The number of times I've heard of people only getting support from Google because they know someone on the inside is quite astonishing.
If I were an Google employee looking to make a few extra bucks I'd definitely start offering to help "nudge" account issues for a few extra bucks under the table.
I believe that the standard approach for getting support from google is to hire an ex-googler who has good relationships with relevant people still at the company. It's ludicrous, but I've seen it work.
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.
I see these stories from time to time, and I can't help but wonder if there's an opportunity for some kind of third-party support for Google.
Like, if you were a former Googler or someone who'd been through their customer-support wringer, and you had some contacts, you could set yourself up as a consultant for small-scale Google account holders who run into this. Charge a fee for access to your higher-tier contacts, maybe even sell "Google insurance", a group of small devs could pool some money to pay for access to Google support when the hammer randomly falls on one of them.
This idea brought to you by my experience with various government bureaucracies, which are nominally publicly accessible, but, due to under-staffing and high demand for services, are more productively approached through the right kind of lawyer.
Classic Google Support: Expect utterly rubbish service until you find the magic insider who can wake up the workers who care.
(I'm not trying to be nasty to the employee who is being kind enough to post here, just pointing out that all too often, this seems to be the only mechanism to reach a useful human support contact for pretty much any Google service...)
I've had a few experiences trying to get help from Google on their products. After I can't get help, I just switch to another service which actually has customer support. It would be cool if they could use this as a way to interface with their customers but I think that if they opened up that floodgate, it would significantly increase their overhead.
There is a famous google support post going around where a woman begs the support to help them get her account back and the support just parrots a canned text reply.
But afaik google only has working support for paid users.
For all practical purposes, paid Google accounts getting access to real support is already that. You get some other things for that money, but I doubt people that are paying for their Google account are unaware that they may need that access to support to save their livelihood some day when a Googlebot drops the hammer for an unknown reason.
Whether Google should offer support, I don't know. But I'm not convinced by your argument.
The companies you name generally have low-skilled workers. Google support would have to be high-skilled and expensive.
Also, this is not just greed vs empathy. Everything has an opportunity cost. Google can spend $X staffing support lines for Gmail, or it can spend that money on developing features and bugfixes. This is a strategic business decision; either answer may be better for Google and its users.
Of course, they can spend the support savings on Olympic-sized swimming pools full of pudding. But you seem to be assuming they're doing that.
But this happens every week, and it’s been happening for years. The only way to get the attention of someone at Google is by making a post on HN or Twitter and hoping your audience is big enough that it becomes uncomfortable for Google.
Yeah it’s nice that this person is getting help. But what about all the other people who don’t have an audience who can raise their tickets up to this level? Why doesn’t Google support just work the way it’s supposed to work? I’d be willing to celebrate this if it was a rare occurrence but it’s not. It’s way too common. If there are any humans at Google, they sure don’t seem to care about their paying customers.
It seems there's a simple solution for this, paid customer support. Why doesn't Google have an option where someone can pay $50 (or some other set amount) to get assistance? This would immediately filter it to only legitimate and serious cases.
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.
With all of the recent stories of people being locked out of their Google Accounts with no recourse, it would be great if Google offered one-time customer support for, say, $50 that would work with you to restore access to your accounts.
They may not make money hand-over-fist but I bet there's enough need for the service that it would be self-supporting.
Yes, I have first hand experience with this. Dealing with Google "support" taught me a harsh reality that Google simply isn't interested in support in the way that Fortune 500 companies need and expect.
Exactly. Because they've usually only experienced support for Google's free services, people assume all Google support is minimal - but it isn't. We pay $150 a month for silver support, and in the extremely rare (several years apart) case we need help, we get it.
My experiences differ from that, as well as everyone I know. I know this is anecdotal, but I have never met anyone who has said good things about google support, including a google support rep. Maybe I'm just an outlier, but I also wouldn't use someone like the above example as a typical experience, as they are also an outlier.
Going against popular sentiment, I dont know how people can't get in touch with a human at Google.
Whenever I have needed something that required human support, such as resolving a false DMCA claim against my content or help with my G Suite account, I had no trouble getting email and phone support. I'm not a big company or influence of any kind either.
If I were an Google employee looking to make a few extra bucks I'd definitely start offering to help "nudge" account issues for a few extra bucks under the table.
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