Microsoft engineer, who has been with the company for 30 years, shares what happened when irate customers wanted to speak to Bill Gates – The Times of India

Microsoft had a specific method for handling angry customers who demanded to speak with Bill Gates. According to veteran Microsoft engineer Raymond Chen, the company used to transfer these customers’ calls to a special phone line where operators pretended to be the CEO’s secretary. In his “The Old New Thing” blog, Chen noted that the software giant’s operators would tell customers that Gates was unavailable, take their complaint details, and route the information back to tech support, which would then call back, claiming, “Bill Gates asked me to contact you.” He explained that support teams followed this process when important customers became upset. If saying sorry and trying to fix the issue didn’t calm them down, the call was sent to a special internal number that sounded like Bill Gates’s office. He noted that this elaborate ruse satisfied angry customers without bothering the billionaire founder of the company, and the…