There are many ways to measure how Windows 7 is doing. There are reports on new PC sales, tallies of boxed copy sales, and surveys of planned enterprise adoption, to name a few.
But one of the most encouraging signs for Microsoft is the lack of phone calls it is getting from people with problems. Overall, Microsoft said the volume of calls to its support lines is half of what it expected.
Gordon
(Credit: Microsoft)"Overall we are finding our call center volume is down significantly more than we expected," said Barbara Gordon, vice president of customer support for Microsoft.
The drop in calls isn't just due to the fact that Windows 7 appears less problem-plagued than its predecessor, though. In the weeks leading up to and following the operating system's release, Microsoft also added two new ways to get help--through an online forum called Microsoft Answers and via the Microsoft Helps feed on Twitter.
"What we have found is we are seeing far more take-up of self-service...forums and Twitter to get responses," Gordon said in an interview this week.
With the Microsoft Answers forums, which launched late last year, users submit questions and experienced community members offer answers that Microsoft workers later validate to make sure they are correct.
So far, Microsoft has validated some 60,000 solutions. The company says that 83 percent of English-language queries are answered within seven days. Those in other languages have a slightly lower rate, but even of those 78 percent are taken care of within a week.
Meanwhile, Microsoft went live with its Twitter help site in October. Users can post a tweet with "@microsofthelps" in the message and Microsoft will respond. A team of seven employees dedicated full time to the project work with the broader support organization to respond to the many tweets. The goal is to either answer simple questions or to point people to a place where they can get a more detailed answer.
"It's hard to answer (most questions) in 140 characters," Gordon said.
But, she said, social networks like Twitter, Gordon said, allow the company to realize a problem that could be affecting thousands of people via a single short message.
"It's really like a customer megaphone," Gordon said.
Gordon hopes the new online options will not only cut down on call center expenses, but ultimately improve overall customer satisfaction with Windows. Customer satisfaction an area where the Mac has traditionally outpaced the various PC brands.
But Gordon says she hopes to see Windows gain ground. "We are really working on this," she said.
Although Apple touts its personal touch with its stores, Gordon suggests Microsoft's high-tech approach might ultimately win it more fans. "If I can help myself without having to go to the mall and sit at a geek bar I will be happier," she said.
Nonetheless, one of the main features of Microsoft's two retail stores is an answer desk very similar to the "Genius Bar" found in Apple stores.
As for the questions people ask on Twitter, they range from the expected range of bugs and problems to inquiries about future versions of products. This week, for example, one user asked when to expect Windows 8. Although vague, the answer was at least as direct as anything a reporter would get by asking Redmond.
"It will be a few years until the next official version comes out," Microsoft replied on the Twitter feed. "Keep an eye out on microsoft.com for future updates."
In addition to building goodwill and cutting costs, the online forums also allow Microsoft to quickly see when a problem is affecting a significant number of users. Such mechanisms helped Microsoft to recognize and then solve a video driver problem that was causing some users to have their systems hang when they reached 62 percent completion on an upgrade to Windows 7.
Within a week, Microsoft had a solution on its Website and shortly thereafter it posted an automated "Fix It," essentially a script that a user can click on to have the proper steps done automatically. The Windows 7 upgrade fix has already been used more than 35,000 times, Microsoft said.
"We're getting people able to meet their needs themselves," Gordon said.
Microsoft says that rather than struggle to fix their own PC problems, computer owners have proved themselves more than willing to just click a "Fix it" button and let the computer take care of itself.
Since about January, Microsoft has been adding the automated fixes for an array of PC problems for which there is a single known solution. In the past six months, it has added more than 300 "Fix its" to automate the steps needed to solve problems, change settings, and even protect against viruses.
Recently, Microsoft used the approach to help people defend against a serious unpatched flaw.
"If we know what those 15 steps are, why shouldn't we just script it," Lori Brownell, Microsoft's general manager of product quality and online support, said in a February interview.
The effort is working, Microsoft said this week, noting that more than 7 million people have used the automated fixes and in 95 percent of cases, the "Fix it" button completely solved the issue.
Microsoft said the fixes are now available in 23 languages and have shown up in the company's advertising. There's even a "Fix it" page on Facebook and a feed on Twitter.
Microsoft said Wednesday that it is changing its support policies to offer customers more time zone and daylight saving time updates at no extra charge.
Previously, Microsoft had offered the updates free while products were in their mainstream support phase (typically five years from a product's release). However, it had required customers who wanted updates during the "extended support" phase (usually the next five years) to sign up for a paid hot-fix support program to get the updates, which keep a computer's clock and calendar up-to-date with any time zone changes.
(Credit:
CNET News)
Under its new plan, products that enter extended support after January 1 will now get free daylight saving and time zone updates twice a year, tied to the Northern hemisphere's fall and winter. The free updates will be provided via Microsoft's Web site and through Windows Update.
Microsoft said that customers who need time zone updates outside of those general distribution times will still need to enroll in the paid hot-fix program.
The company said it is making the change based on customer requests. Changes to daylight saving time have proved tricky for businesses to handle in recent years, as governments have made tweaks to when the clocks change.
When people encounter a problem with their PC, they often go to the Web and do a search to see if others have had the problem. If they are lucky, someone has found a fix and listed the steps on either a support document or within a user forum.
Now, they may have an even better option.
Over the past six weeks, Microsoft has quietly added a "Fix it" button to a few of the thousands of help documents on its Web site. When clicked, the computer then takes all the recommended steps automatically.
An example of the "Fix it" button that has started showing up in some Microsoft help documents, offering users a one-click solution.
(Credit: CNET News)"If we know what those 15 steps are why shouldn't we just script it," said Lori Brownell, Microsoft's general manager of product quality and online support
The "Fix it" option is still fairly rare, showing up in around 100 different help documents. The effort is growing rapidly, though, up from just four such fixes when the program quietly began in December.
Microsoft continues to offer users the option of doing things on their own if they either don't trust Microsoft or just like being in control.
"We're not trying to hide anything," she said.
The first fixes included a number of common issues, including restoring a missing Internet Explorer icon to the desktop, how to enable the DVD library in Vista's Windows Media Center as well as what to do when encountering the error message in Street & Trips 2008 that "Construction information for routes could not be downloaded"
For now, Microsoft is having to go back and search its archives to see which of its problem solving tips can be automated. Eventually, it hopes to create the automated fixes at the same time the help articles are created.
Where it can, Microsoft is also adding the "Fix it" option into the error reporting tool built into Windows. Initially, all users could do when a program crashed was send a report to Microsoft. More recently, the system has started checking to see if there is any information on the issue. Next up, said Brownell, is offering the option to have the issue solved automatically.
Long term, the company has even broader hopes.
While it would like to just eliminate bugs and glitches, Brownell said that is not an attainable goal.
"We'd love for our customers to never have problems," she said. "We'll never ship bug-free software as hard as we try."
Instead, she said she is aiming for a day when Microsoft's products themselves will be able to spot problems and proactively offer fixes. As an example, she noted that in Exchange, it's a pretty safe bet that once one gets low on disk space, bad things will happen. Making sure that users take action before problems occur is an example where the company is headed.
Another example, she said, would be for Microsoft to be able to notify users if they are running two drivers that others have found to conflict with one another. Assuming the appropriate privacy safeguards were in place, Brownell said it would be great for the user to be alerted and offered a fix before a problem occurred.
That proactive world is still largely a vision rather than a reality. That said, Brownell said that the company is putting in place some of the plumbing necessary to make such things possible.
With Windows 7, Microsoft has added an "action center" that Brownell said offers the underlying capability needed to serve up fixes within the operating system. She said that she would expect some opportunities for that over the life of the product, though the current beta version of Windows 7 has few examples of that.
Personally, I'd just like to see the "Fix it" button extended to other areas of my life. I'd really like one that would make travel plans, fill out my expense reports and hire a plumber. That would make me (and my partner) much happier.
For what would you like to see a "fix it" button?
AUDIO
Fixing it with a single button
CNET News reporter Ina Fried tells editor Leslie Katz about Microsoft's Fix it button.
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