I asked for help
I relate below a totally failed
customer support activity that I requested from my DNS provider on Friday,
because I was frustrated by their inertia, their exacerbation of the problem,
and as a result, it put my week out that it is taking some time to get back on
an even keel.
I logged a support ticket because a
change the firm had done on the backend took away the presentation of my
corporate Blogger website using a domain name, they had provided me. The change
was implemented in mid-March, but I just did not seem to have the time to
address it, so I removed all references to my corporate website on all
published material until I could properly review the issue.
Asking with clear concerns
My support ticket was written thus:
I
had my company blog at http://www.forakin.com/
which is a redirection for http://forakin.blogspot.com
for years until a change was made to your back-end systems.
Since
that change, anytime I visit my blog, I get the following error:
Welcome
to www.forakin.com, a
site recently created using our clustered Linux web hosting. If you’re seeing
this page instead of your website, please replace or remove the default
index.php from your public_html directory. (Screenshot attached.)
I
have no idea what to do here because I did not have to create an index.php file
when I created my website and the redirection from here, I believe it is a file
in the TSOHost environment which I did find but still could not resolve the
issue.
Note: Also, I use forakin.com as my Microsoft Azure
domain with my email managed within Azure / Microsoft 365 and cannot afford for
any changes to the domain to affect my email services.
Expectation: How do I get my Google Blogger
website to show again when referenced as forakin.com?
 |
| The error I reported. |
Think like your customer
The error I was getting when I visited
my website, I could not fix even after I accessed the said file on the hosting
service portal, this apart from the fact that I did nothing in Linux or with
the service provider apart from entering a few DNS records to redirect my custom
domain to my blog.
Fundamentally, the change had no
guidance for users who do not normally tinker with Linux and all I wanted was
for this issue to be fixed.
However, despite the narrative of my
issue, the note attached was quite particular, whilst I wanted a problem
solved, I had a core dependency on that domain name, the business email that I
could not afford to lose, and I clearly stated that I do not want any changes
made that would affect my email service.
Despite my expectation of a
resolution, my thinking was my note would stay paramount in the mind of whoever
took up the issue to help resolve it. I was wrong.
This matter goes to the heart of
understanding what it is to give customer support in the Information Technology
and Computing world. It is not enough to understand and comprehend the problem
being stated with the wherewithal to resolve the issue. Much as a customer will
have expectations, once a concern or requirement is raised, nothing whatsoever
should be done to impair the quality of service the customer is trying to
retain as the issue is being resolved.
A fix or a fudge?
On Saturday morning, I received an
update from a customer support person, and this is what he said:
Thank
you for getting in touch on that matter!
I
checked your account, and it seems like the problem was coming from the DNS
conflict, I fixed it, but could you clarify from where should the website load
from?
Could
you please confirm where you host your emails because it currently shows they
are with Outlook?
If
you have any further questions or concerns, we will remain available.
There is a lot in this response that
might not be seen without carefully reading it. He said, “I fixed it.” No, it
was not fixed, and his assessment that it was a DNS conflict was strange because
no changes had been done to my custom DNS records for well over a year, and
everything website and email was working until the change in mid-March when I
lost access to my website.
I already stated where I was loading
my website from in my support ticket, all he had to do was click on both URLs
to see what results. He had somewhat attempted a quick fix, with no attention
to detail or verification of the consequence of his action.
Indeed, my emails were hosted with
Outlook, he would have seen the DNS records indicating that and that service
was what I expressly said should not be affected by what they do.
Like I said, my website was not working
after the fix, rather it was showing another error. However, what also happened
was I was no longer able to receive emails on my business email account. Much
as I was able to send from it with my email client, no emails were received.
Hey! I’ve lost my email service
I updated my support ticket with my
new observations and concerns, this time asking that they either revert what
was done or resolve everything and particularly the email service that was lost.
Another customer support agent,
instead of reading what I had written, responded on Monday morning:
In
terms for the emails related to forakin.com, you need to contact Microsoft as
they are the email providers and not us.
They
should be able to assist you a lot further into this as they will see any
errors that appear.
If
you need further assistance, feel free to contact us.
Not our problem, dear
Well, no, I do not need to contact
Microsoft when in fact it is what your customer support agent did that lost me
the email service. I was incandescent with rage but had to keep my cool as I
tried to assess the situation.
I visited the Microsoft 365 portal to
check my domain configuration and what I could see on the Microsoft end was
that it was expecting to read some DNS records from my DNS hosting provider,
and it was getting something else. Their assessment of the issue was that some
DNS entries were wrong.
Therefore, if a member of staff with
my DNS hosting provider was tinkering with settings on my account and fixing a
DNS conflict that until I received the first response was working, the
responsibility for the issue lay with my DNS hosting provider, but what I was
met with was lethargy, inertia, and a total lack of consideration. It was in
all terms a total failure of change management and customer support.
Maybe it’s just the culture there
This was further complicated by the
fact that no one could determine what the supposed DNS conflict was nor was
there any documentation of exactly what was done that could be reverted.
The culture in the organisation was
becoming evident.
- A lack of controls in the organisation
that documents or considers customer engagement, apart from the fact that they
had withdrawn telephone support for either live chat or support ticket
registration.
- A lack of attention to detail where
customer concerns are paramount, requiring the customer to be first informed of
the consequences of any action to be taken before the action is implemented
- A poor grasp of comprehending and
reading up on all the material and communication between the customer and any
agent before acting or responding.
- No proper escalation processes where a
poorly executed activity can be reviewed and remediation towards reversion or
forward resolution.
- A tendency to engage in back-and-forth
communication without any sense of responsibility for their actions.
- Any absence of enduring team cohesion
that allows other agents to know what one agent has done, especially, when that
action has caused other issues.
- In fact, I did also write to the head
of the organisation about my issue, well, they just pay lip service to customer
service and enablement, but the reality is far from the intentions expressed.
I provided additional information with
screenshots and data that needed to be entered in my custom DNS records table,
even though from my perspective on the DNS provider’s portal, everything seemed
correct.
However, I could not persuade my DNS
provider’s agents to enter these DNS records, they all were requiring me to
clean up after the mess that one of their agents had created by totally
ignoring my note.
By Tuesday morning, it became evident
that whatever I was trying to do on the DNS provider’s portal was not working. This
might have been because that part of the portal even though it was displaying
my changes was not saving the same changes.
For all that time, Microsoft 365 was
indicating to me that no changes were being observed from the entries on my DNS
provider’s side to match the entries it was expecting.
Not all rotten apples
Eventually, I initiated a new Live
Chat session where the very helpful agent said the DNS records were
propagating, but when I checked, they were not the expected DNS records. I was
then able to persuade the agent to enter the 5 records needed to restore my
email service and device registration service in Microsoft Endpoint Manager.
Once those were done on Tuesday
afternoon, my email service was restored and by then I was no more interested
to getting my corporate website back up on forakin.com, I could not go through
another ordeal like that, I began the process of moving my corporate website to
forakin.org that is hosted by another DNS provider.
Now that I think of it, I might well
consider moving forakin.com to this other DNS provider.
It was all unnecessary
It must be said, this issue could have
been resolved on Monday morning if any of the customer support team cared. I
provided them with the full details of the DNS records that needed to be
entered to be matched to what Microsoft 365 was expecting and each time, rather
than act, they asked me to do it myself.
A few hours after my email service was
restored, I got another update on my support ticket asking for the DNS entries
I had already provided and this was after the update that the issue had been
resolved. What did I say earlier, they do not read the full thread of
communication before they act, it is appalling.
This time I had to update the subject
and state as the first line in my response, “Please, close this ticket.” After
which I explained why it should be closed. It is evident that if an
organisation cannot take responsibility for the actions they have undertaken,
it is quite unnecessary waiting for an apology from them.
It is my hope that customer service in
that organisation improves, however, if I have to face another technical
support situation, I will rather take my custom elsewhere. No one should ever
have to face the level of ineptitude I experience, and this is the case with
someone who has been in the industry for over 3 decades. I hate to think of
what people who have no IT experience have to face, it just does not bear
thinking of.
Personal
website
Business
website – I hope to start putting more up there.
