3rd Party: A Microsoft Support Show – A Dormakaba Expert’s Journey from Client to Insider (ep7).

Hi Tipp. Glad to be here. 

I’m now a senior technical account manager. My job is really to be an advocate for my clients within the US Cloud organization. I escalate problems and ticket management, making sure that the account is in good shape, making sure the experience is at the right level, and ensuring that we’re really delivering the services that they’re expecting out of the contract and the engagement. 

Absolutely correct. My background is that I’ve been inside the IT industry now for over 35 years. You can probably tell by the color of my hair. I started off with onsite support, just doing break-fix around the office. Then I transitioned from that into becoming an infrastructure manager for the UK. The organization was the second customer to adopt Office 365 in its conceptual launch within the UK.  

Then I transitioned to becoming infrastructure manager for Northeastern Europe. So now I had nine countries I was responsible for, and we took Office 365 into all of those nine businesses. Based on that, our head office decided they were looking for a global solution. Then I was invited to join Group IT to start helping build the global strategy at a platform level. 

For 25 of those 35 years, I was with one organization. As I said, it regularly changed. So, it was never boring. It never stayed still. It was continually evolving. 

My last role inside Dormakaba was that I was the service cluster owner for a team called Unified Communication and Collaboration. That involved being responsible for email and personal information management. It also included responsibility for our enterprise public services solutions and collaboration solutions as well. 

The challenge came when Microsoft decided for Dormakaba that it was no longer viable to continue using a Premier Support contract and insisted on moving to a Unified Support contract. This was a significant price increase. That triggered a lot of internal activities to reassess the marketplace. Because of the scope and size—we were supporting every country from New Zealand to Canada and many in between—we found that our local providers were great within the immediate time zone. But once you included the APAC region or the Americas, it became a lot harder to deliver consistent service. 

We ended up talking to Gartner. Dormakaba had a relationship with them from a strategy point of view, and Gartner provided a list of alternatives to Microsoft in the support space. We started an assessment. Our procurement process requires three competitive quotes for any provider change. We reached out to US Cloud, explored the opportunity, and after completing our scoring matrix weighted on key deliverables, US Cloud came out in front. We moved forward with a first-year contract—and it went very well. 

So well, in fact, that at the end of year one, everyone agreed we’d renew for an additional two years. It was very successful. We had a great relationship with US Cloud. We had a good feeling about the organization. Everything was dealt with positively. One of the valuable things from my point of view is that, as a client, you were listened to. If you had an idea or a hurdle, your voice was heard. It felt like we were really getting value for money. With Microsoft, we were a relatively small fish in a massive pond. Our voice would’ve only been heard to a certain degree. 

Yeah. We looked at the skill matrix first. Were we going to experience a reduction in engineer quality on tickets? That was the key consideration. Cost was another, but it was secondary. If the service isn’t working and the engineer isn’t giving you the information you need, it doesn’t matter what you pay—you’re not getting results, and your business is impacted. 

Another must-have was 24/7/365 coverage. What we found after moving to US Cloud, and didn’t see elsewhere, is that when problems covered multiple Microsoft environments, you’d normally be bounced between departments. You’d only get collaboration once you made enough noise. But at US Cloud, engineers work together across environments. There’s no “wrong queue” or “policy waiver” nonsense. That’s a major shift in experience and turnaround time, especially when a ticket impacts productivity. 

It’s a significant difference from the old experience. One genuine concern Dormakaba had about signing with US Cloud was that it’s a 12-month commitment. If it went wrong, there’d be internal pushback. But what US Cloud offers—and this is unique—is a proof-of-concept phase. Any member of the sales team can start that conversation. You don’t have to go all in. You can take a POC with US Cloud, make sure it’s the right fit, and then decide. 

That shows the strength of the product. We have the confidence that once you try it, you won’t go back to Microsoft’s Unified Support experience. I’d encourage everyone to at least explore and verify if it’s a fit for your organization. 

I’m in a unique position at US Cloud because I’ve got a 360-degree view of the environment. If there’s an idea or development, I can offer both the TAM and client perspective. I can give feedback on how a client would perceive a change—whether it’s positive or negative. I can provide that viewpoint on what’s coming down the roadmap. That gives me the visibility that helps ensure client experience remains strong. Because without clients, we don’t have a business. 

Exactly. 

For anyone focused on the “US” in US Cloud—it’s just the name. It’s not about the hours. I can guarantee it’s a true 24/7/365 service, delivered to all our clients. 

The Premier support experience with Microsoft was okay, but if the product group was in the US, we always had delays waiting for them to come online. It was a struggle to engage. Businesses were left hanging. 

Sometimes tickets were stuck in the wrong queue, with the wrong team, in the wrong time zone. With US Cloud, it’s different. You pick up the phone—say 7:30 in the morning—and within 30 minutes I’m talking to an engineer. That level of responsiveness just wasn’t there before.