Google needs to realize that their services (such as Gmail) are critical to a lot of people. I understand why they don't want to offer free support for a free product, they would get flooded with useless support requests. However, they need to offer a paid support option. Something like $25 per support request call. This would reduce the calls to only truly urgent and necessary issues.
It's possible to get something similar using Google Apps and a custom domain. But they need to start offering paid support for the free services (@gmail.com) as well.
Any company the size of google can't provide support for their free products. It's not that it's too expensive, or that it's too hard, providing support for a product like gmail is simply impossible. If they opened up a support line for gmail they would simply become overwhelmed with requests like "help, i can't find the send button" or "somebody's spamming me, cna you tell them to stop". Real actual support queries would never get through the noise.
I don't necessarily disagree, but the assumption that not providing support on a free service is evil is the more flawed idea, I think.
Also, as I recently discovered, Google does have a for-pay phone support service for Gmail users, as well as all the other forms of support they offer in the form of message board, how tos, google groups, etc.
It is true that Google has no support for free (or mostly free) services but they do generally for paid services. When I have issues with my google hosted (and paid for) domain a real person answers the email and follows up. At some point I expect them to just flip the bit and bring up a customer support service for 'real'. I suppose they could buy zendesk or something like that but here is an interesting question, how much would you pay for your Google stuff? A gmail account, a hosted domain, docs, etc? $10/month? $100/month?
At NetApp I got a chance to sit in on some meetings where support costs were being evaluated and there is a pretty clear calculus that can be done. (I recommend all engineers at an enterprise products company experience it since the 'cost' of s bug (and thus the value of testing) is pretty clear) So I wonder if Google decided to add revenue from all of their products in this way (clearly they do that right now for Google Apps) would folks sign up? I know a number of Youtube 'publishers' who would if only to have someone to call up when they get a robo-takedown.
The problem is, if Google had to provide real support, would they be able to offer stuff for free¹? Because if not, the alternative is shutting down these services, which is bad for those of us who bother to backup their emails and have their own domains.
Personally, I feel this is a simple matter of personal responsibility. It's free, so you can't expect support. If you're not okay with that, pay someone and ask them for guarantees.
¹ Yes, I know there are other costs, but I don't think their value to Google covers anything similar to real support.
I like how this has 366 up votes in the last 8 hrs and is at spot 15 as I write this. Perhaps there is a strong bias against whining about free services not having support.
Short answer: In order to get in touch with someone to talk to at Google, first talk to a sales rep for Google Apps and buy the product, ask the Sales rep to put you in touch with your assigned support engineer. Your costs are going to go up quite a bit.
Longer answer: These services aren't "free", they cost money and resources to run. Everyone knows this of course but for some reason it sort of doesn't sink in. You have exactly two choices here, one you can use someone else's "free" service and periodically get bitten in the balls when it either fails, decides to shut down, or randomly disables your access. Or you can build your own version of the service for your organization where you end up spending someone on your staff's "free" time to maintain it and some of your excess budget to "host" it. The good news is that nearly all the groups that might currently be doing this can get away with a single "business" class IP service with 1 dedicated IP address. So figure $60 - $100 a month depending on your location.
Seriously, that is it. Those are your choices. So suggestions:
1) First exfitrate all your meta data you currently use for Google Groups. Which is to say download all the email addresses and membership lists.
2) Second start looking around for an alternative solution (check in your organization perhaps someone already has a machine "hosted" somewhere they can donate to your cause)
3) Third, I really would talk to the sales guy (or gal) at Google to get pricing and while you are at it you can mention your having troubles and they may be able to contact someone inside who will help you out.
I understand the struggle of trying to provide free support to billions of users, but more companies should provide a "pay a fee for real customer support" kinda hot line. Whatever price is costs to provide said support, honestly, many would be happy to pay for it.
Google sorta does this through Google One, it's 2-3$ a month and you also get some extra storage space. It's not perfect but you actually get to talk to a real human being.
Not OP but Google does offer support for their paid products. With something like gmail, you might be extremely limited to getting help if you can reach a Googler. Worse case you can purchase one of their paid products in an attempt to reach a human being but I don’t know if that will help at all. Probably not.
Its already happening in Google Apps. Technically Google provides free support and phone support if you pay $50/year but if you signup with a reseller they also provide support and usually have a contact at Google for any issue they can't resolve.
If offering support was in any way required for Google's business model, they would consider it.
As it's not it would only be a waste of time as people calling as Google "customers" would ask about their search difficulties or Gmail formatting concerns.
If you want to see the future of Google support, look no further than AdWords "support". This is Google's money maker, and most customers are largely ignored.
Google's "support" is basically a series of weak decision support systems that yield nothing of value, unless you're a complete noob. Email support is a guy in India that does a look up in the public knowledge base and sends you the result.
If you can get your hands on the unpublished support phone number and call it, you'll have to enter your account number. Then the system tells you nicely that you're not important enough to talk to a live person. Fine, for me I understand, I was only spending $400 a month, but there were people on forums that were spending $10K a month and getting the same treatment.
Sometimes I wonder if Google will ever be more than a text box and a button. People knock Apple and MS but these are real software companies who understand much of their business is customer support.
I would imagine that providing support over the phone under the Google name or brand would have a high volume of people demanding free support because their products are already provided for free. Not providing free support could damage their reputation.
I get responses to my Google Apps support questions pretty quickly and I'm just using this for my personal family accounts, so I'm not paying them tons of money. I don't think it's really fair to say they should provide support for their free tier which hosts mail for a billion people and compare it to a service that hosts, what, maybe a million?
So much of many people's digital identity depends on Google/Apple (or FB/Twitter/etc). This is a huge dependency problem.
Clearly Google doesn't want to do support, but this seems like an opportunity to me. If they offer in-house (US based) support that can actually resolve the issue for a fee, they would improve countless users' lives. Actual support would be infinitely better than the current black hole of oblivion any time an automated processes flags something.
( I realize paying for support isn't popular, but it seems like the only way 1.) Google would care about helping you and 2.) reduce support ticket volume. )
In most companies you can access better support by paying more. The frustrating thing about Google is that they do not offer this option for most of their products.
Agree. Its surprising how much Google can get by without providing any customer support at all. I stopped using my gmail accounts earlier this year when I lost my I emails and google couldn't track them down.
It's possible to get something similar using Google Apps and a custom domain. But they need to start offering paid support for the free services (@gmail.com) as well.
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