To help us to improve the quality of our products, services, and training, this call may be recorded or monitored, and information collected on this call may be transferred to other countries. To help me best assist you, I need to know if you are calling as a home user or a business user."
Calling Microsoft Tech Support's 800-936-5700 phone number is a waste of time if you want to talk to someone. I had a terrible experience attempting to get help, and apparently, Microsoft tracks callers like a web browser tracks users. After I failed to get help the first time, I was unable to talk to anyone on this line, which was even more frustrating. What if I had a different issue (which I did), and I needed to talk to someone? I'm pretty sure for the short term at least, my number has been blacklisted. That is some really bad customer service.
I realize Microsoft has a lot of products, so the company probably gets a lot of phone calls. However, just because a company has a lot of customer service demands doesn't mean it gets to ignore them. It's pretty obvious Microsoft prefers to automate the entire process online. Not all customers are ready for that though, and there's no point in allowing people to call a business if the company doesn't intend to provide good service using that format.
The phone call started out okay. An automated assistant answered and said, "Thank you for calling Microsoft," followed by the standard Spanish option and privacy message. Then, it said, "To help me best assist you, I need to know if you are calling as a home user or a business user." I promptly answered "home user," but it didn't understand what I said and I had to answer again. Then, it asked me what it could help me with today. I said clearly, "MS Word," and once again, it said, "Sorry I didn't catch that. Are you calling for technical support or help with a product?"
I wasn't sure what to say because I needed help licensing my copy. The code was not working after I submitted payment. However, I figured that could be technical support, so I decided to say that. It told me, "Okay, to better help you, technical support is now online. Help.microsoft.com. If you like I can also send you that link in a text message." I said no, and then it rudely said, "Okay, thanks for calling Microsoft," and hung up on me. I was pretty angry at this point because I had received no help and the system just hung up on me.
Immediately, I called back and was even more stunned that the automated system didn't greet me or offer me any options. Instead, it knew I was calling back and said, "Hi, thanks for calling Microsoft. For assistance with Microsoft Word technical support, please visit us online. Thank you for calling Microsoft. Goodbye." I waited a few minutes and tried again and the same thing happened. What a horrible experience.