{"id":5365,"date":"2016-06-16T21:43:17","date_gmt":"2016-06-16T20:43:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.n-able.com\/?p=5365"},"modified":"2021-07-12T14:13:45","modified_gmt":"2021-07-12T13:13:45","slug":"what-do-when-your-customers-office-365-service-goes-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.n-able.com\/it\/blog\/what-do-when-your-customers-office-365-service-goes-down","title":{"rendered":"What to do when your customer&#8217;s Office 365 service goes down"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Managed Service Providers (MSPs) can often suffer from the worst of both worlds. On the one hand, they have unforgiving customers working under pressure, who demand a robust, highly reliable service. On the other hand, they are often beholden to third-party cloud service suppliers running services that they cannot control. Office 365 is a good example. You don\u2019t get to control its back-end infrastructure, meaning that when it fails, there\u2019s little you can do except wait and pray.<\/p>\n<p>How can you placate customers experiencing Office 365 email outages? It\u2019s a careful blend of communication and learning from experience.<\/p>\n<h3>Clarify<\/h3>\n<p>If a customer complains about an email outage, then the first thing to do is assess the extent of the problem. How wide is the outage? Are all your customers affected? Check with Microsoft to see how many of your customers are about to pick up the phone, and while you\u2019re at it try to get some estimate of when the service will be up again. This\u00a0<a class=\"ext\" href=\"https:\/\/www.pcworld.com\/article\/2417840\/microsoft-admits-communications-tech-problems-during-office-365-outages.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">may not be as easy as you\u2019d like<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>One way to help get clarification is to build Office 365 monitoring into your remote monitoring portfolio. There are several third-party Office 365 health monitoring services that cater for the gaps in Microsoft\u2019s own communication.<\/p>\n<h3>Communicate<\/h3>\n<p>The next step is to own the problem. Clear and effective communication is a key responsibility for customers, and because Microsoft\u2019s own communication around Exchange Online and Office 365 outages\u00a0<a class=\"ext\" href=\"http:\/\/www.crn.com\/news\/cloud\/300073239\/after-office-365-cloud-outages-partners-calling-for-better-communication-from-microsoft.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">has often<\/a>\u00a0been\u00a0<a class=\"ext\" href=\"http:\/\/windowsitpro.com\/blog\/microsoft-communication-failure-office365-incidents\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">subpar<\/a>, it\u2019s up to you to keep your customers briefed. Get the message out there using an alternative communication medium (email may not cut it, for obvious reasons). Ideally, you\u2019ll have your own service dashboard to help communicate problems. Pager or text numbers for your key points of contact are a good communication channel.<\/p>\n<h3>Credit<\/h3>\n<p>As an MSP, you have some recourse to compensation when Microsoft\u2019s service goes down, but we already know that the company\u2019s system for categorizing downtime\u00a0leaves it with plenty of room for manoeuvre.\u00a0 As a proactive MSP eager to serve your customers and give them a rock solid experience, your approach to service level agreements and compensation may have to be more transparent. This could leave you out of pocket if you\u2019re forced to award credit for a service outage or slowdown that you can\u2019t easily claim compensation for when dealing with Microsoft. So what\u2019s the answer?<\/p>\n<h3>Create contingencies<\/h3>\n<p>The obvious solution is to be proactive by working to prevent and minimize the risk of downtime in the first place. You could rely on an Office 365 monitoring solution and a fast-fingered tech to switch your client\u2019s MX records when disaster strikes, but that\u2019s hardly efficient if you\u2019re dealing with lots of customers. The alternative is to use a secondary service that handles your clients\u2019 email before passing it on to Office 365. This gives you the chance to proactively manage customer email and make it accessible even if Microsoft\u2019s infrastructure goes down.<\/p>\n<p>The important thing for MSPs is to be proactive about all this. If you can prove yourself to be a responsive service provider paying close attention to your customers\u2019 services, then you stand a better chance of building a loyal base of long-term customers. For MSPs using Office 365, part of that process involves actively managing Microsoft\u2019s service to protect customers from outages when they occur \u2013\u00a0<b>and they will<\/b>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Managed Service Providers (MSPs) can often suffer from the worst of both worlds. On the one hand, they have unforgiving customers working under pressure, who demand a robust, highly reliable&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-5365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","topic-msp-business"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v27.2 (Yoast SEO v27.2) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>What to do when your customer&#039;s Office 365 service goes down - N-able<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"For MSPs using Office 365, part of that process involves actively managing Microsoft\u2019s service to protect customers from outages when they occur \u2013 and they will come, says Danny Bradbury\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.n-able.com\/it\/blog\/what-do-when-your-customers-office-365-service-goes-down\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"it_IT\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What to do when your customer&#039;s Office 365 service goes down - N-able\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"For MSPs using Office 365, part of that process involves actively managing Microsoft\u2019s service to protect customers from outages when they occur \u2013 and they will come, says Danny Bradbury\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.n-able.com\/it\/blog\/what-do-when-your-customers-office-365-service-goes-down\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"N-able\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/NableMSP\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2016-06-16T20:43:17+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2021-07-12T13:13:45+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.n-able.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/share-image.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1200\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"630\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Danny Bradbury\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@Nable\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@Nable\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Scritto da\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Danny Bradbury\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Tempo di lettura stimato\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minuti\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.n-able.com\/it\/blog\/what-do-when-your-customers-office-365-service-goes-down#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.n-able.com\/it\/blog\/what-do-when-your-customers-office-365-service-goes-down\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Danny Bradbury\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.n-able.com\/it\/#\/schema\/person\/9efc2ff2161069ac07aa5b934493697e\"},\"headline\":\"What to do when your customer&#8217;s Office 365 service goes down\",\"datePublished\":\"2016-06-16T21:43:17+01:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2021-07-12T13:13:45+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.n-able.com\/it\/blog\/what-do-when-your-customers-office-365-service-goes-down\"},\"wordCount\":582,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.n-able.com\/it\/#organization\"},\"articleSection\":[\"MSP Business\"],\"inLanguage\":\"it-IT\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.n-able.com\/it\/blog\/what-do-when-your-customers-office-365-service-goes-down\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.n-able.com\/it\/blog\/what-do-when-your-customers-office-365-service-goes-down\",\"name\":\"What to do when your customer's Office 365 service goes down - 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