Microsoft
...the Director of Marketing for the Product Support Services Division (PSS) of the Microsoft Corporation, decided to take a well-earned break from the time-consuming analyses she was doing. It was about 8 p.m. on the evening of December 28, 1992; yet, she and most of her task force were hard at work at PSS offices in Bellevue, WA. Trish and her boss, Patty Stonesifer, the Division's Vice President, had a major presentation scheduled for January 20, 1993 to ten top Microsoft executives, including Mike Maples, Executive Vice President of Products and Steve Ballmer, Executive Vice President of Sales and Support. At that meeting, Trish was to unveil PSS proposals for revamping Microsoft's entire support services network. Although her analyses had revealed significant insights and provided guidelines for a solution, she was still unsure as to the make-up of her final recommendations. As she headed for the Division's coffeemaker for a café latté, she reflected upon the financial and marketplace forces that necessitated a change in Microsoft policy.
PSS managers began to re-evaluate Microsoft's support service network in earnest early in November 1992. Patty Stonesifer noticed a particularly troubling upward spike in customer service costs in her periodic review of the division's Profit and Loss statement. She projected that service expenditures would become an acute problem in three years. At the same time, a PSS market research survey discovered that customers, particularly those that used several Microsoft products, were very confused and frustrated with Microsoft's technical support services. As if these problems were not enough, the vice president of sales sent a caustic memo to Patty complaining about the difficulty that his representatives were having when they tried to explain the service offering to prospective customers.
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