By now, I hope you folks know me. If not, let me say that I’m NOT a Microsoft basher. But, like you, am a practitioner and watcher with an occasional comment. My hope is to make things better for everyone – Microsoft included.
This week I came to a rude awakening and, I’m sure, you have already heard or will be hearing more stories like this.
But first, let me take responsibility for my own ignorance. I’ve had an iPhone for any number of years now.
– I know that I have an Apple account.
– I know that they have my credit card on file.
– I know that I can only download free app’s if that’s set up.
– I know that I can purchase app’s and music without fuss.
All that is normal and fine enough and I should be used to it.
What I didn’t know is that there is a similar “Microsoft Store” with many of the same characteristics. My bad.
But, so what? I’m not normally buying anything from that store.
A Disastrous Scenario:
A newbie / innocent buys an HP computer from Costco. That seems normal enough, eh?
The innocent takes the computer to the office and sets it up .. more or less.
When the innocent tries to use the computer there is a panoply of things that need attending.
One of those is an Office app, it warns that it needs to be Activated.
That’s because HP was kind enough to pre-install Office 365 on the computer – no surprise there.
So now things are getting out of hand for the innocent.
Costco Concierge service wasn’t helpful.
Enter the not-so-innocent me!!
The first thing I did was notice that the innocent newbie had set up his user account in Windows as a Microsoft account.
He used his own email address and was confused about which password went with which app / device / situation….
So I figured he needed to keep those things separated and distinct.
In truth, I usually set up local accounts in Windows so I don’t know what steps and responses he may have seen or how he responded.
The bottom line was that he didn’t have a credit card on his Microsoft account. Little did I know….
Back to Activating Office.
We quickly clicked on Activate Now and went through a pretty normal sequence of events.
When it was all ordered and we were ready to enter a credit card number, we were offered a button to continue.
All we got was a blank screen with some dimly-colored gray bars that looked like what might be blanks for name, address, etc.
After a bit, we were returned to the original page and were once more prompted to “continue”. An endless loop.
We could not complete the process.
After talking with probably 6 different people at “Microsoft” (wherever that may be) and spending literally hours on the phone, I finally got someone who actually helped and the purchase was successful. In the mean time, I was told that we “had to have a credit card” on the account. When I said “that’s what we’re trying to do!!” it didn’t seem to register. It was clear that we were living in separate universes. I WANT TO PAY YOU! was not in the accepted vocabularly.
Here’s my take on this disaster:
1) The Microsoft folks mostly just assume that there must be a credit card on the account.
2) The Microsoft web pages for Activation of Office must just assume that there must be a credit card on the account.
I think it’s fair to ask:
“What if a customer comes to you with a credit card and wants to register it or needs to register it in order to do business? Do you help them or send them away (or transfer them to someone else)?”
That’s the crux of what happened here.
This is the first time that I’d encountered a situation where a Microsoft account WITH a credit card pre-registered was needed.
Clearly the newbie innocent was able to initially set up the computer user without that.
Yet, not able to Activate Office without that.
Not wanting to just make empty complaints, here are some suggestions:
1) Make sure the customer can pay. That’s sort of a first screen in good selling practices.
2) Make it easy for the customer to pay.
3) Make the connection between the Microsoft Store and licensing issues much clearer.
4) Just tell customers to “think Apple” .. that’s how this works too!
The response that “well go to account.microsoft.com and log in” is correct but when one is focused on Office, they may not be focused on creating an “account” for some nebulous reason.
Now, I don’t want to belabor this story with more facts but this “PS” seems appropriate:
Before trying to Activate Office, we had already set up Outlook and had a fair time investment in it.
After all, Activation is easy, isn’t it?
So, we didn’t want to uninstall and reinstall Office if we could help it. We just planned to Activate it.
We noticed, in the process of trying to Activate Office, there was a blank space for entering a license key. We never used this opportunity and here’s why:
1) We didn’t have a license key for any version of Office 365.
2) The Microsoft people that we talked to seemed to hold up wolfbane if we mentioned the opportunity to enter a license key.
3) We didn’t know which Office 365 we would purchase on the open market in order to enter the license key number for THIS installation.
4) Once we figured out which Office 365 version, we had a heck of a time finding that version for sale (Office 365 ProPlus).
Then, when we did go to Activate with Microsoft, we still had to pick a version and our choices didn’t match up. Fortunately it looks like the choice we made was OK.
But the fundamental question was never really resolved.
It’s fine to copy successful things. It’s not fine to flub the implementation!
Fred Marshall
