Provide billing support for your customers and help answer their billing questions

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Appropriate roles: User management admin | Helpdesk agent | Billing admin | Sales agent

You own the billing relationship with your customers, and you're responsible for answering the billing-related questions your customers might have.

  • Ensure timely payments to Microsoft and keep doing it consistently.

  • To ensure timely payments to Microsoft, establish a clear collections policy with your customers. The policy should clearly outline your collections process and specify the point at which it might affect their access to subscriptions, services, or software.

  • Disable your customers' access to a product or service for nonpayment if necessary.

Microsoft partner support guidance

Partners transacting in the Cloud Solution Provider program (CSP) model are the trusted advisor to their customers and own the relationship end to end, including support when their customer has a question or issue. Through support touch points, partners can learn more about the customer and their business to identify new services and solutions that drive value.

To fulfill the support requirement, a partner may:

  • Resell support from another entity.
  • Outsource all or part of their support structure.
  • Set up a structure to provide support directly.
  • Charge for all or part of the support provided to customers.

The partner should articulate to their customers the support the partner provides, the service hours and contact method, and the pricing (if charging for support).

Note

If you aren't a CSP and have questions about customer billing, see the specific portal for the appropriate products or services.

Partners must receive incoming support requests from customers, diagnose issues to the best of the partner's ability, and resolve issues that are within scope of the baseline support boundaries. If a partner is unable to resolve an issue, they can escalate issues to Microsoft using the following support vehicles:

  • Commercial issue support is available to all partners in the CSP program.

  • Technical issue support is available through:

    • Premier Support for Partners (PSfP) (fee-based)
    • Advanced Support for Partners (ASfP) (fee-based)
    • Partner cloud support (included with Gold/Silver competency)

Providing billing, subscription management, and technical support

Each online service has specific and detailed requirements for providing billing, subscription management, and technical support to customers.

For more information, see: