susandennis | Busy Monday

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Reload page in style: site light

There is, apparently, no rest for the aged. It's another heads down day. Plus I get to leave early today (not so much early as on time for a change) and I have a meeting for the last hour of my day. So I'm crunched for time. But I have an offering...

I've been reading this guy's blog now for months and some days he just get inspired. Today is one of those days - so why don't you just hop on over and check?

I'll be back later.

Current Mood: busy

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

spiritgirl.livejournal.com

I love Witt! He's from the Atlanta area becuase I discovered him on this Atlanta blog thingy. He's pretty funny. Today's entry was a great respite for a busy Monday.....and so that's the extent of my physical activity! Take care!

From:

susandennis

The funny part is that when I was creating the entry, I realized that I hadn't a clue wht his name was. I took a quick look at his website to see if I could figure it out and couldn't. Then your comment came in. DUH.

And I somehow thought he was from Boston!

I love that you were already on to him.

From:

spiritgirl.livejournal.com

He travels to Boston a lot. I'm not positive his name is Witt...I just assumed. (I know you shouldn't assume...but I did). My favorite entry that still makes me bust A GUT laughing is here: http://wittandwisdom.blogs.com/home/2003/11/dull_knife.html

Who needs Calgon!

From:

susandennis

I missed that one... thank you!!! I think this guy might be the Kevin Bacon (as in Six Degrees) of bloggers. I thought he was in Boston because he once - not long ago - had dinner with another guy I read who I know is in Boston and now I find out you are a fan...

Suppose the whole world is connected?

From:

mickeytor.livejournal.com

Hey there, my little Microsoft contact!

Here's a question from the Peanut Gallery --

How are the people in your call/help centre trained/hired? Are these MVPs? Are they given specific training?

From:

susandennis

Well, peanut, I do not know for certainty... But, I can tell you the way it worked when I was there 5 years ago... It depends on the product.

There are generally 4 levels of people you get. The first is the greeter person who is in charge of getting your details and then you go to a Level 1 person. If that person can't fix you, you get to a Level 2 person, etc. Level 3 is pretty much relegated to software bugs.

NON are MVPs. MVPs are stictly volunteers. They don't get paid anything and they don't work for Microsoft.

Level 3s used to be full time regular Microsoft employees and generally people who were in the product development team. If you called about a FrontPage question and it turned out that you maybe found a bug, you'd likely talk to someone on the FrontPage development team - a junior somebody who had helped write the code.

All other levels - greeters and 1 and 2 - are employees of a company that Microsoft hires to provide support. They are the experts on how the products are actually used. The environments and the users. They get extensive training on the product, the likely environments and the kinds of users who are likely to call looking for help.

At least that's the way it used to be. I'm pretty sure it still is.

The greeter people are also likely to be physically anywhere in the world. For consumer products, especially - games, kids software, office, operating system - they might be in India, Ireland, or just about anywhere. Level 1 people, too, I think - although a lot of them are in Texas and North Carolina.

Again... more than you wanted to know, I'm sure...