rant here but yeah, gogo support.
major, can you tell us what time the lost planet mp demo will come out please
To Brian:
I appreciate your response, but Microsoft does send out prepaid shipping boxes to people with launch day defective 360's (basically any 360 made before 2006).
I called again today (4th time) to check on the box and the service rep was almost crying. It sounded like he was being hammered with calls, and apologized up and down about the box not shipping out. He "spoke to a supervisor" and the box was "definately, seriously" being shipped on Monday,
Call #1: Spoke to "Bob" in India, he asked me to check on cables, etc.
Call #2: American female, confirmed my 360 was toast, told me I could send my 360 back but I'd have to pay for shipping. I corrected her and told her that pre-2006 systems don't have to pay for shipping, she checked, and agreed. She said she was shipping me a box and I'd have it within 3 business days.
Call #3: After 6 business days and no box, I call back and get a guy who says the box "just didn't get shipped" because of "Computer error- you know how it is, these things happen". He said he fixed it, and within 2 days I'd have a UPS tracking number in my email for the box.
Call #4: After 3 business days and no email with tracking info, I call back and the crying service rep says they're swamped with defective units. He says that so many people need boxes sent out, but Microsoft changed their policy recently about paying for shipping, blah blah blah. I politely tell him "look, I'm not concerned with other people, or what the policy is now. I'm entitled to free shipping due to the shoddy workmanship of the launch day systems, and I just want the shipping box I was promised 2 weeks ago." He claims to check with a supervisior, and swears my box is about to be shipped. He gives me a tracking number, but it doesn't work because he claims it's not in the system yet.
In the past two weeks, I've spent several hundred dollars on Xbox 360 games. The Godfather, Madden 07 Collector's Edition, Marvel Ultimate Alliance, NFS: Carbon Collector's Edition, Splinter Cell Double Agent Collector's Edition, Gears of War Collector's Edition, Smackdown vs Raw 2007 Collector's Edition, F.E.A.R, Viva Pinata, Rainbow Six Vegas Collector's Edition.
I know *** happens. I'm an adult. The early 360's were poorly built and prone to defects. I understand. Microsoft was nice enough to extend the warranties to 1 year when they realized there were problems. That's a great move by Microsoft and I applaud them for doing so.
Just send me my fucking box and fix my fucking broken 360, Microsoft. How fucking hard is it to send out a cardboard box? For ***'s sake, get your *** together.