Spent last Wednesday night at the Microsoft Store getting some one on one training on One Note, Microsoft’s super sweet note taking software that I fine extraordinarily useful. I bought the extended support package when I bought the PC and I’ve been saving up my questions so I could make the most out of the hour of one on one consulting I had.
Stupid me. More on that later.
On arriving at the store I was greeted at the front door and escorted back to where they do the training. As the greeter dropped me off he offered me a bottle of cold water, nice touch. My trainer, an older lady, Pat, was a fantastic. Pat was informative, a little funny and very personable, and after an hour I’d learned a ton OneNote and some cool stuff about how to better use SkyDrive, their webserver that I’ve been trying to use to manage documents for the Lodge.
I also came away with OneNote and SkyDrive apps on my iPhone meaning all my work on the PC is synced with the phone and visa versa. Worth my hour RIGHT THERE.
And, when the hour was up I felt pretty good . Well worth the time. N0w, I didn’t quite get through all the things on my list but you know, goes like that sometimes.
As I was packing up Pat said to me “So, we’ll see you next week.”
“Next week?” Well turns out I didn’t read the small print on my purchase agreement. As it turns out I get an hour a week of one one support, for 52 weeks.
While that’s waaay more than I’ll need I already have a short list of things I want some help with, Access work, some advanced PowerPoint stuff.. things I use every day. I’d also like to finally have someone help me with Publisher.
After the hour Pat handed me three 4 books for my reference, OneNote, Windows 7, PowerPoint and Explorer/SkyDrive. And these weren’t crappy pamphlets, these were the Microsoft Press full on books I’d pay $30.00 for at Barnes and Nobel.
Finally I booked my next appointment, she tool some notes about what I wanted to talk about and the appointment was on my iPhone via email before I got to my car.
For a company that used to be the evil face of Computing, they’ve sure turned things around. This whole experience, from start to finish was outstand. They’d planned the experience, made me feel great about my time and I left that much more of loyal Microsoft customer. A feeling not lost on me as I walked past the Apple Store, packed to the gills with people lining up for proprietary expense hardware solutions.
Well done Microsoft Store!
Oooh so this is why the Microsoft Store has people in it. Because they give you 1:1 meetings every week for a year, not because people are actually buying anything. I always wondered why anyone would go in there. Now I know.
Interesting.
I’ve had nothing but great experiences in there.
MS needs more advertisers like you. They’re getting customer service right, now they need to do some marketing.
Exactly what I was thinking.
I think a lot of people have opinions of MS that are kind of stuck in the 90′s, back during the era of “Micro$oft” as the big evil company and all that. They’ve come a long ways since then.
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