I love Microsoft's terrible automated voice attendant

Long-time readers may recall when I got an angry caller from a Vista user that had trouble configuring it the way they wanted it. They got to me because they were looking for "sales" using the automated voice attendant that matched my last name instead ("Sells") and forwarded him to me in the middle of a 1:1 in my office. Not wanting to let a customer go away angry, I stopped what I was doing and did my best to try to help.

It happened again today, except for an angry middle-aged guy, I got a call from the sweetest 12-year-old girl you'd ever want to talk to. Her Word CD had gotten scratched and she needed a replacement so she could write a big paper due next week. I considered telling her that I wasn't in sales or support or getting her number and calling her back (I was IM'ing with four other people at the time and I was late for a meeting), but she was so earnest that I just couldn't turn her away.

Instead, I took her name, address and email, went to the MS store and purchased her a copy of Office 2007, which I then had sent to her place via 2-day shipping, all the time assuring her that it wouldn't cost her a dime. I ended up using my own personal quota for discounted software and charging $60 to my MS AMEX, but I would've spent my own money (and still might if my boss reads this and rejects my expense report : ).

She was so grateful and it made my day to solve her problem. I love our customers and I hope the terrible robot on the main MS line keeps sending 'em my way.

Hi - loved the story. It reminded me of my one and only contact with Microsoft support.
I was a very junior staff member and I was given the task of installing Office 95 onto some workstations. In my eagerness to complete the task I worked on a bit and early in the evening I knocked the CD onto the floor. I then rolled my chair back to pick it up and ran over it shattering it! This was the only copy in the office. I called Microsoft and poured my heart out. 2 days later a new CD arrived and they had taken the effort to address it directly to me and not my boss, the account holder, so I was able to complete the task AND the substitution in secret.
Glad that there are still real people in the "borg"

Charlie

Nice.
hmm....
"... hi, uh, is this Sales? Sells? who? I want sales. Oh, well, can you help me? My Halo 3 disc isn't working. Now that I think of it, my Gears of War 2 disc is flaky too..."
:)

Reminds me of a story when I first got Vista and locked myself out (UAC won't - or wouldn't at the time - show any admin users if you've got the Xbox 360 Media Center Extender hidden user, so you could never enter admin mode).
I went on several MS blogs to complain since tech support is such a royal pain (they basically told me I had to reinstall the OS).
Well, I wound up getting a *phone call* from someone on the Vista team, who took over my tech support ticket, let me email him my SAM file and gave me instructions for "patching" the thing with one he'd fixed and sent back to me, and I was back in business.
That was an incredibly gratifying experience that showed me that in spite of Vista's flaws, the team is passionate enough to make things right with even individual users.

That was an awesome thing to do. If everyone had as much passion for customer service as you every transaction would be bliss.

If your boss IS reading this give this employee a promotion!