3 ms·

For their own sake, I hope the team gives this question attention and respect. What sets Amazon apart from many other companies is their reputation for relentl

by steego 9y ago

For their own sake, I hope the team gives this question attention and respect. What sets Amazon apart from many other companies is their reputation for relentless customer service. Customers pay close attention to the quality of answer or lack of answers to questions like this one. Every cloud company that asks us to invest our time in their proprietary API is asking us to trust them. If you violate one vocal customer's trust, we're going to notice. If you don't make things right, we're going to notice. Even before I read the article, I first read the comments to gauge the reception because I care more about the perception of trust before I even consider using something like this. Customers don't always stop trusting companies for fair or valid reasons, but that doesn't matter. Trust is much more of a visceral thing than a cerebral thing. So here's my question to other HN readers. What would Google need to do to improve its reputation for customer service? What would they need to do to make that commitment resonate with you on a visceral level?

techdragon 9y ago
For me it's pretty easy. I want to start hearing and seeing positive anecdotes about real time communication with Google Cloud support. That is to say, I want to hear people start saying things like "I rang them, and everything was sorted out" ideally with a platitude attached like "it was actually a pretty good experience". I hear this about AWS all the time, and I've even experienced it myself. One client some time ago had an AWS novice who was confident they could handle setting up the auto-scale groups. They made a small mistake, which lead to the scaling trigger being permanently on, and it auto scaling to 1024 ec2 nodes within the first half hour. Immediately after deploying a fix for the scaling trigger, I phone AWS to see if there was anything that could be done about the cost of this accident, and I had a small monthly credit to compensate, and a respectable discount on the next appropriate AWS training course so that the novice could learn more and hopefully avoid future mistakes. THAT is the kind of story I want to start hearing about Google Cloud. "I used it and did not have problems", and "It works and was cheaper than AWS" is just not enough.

by steego 9y ago

techdragon 9y ago

For me it's pretty easy. I want to start hearing and seeing positive anecdotes about real time communication with Google Cloud support. That is to say, I want to hear people start saying things like "I rang them, and everything was sorted out" ideally with a platitude attached like "it was actually a pretty good experience". I hear this about AWS all the time, and I've even experienced it myself. One client some time ago had an AWS novice who was confident they could handle setting up the auto-scale groups. They made a small mistake, which lead to the scaling trigger being permanently on, and it auto scaling to 1024 ec2 nodes within the first half hour. Immediately after deploying a fix for the scaling trigger, I phone AWS to see if there was anything that could be done about the cost of this accident, and I had a small monthly credit to compensate, and a respectable discount on the next appropriate AWS training course so that the novice could learn more and hopefully avoid future mistakes. THAT is the kind of story I want to start hearing about Google Cloud. "I used it and did not have problems", and "It works and was cheaper than AWS" is just not enough.