What’s the Difference Between Standard Cloud Support and Signature Cloud Support?

Rick Rietz

02/02/2015

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Standard Cloud Support is pretty intuitive: you receive the standard support from Microsoft for issues you encounter with Office 365. What is Signature Cloud Support though, and why should you care about it?

Signature Cloud Support offers more timely and thorough technical support to primary Cloud partners and those partners’ clients. Among the numerous benefits available, Signature Cloud Support members experience specialized support from exclusive technicians with a high level of knowledge and who are required to work with a particular case through to its resolution.

As a Microsoft Cloud Productivity Partner, DMC is entitled to unlimited Signature Cloud Support from Microsoft. DMC’s Office 365 technical support allows us to bypass Microsoft’s tier 1 support and go directly to tier 2 support. DMC also receives faster response and more frequent updates on the status of open support cases (see tables below).

For example, Microsoft’s response to technical support requests initiated by a customer that fall within Severity B parameters is plan dependent (ranging from no response commitment to next business day response). DMC, though, will receive a response within two hours. For Severity C, there is no defined response goal for requests initiated by a customer; DMC will receive a response within 4 hours.

If you (the end customer) open a technical support case with Microsoft Office 365 support, you may ask DMC to have the case re-assigned to our team. The only caveat is that if the case is reassigned to DMC for escalation, the Microsoft support team can only work with the DMC team to resolve the problem.

It's not uncommon for Office 365 consumers to either be unaware that they can assign a Microsoft partner as their subscription advisor, or to neglect to update their advisor to a current partner. Office 365 Admin Portal, though, conveniently allows customers to assign a partner as their subscription advisor. If you're unsure how to use Office 365 Admin Portal, contact us for instructions. Don't forget, there is no cost for customers to assign DMC as their subscription advisor.