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Windows Live Support Moves To Forums

Mar. 10, 2010 Paul Thurrott | Paul Thurrott's Supersite for Windows

Microsoft is moving its Windows Live support to online forums, which sounds like a step down, until you realize that it was previously email-based.

Today, Microsoft announced changes to the way Windows Live customers will receive support.  Beginning on March 10, support for Windows Live Services will move from e-mail to a community forum. This means that consumers and partners will experience quicker resolution times and will be able to leverage our extensive community forums to post or answer questions, view service alerts and find solutions.

Through forums, customers will have access to information and answers 24/7, to help them find information when they need it, from a broad community of peers, technical experts, MVPs and Microsoft support moderators.  Support moderators will be available to assist in managing the flow of information within the community, ensuring the overall health of the community, and engaging with users on complex technical problems or safety issues that the community cannot resolve.

The transition from email to forum support will begin today for English, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Italian and Japanese customers.  By the end of March, all Windows Live Services customers will be fully supported through community forums in fifteen currently supported languages, as well as in nine new languages.

Discuss this Article 15

redunion1940
on Mar 10, 2010
So while this is an okay thing, digging through forums to find the solution to that one problem can be a pain, especially if it is a very rare problem.
aemarques
on Mar 10, 2010
@ redunion1940: you do realize that every Forum has an internal search engine that makes "digging" easy, right? :-)
romeyinfc
on Mar 10, 2010
The next time I find a Forum Internal Search engine that is even half-way useful will be the first time.
planetarian
on Mar 10, 2010
funny, it's rare that I have any troubles using forum searches. There are the occasional ones with strange character restrictions, time-between-searches, or generally poor results, but most i've used are just fine and help me find what I'm looking for in no time.
jctierney
on Mar 10, 2010
I like this idea, especially since they used to be e-mail based. Forums offer a great way to consolidate similar problems. I wonder how many times e-mail support got the same questions? This will be much easier because if the question has already been asked, it's probably already been answered, and the answer is visible to all. I applaud Microsoft for moving in this direction. I would probably even prefer a support forum over actual telephone communication. Albeit, I probably spend more time on forums than the average person, so I would be more comfortable using them. On a side note: I can't wait for Live Services Wave 4...waiting...waiting...waiting...
la_bruin
on Mar 10, 2010
This was completely the right thing to do. Anyone that hasn't tried to use Windows Live Support prior to this needs to do everyone a favor and just shut up & listen to those that have. Questions frequently went unanswered and the times in which there were return mails, responses after the initial "we're reviewing your question" automail could take as long as 3 weeks. There was no accountability for response times or resolution. It was frankly worse than best effort. More to the point, because the message had no owner per se, and there was no transparency around questions being asked about issues (no one other than WLSupport saw your issue), no one else ever knew if they were the only one's having the problem or if it was systemic. There was no community assisting you. No one else chiming in to say, "Yeah I have this problem too!" What this DOES do is it exposes any issues customers have with Windows Live products way out in the open in a central location. This is a risk for Microsoft in terms of the perception people have around Windows Live products but it's also the brave & right one to do. Kudos to Microsoft for having the stones to do this right. Finally.
tayme
on Mar 10, 2010
This is the one thing that I find annoying about the Zune service...support there is via forums. There are so many trolls that are there just to muddy the waters. When a widespread issue surfaces, like they do for all electronic or computer related products, the trolls flood the forums with nonsense, making finding a good solution tough. Luckily, Zune and Xbox have Major Nelson to consolidate the good answers. --tayme
jctierney
on Mar 10, 2010
@tayme Another thing I dislike is when someone asks a question and five people respond with "just Google it." Interestingly enough, I find that half the time the answer could have been answered with just as much effort as typing "just Google it." It's a shame that just a few people can make such a great service not as useful.
qaelith.2112
on Mar 10, 2010
Community forums can be nearly useless if the company's own support people aren't actively participating. I wasted a great deal of time on Linksys community forums with a malfunctioning router which would every 3 days or so totally lose all ability to do anything until it was reset. That included both wired and wireless traffic. All I ever got from "the community" were tips on how to configure and troubleshoot an intermittent wireless connection. I repeated my issue several times and emphasized "this is NOT a wireless connectivity problem" and still was given tips on checking the wireless signal strength, moving closer to the router, using one wireless encryption method rather than another, etc. Unfortunately this is too typical with community forums that have no active company tech support people.
SoonerSkeene
on Mar 10, 2010
I'm terrified of this. I currently have a security issue. Someone was able to gain access to my Windows Live ID (presumably through the xbox, because my profile was recovered on someone else's xbox) and then my Live ID password was changed. Now I'm locked out of my Azure services, Mesh, messenger, email, and a dozen other sites -- including forums -- that use Live ID as the authentication system. I've been waiting 8 days for an email reply and just today finally received an email (that unfortunately began with "we never received the form you were supposed to fill out", that I did fill out a week ago). When email is no longer an option, what path would I be able to take? It's terrifying having my account in someone else's hands and Microsoft taking weeks to reply. The community could never help in this case.
Dr. Daniel Jackson
on Mar 10, 2010
"There are so many trolls that are there just to muddy the waters." Just like this blog!
RunTimeError
on Mar 11, 2010
@Dr. Daniel Jackson Watching Waethron/MikeGalos go at it with Logjamming/rr0de is part of this blogs charm ;)
RunTimeError
on Mar 11, 2010
Email, forum based, whatever. It's support for a free service. You get what you pay for. I've never used support for the Live services so I can't compare but if it's anything like the support from other popular, free, web based services (cough, Facebook, cough MySpace) then it will suck for various reasons no matter the format. That being said, I've always found Microsofts *paid* product support to be awesome :)
tayme
on Mar 11, 2010
@RTE - Very true on the "free" vs "paid" support comment. --tayme
anonymous
on Mar 14, 2010
Windows Phone 7 no tendrá compatibilidad hacia atrás : Al implementar Silverlight y XNA, no podremos

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