Good Support Stories

It's best to share both good and bad feedback with teams when you have it.  Today I have some better stories to share... and I still don't really classify the last one as bad, just less than stellar.

Xbox Support

My Xbox360 came loud. The fans where slowly driving me insane. I used to think this was by design, but I think my problem got worse over time.  I finally started listening to other Xbox 360 devices and realized that mine was just a bad apple. It was not being a good AV citizen and had progressed to the point where listening to anything that wasn't cranked up to 11 was nearly impossible.  So I drifted on over to www.xbox.com.   Here are some of the things that they did really well before I even clicked a contact link.

1. There is a top level support link on the site. So it's easy to find.

2. The forums are also a top level link in two places. I wanted to check and see if other people had the same problem.  Turns out they did... leads me to #3.

3. If you see some of the threads about fan noise you'll see there are some xbox.com support folks that actually comment there.  I found one thread where the user posted a video of his xbox, that sounded like mine, and the support engineer acknowledged there was a problem and told him to call it in... so I did. 

4. The support issues are well categorized (Games, Hardware, Live)

5. The e-mail support option is only a two step process! I opted not for that option since I knew I'd have to have someone listen to my box to understand my issue.

6. They have podcasts and support how-to videos for common scenarios.

I would have loved to try their e-mail support, but I opted to call.  I wasn't on hold very long.  I did, however, have to do a bit of convincing to get them to do a repair/replace order for my box.  The engineer claimed first that I didn't really have a problem if games worked fine.  I asked him if he would define it as a problem if my xbox made repeated "clanging" noises.  Then he asked if he could listen to my Xbox. So I held the phone within a foot of the box and after a couple of seconds he agreed by saying "Yeah, that would drive me mad, I'll send a box to have it repaired or replaced".    Good times! 

I'll follow up when I get my new whispering Xbox 360 back. 

Internal Support

My laptop turned itself into a brick the other day.  It would boot be fine for a minute, then the screen would turn white, freeze, bump up the fans and finally die.  I went for e-mail support to our internal help desk.  By the end of the day they had someone out to look at it.  Unfortunately I needed a new system board so it took a bit for the part to get to me, but they kept me in the loop the whole time.  Good stuff.