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That's hilarious! Having run a few call centers, the costs involved in upping service levels from, say, 80% of calls answered in 20 seconds to, say, 98% in 10 s
by sverige 10y ago
That's hilarious! Having run a few call centers, the costs involved in upping service levels from, say, 80% of calls answered in 20 seconds to, say, 98% in 10 seconds, grow geometrically.
If regulations were passed that mandated service levels, many companies would take Google's approach and simply not offer phone support at all. And we all know how great their support is.
The solution is to not use any services from monopolies, as the article points out. But of course, that's impossible for most people.
- Trundle 10y agoGoogle offers customer support by phone.
- sverige 10y agoReally? What's the number for help with gmail? I can't find it anywhere on their site. YouTube either, if it's different. Also, I need a number to reach support at Facebook, if you have it.
- Trundle 10y agoCustomer Gmail: 1-877-355-5787 YouTube: 1-855-500-2756 Never done business with Facebook, can't help you there sorry!
- marksc 10y agoFacebook outsources support to certified regional specialists. You can find contact information for your region/niche on their partner directory site: https://facebookmarketingpartners.com/ https://facebookmarketingpartners.com/
- cornellwright 10y agoIf you pay for Google Apps they do. I've had to call them a few times, and they were actually fairly helpful, even calling me back the next day to make sure the problem was resolved. Judging by the number they called me from their call center is in Ireland.
- enraged_camel 10y ago>>Also, I need a number to reach support at Facebook, if you have it. You don't pay to use Facebook, so you don't get support. Google does provide phone support to Google Business accounts, though, since those cost money.
- godzillabrennus 10y agoThey offer support over the phone for products they charge customers for.
- Nullabillity 10y agoUh, if there were mandated service levels then Google would have to live up to those too...? Presumably this would be an acceptable-or-you-get-fined deal, not an acceptable-or-nothing-at-all deal.
- majewsky 10y agoIt will be hard to argue (esp. in front of judges) for SLAs on free services.
- victorhooi 10y agoGoogle does offer phone support (and email etc), with SLAs - however this is for their paid offerings (I.e. Google Apps, which is like Gmail/Calendar/Docs/Drive etc). Google Apps start at $5 a month, so the entry price isn't astronomical. For free products, there's support on official forums.
- Spooky23 10y agoI've dropped similar SLAs on 3rd party contractors. They can hire exponentially more support people, or fix their shit. The latter is usually cheaper.
- dothis9 10y agoI recently had to call to pay a highway toll because their system for accepting payments online was broken. The IVR was an endless tree of options, and at each option, it would point out how much time I would save if I paid online. It took several minutes to navigate the phone tree before being placed on hold. Pressing 0 didn't help. I made a point of spending time with the agent talking about the problems with the phone tree. I did so very politely but also very slowly and verbosely - it took several minutes. I think if we were able to create a social convention where people waste n or 2n minutes of the agent's time when the company has wasted n minutes of their times, it could change the incentives. Right now companies save money by having long times. If we could create a movement to do this, leaving customers on hold too long would lead to congestive collapse. Long hold times would end up costing more money than simply having adequate staffing.