A tech support professional shared his experience of encountering a critical bug in Microsoft Corp.'s Excel software. The tech support professional sent an angry email to Bill Gates, the Microsoft founder, and was surprised to receive a response and a bug fix within 48 hours.
What Happened: The tech support professional referred to as "Brad," who was working for a major U.S. grocery retailer in 1996, was tasked with upgrading the company's software from Microsoft Office 95/7.0 to Office 97/8.0. After a successful installation, Brad discovered that Excel files created on a PC and opened on a Mac would appear as gibberish when reopened on a PC, reported The Register on Friday.
Brad, fearing for his job, sent an angry email to "billg@microsoft.com," expressing his frustration and accusing Gates of using the public as beta testers. "I expressed how upset I was at this obvious bug and essentially accused Bill of beta testing his software on the public," Brad said according to the report.
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To his surprise, Brad received a call from a Microsoft developer the next morning, who spent an hour understanding the issue and promised a solution.
Brad received an updated version of Microsoft Office 8.01, which resolved the issue. He later regretted not following up with a job offer to Gates, realizing the missed opportunity to join Microsoft's QA department.
Brad said, "I realized that instead of just sending the thank you, I should have followed it up with a question: 'Do you need anyone in your QA department?'"
Why It Matters: This incident underscores the hands-on approach taken by tech moguls like Bill Gates in addressing customer issues. Gates' direct involvement in resolving a technical glitch mirrors the practices of other tech leaders.
For instance, Elon Musk of Tesla Inc. is known for forwarding customer feedback from X posts to his management team, often with a simple question mark or exclamation mark symbol in the subject line.
Similarly, Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com Inc., once called Amazon customer support during a business review to highlight discrepancies between customer complaints and company data.
Bezos' philosophy, "When the data and the anecdotes disagree, the anecdotes are usually right," emphasizes the importance of firsthand customer feedback.
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This story was generated using Benzinga Neuro and edited by Kaustubh Bagalkote