Client Conversation: Brown University

Hello, Michael! Thank you for your time today! Before we begin, would you mind telling us a bit about Brown University?

Oh, that’s a good one. Brown University is a prestigious Ivy League school based in Rhode Island. We are the seventh-oldest education institute in the United States, and we’re well-known for our open curriculum, which allows students to open themselves up to what they want to learn without following the rigid requirements of core-based classes.

We’re in a historic neighborhood on a hill within Providence, RI, with a large student population from a whole range of backgrounds. We’re well-known for our medical school, school of engineering, school of public health, and professional studies as well.

Thanks! Yes, we’d heard quite a bit about the medical school there. Now, when it comes to support for the University’s Microsoft systems, how was your support prior to US cloud? What was the experience like, and what prompted your team to switch to US Cloud?

Yeah, that’s an easy one. I’ve been at Brown now for 18 years and in my position, we had been a customer of Microsoft support, beginning with Premier Services or premier support for most of that time. As time progressed, you know, we saw a change in the level of support provided by Microsoft—especially when we changed from Premier Support to the Unified contract or Unified Support.

We started to see a shuffle in our on our technical account managers, which then became CSAMs (or customer success account managers), which is in more of a customer support role. We found they were more sales-oriented than they were technical.

These CSAMs were often people who were not necessarily in the IT field previously, so we started to lose that relationship.

When I first started working with Premier techs, they said, “We’re an advocate for you and we fight for you. We understand your situation. We understand what you’re going through from a technical standpoint.” We really lost that when we switched over to a CSAM and started to be sold products. We’d hear, “Oh hey, we notice that you’re not using this product. Have you thought about using this? We could get you a discount on this.”

That service setup wasn’t really looking at what we were doing and what issues we were facing from a technical standpoint, so that was really one of the reasons we started looking for something else.

The second thing that really made us start questioning the value of what we were doing with Microsoft and the level of quality of support we were getting. After the switch to Unified, we started to deal with all level-one engineers—you know, people who are just reading from a script and asking the same questions over and over again, even after receiving all kinds of information from us.

We’d open up a ticket and fill out all the information on that really nice form: Here are the log files. Here’s the experience that I’m having. Here’s the screenshots. Here’s all this, everything you need to know. Then we would still get a response back from engineering like, “Hi, I’m so-and-so. Can you send me the log files? Can you tell me what’s happening? What is going on?”

Our team questioned, “Why am I having to repeat it for you? I just filled all that out.” I think that was ultimately the last straw for us. Members of my team were coming back to me and saying, “You know what? I don’t want to open up a case with Microsoft anymore. It’s not worth my time. I don’t want to use the service because it’s frustrating and a waste of time.”

At that point, we thought, “Ok, look, we need to do something.”

We provided all this feedback to our account reps through Microsoft, and they responded with, “We know, we know. We understand. Blah blah blah…” But it just never helped.

Then we really decided to see what else was out there, to check and see what options we had for third-party support.

Wow, your story resonates deeply with the experiences we’ve been hearing from other clients who were unwillingly shuffled from Premier to Unified. Despite all of these known problems and the clear need for change, was there any anxiety from your team about switching support away from Microsoft as the OEM for Microsoft products?

I wouldn’t say there was any resistance because we were looking so intentionally for something better. We were hopeful.

If anything, there may have been a little anxiety because, of course, some of us worried about losing our direct contact with Microsoft, the developer of all this software. But what I think really helped reassure us and remove that anxiety was the fact that, even if US Cloud is not able to resolve the issue, they have the ability to open up a case through Microsoft on our behalf (or escalate the ticket). We felt comfortable with that security blanket in case we still needed direct help from Microsoft.

Once we understood the process and removed the Unified issue of frustration with low-level engineers, we were like, “Ok. There’s really nothing to worry about. This is a no-brainer.”

That’s excellent. It looks like you carefully considered US Cloud as an option after using the proof-of-concept trial. It went well for you, and you made the jump to third party support! We’re glad to have you! Can you tell me a little bit about your experience with us so far?

Yeah, so the experience has been wonderful. First and foremost, working with our account manager has been great. Having that resource and knowing who they are is important to us. They’ve been with us the whole time, and they haven’t shifted. We’ve set up monthly check-ins with them, so that’s been helpful. They really understand our environment and they can provide that link between us and US Cloud.

As for the experience of opening up cases through US Cloud, I haven’t heard a single negative thing from any of the members on our team or anyone else who we provided the service to within the University. It’s all been positive feedback.

I think there’s still a little fear of opening tickets after what we went through with Unified Support, but we’re trying to remind people that this is different. It’s not Microsoft, so you’re not going to have that experience. Go ahead and open up cases when you need to.

Ah, so they might still be a little traumatized by their Microsoft Unified Support
experiences.

Exactly. There’s still a little hesitation, because people are double-checking to see if we can open up cases for issues we’re having. Since we’re a Microsoft on-premises institution, it doesn’t just happen. I just keep reminding them: “We have these questions, so open up some cases. Don’t be afraid to do submit the ticket!”

So yeah, we’re still getting people back into the habit of opening up cases, reminding them that it’s OK to do that. The cases we have opened have been resolved successfully, and the communication has been great, which is one of the things we were dealing with. The handoffs and escalations have also been excellent—which was another thing we were struggling with through Microsoft Support.

We’re glad to hear that people are starting to recover a bit from those difficult support experiences as time goes by. Speaking of time, have there been any issues with support timing from US Cloud, since we’re in different time zones?

No, we haven’t had any issues with that, whereas with Microsoft, we’d open a ticket at, say, 4:30 or 4:00 P.M. Eastern Standard (EST), and we’d get someone who was only working the night shift. Then we’d spend our whole day waiting for them to respond. Then they come on, and we’d have to ask the case to be transferred. It would be transferred and then the new person would start from square one and ask all the same questions again. They didn’t do well with handoffs at all.

Even if the tech would go on vacation or go out sick or something, we’d lose all the progress and momentum we were making towards a solution.

Oh no—that’s incredibly frustrating. I’m glad to hear that ticket handoffs are a non-issue for you at US Cloud!

Absolutely. Even when our assigned engineer at US Cloud was sick at one point, we reached out to our account manager with feedback and he completely understood. He looked into it and got it resolved for us. It was just A1 timing. We were appreciative that our feedback was heard, understood, and quickly acted on.

That must have been such a relief to finally get responsive action from your account manager. Are there any other particular tickets or situations that stand out to you from your time so far at US Cloud?

Not right now, but in a good way: things are working as they’re supposed to work. In fact, things have been working so well that we haven’t had any major cases that stand out above the rest. Tickets have been getting resolved and everyone’s been happy without any major fanfare-type event. Don’t take that as a negative—this status of “just working great” is helpful for us, really!

Don’t worry, we’ll definitely take that as a positive that, unlike that support from Microsoft Unified, we’re not becoming part of the problem. Integrating seamlessly into customers’ teams is a focus for our engineers! Is there anything else you’d like to mention about your US Cloud experience so far?

I like that US cloud is expanding and offering more services—even more than what we even signed on for. With the proactive health checks, it’s great to know that service is there if we need it. That’s something Microsoft used to do! We had a number of people taking advantage of that.

Another aspect of our contract we appreciated was the ability to look at the hours we used in the first year of our contract and use that information to make adjustments for next year’s contract. That process was smooth and without any headaches.

I also like this open dialogue, like with this conversation. It just goes to show that you guys don’t lose touch with your customers. It’s good to know that these conversations are happening with your customers, especially with people from all sorts of different businesses and technology backgrounds and whatnot.

Thank you so much for your feedback! Also, thank you for your time today!

No worries!