Providing different types of support to your customers
Applies to: Partner Center | Partner Center for Microsoft Cloud for US Government
Appropriate roles: Help agent
Microsoft partner support guidance
Partners transacting in the CSP model are the trusted advisor to their customers and, if you’re a direct bill partner, own the relationship end-to-end. Indirect resellers should work with their indirect providers to support customers. This relationship includes supporting your customers when they have questions or issues. By providing support to your customers, you have the opportunity to learn more about them and their business. Doing so helps you identify new services and solutions that drive value.
To fulfill the support requirement, you may resell support from another company, outsource all or part of the support structure, and/or set up a structure to provide support directly. You may charge for all or part of the support provided to customers. Be sure you tell customers the types of support you’ll provide, the service hours, contact method, and the pricing (if charging for support).
CSP customers can't create support tickets themselves. They need to contact you for support. You're required to receive incoming support requests from their customers, diagnose issues to the best of your ability, and then resolve issues that are within scope of the baseline support boundaries. If you’re unable to resolve an issue, you can escalate issues to Microsoft via the following support vehicles:
Commercial issue support is available to all partners in the CSP program
Technical issue support - you can compare partner support plans or for more information, see the following links about a specific support plan:
Premier Support for Partners (PSfP) (fee base, use for all products)
Advanced Support for Partners (ASfP) (fee base, use for cloud products only)
Signature Cloud Support (included with MPN benefits for Gold or Silver competencies, use for cloud products only. See Technical Benefits)
Product Support Incidents (included with MPN benefits for Gold, Silver, or Microsoft Action Pack partners, use for recent on-premises products only. See Technical Benefits)
Providing billing, subscription management, and technical support
Each online service has specific and detailed requirements for providing billing, subscription management, and technical support to customers. For more information, see the following documents.
Enable Microsoft Cost Management for customers
Partners can enable Microsoft Cost Management for customer tenant Azure subscriptions. Providing access allows customers to view their costs for Azure consumed services at pay-as-you-go retail rates. Costs are shown in the customer's billing currency for their consumed usage at Azure RBAC subscription and resource groups scopes. For more information about how partners can grant access to customers, see Enable cost management for customer tenant subscriptions.