Microsoft Premier Support Meltdown – Core Quality Failure

Microsoft Premier Support has suffered a complete meltdown after years of quality decay.

Critical MS Premier Support tickets are now taking weeks to fix instead of hours. Unified’s new “as needed” model has pushed Microsoft Support beyond capacity.

Audience: Microsoft Vendor Management | IT Sourcing & Procurement | CIO

Gartner IT Symposium Xpo October 16-19, 2022 in Orlando, Florida.

US Cloud executives spoke to over 50 former and current Microsoft Support clients who all shared one major concern about Premier Support – quality has been in decline for years and is now forcing IT leaders to take action.  Either build out their own teams or seek an alternative.

Now in 2022, IT leaders are seeking out US Cloud as an alternative to Premier’s failing quality.

2017 through 2021 enterprises sought out an alternative to Premier because it was becoming too expensive. US Cloud’s primary audience was procurement teams looking for cost savings. Now in 2022, IT leaders are seeking out US Cloud as an alternative to Premier’s failing quality.

The 2022 Gartner Xpo IT leader conversations affirmed “failing support quality” as their primary driver to seek out an alternative to Microsoft Premier Support. All in an attempt to contain the meltdown accelerated by Unified.

A Microsoft support meltdown is the worst case scenario for an enterprise.

A Microsoft support meltdown is the worst case scenario for an enterprise with mission-critical functions relying on Microsoft technologies, causing widespread prolonged service outages impacting thousands of end users and customers.

Microsoft Premier Support quality has been decaying over time but has been in free fall since the introduction of the “as needed” Unified support model. Since 2017 there have been thousands of organizations reporting MS Premier Support quality meltdowns of varying severity throughout commercial and public sector industries.

What actually causes a Microsoft Premier Support meltdown?

A meltdown occurs in an enterprise when critical support tickets aren’t being resolved within a reasonable time period. There are not enough MS support engineers to keep up with the swelling volume of tickets being generated by Unified.

As a result, crit-sit and escalation points become overwhelmed forcing CSAMs to spend their time managing tickets for their customers. The service delivery teams become so hot that they reach their melting point, burning out, and forcing Microsoft to bring up more offshored resources to attempt to contain the meltdown.

What impact does Premier’s quality meltdown have on Procurement teams?

• Skyrocketing Premier Support Prices
• Low/No negotiation resulting in “monopoly pricing”
• 40% to 400% increase in year one
• 130%+ increase in following years per Gartner
• Migration to cloud causes biggest increases in support cost

What impact does Premier’s quality meltdown have on IT teams?

• Premier Support quality degradation accelerated by Unified
• Ticket resolution 30% slower in last six months
• Non-technical CSAMs replacing real TAMs
• Offshored service delivery for majority of low-severity tickets
• Zero performance SLAs offered by Microsoft; only optional Azure Rapid Response as significant add-on