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Improving our account management policies to better support customers
- zachruss92 8y agoThis is encouraging that Google listens to it's customers' concerns and candidly addresses them.
- some_account 8y agoHave you heard of marketing before?
- jonahhorowitz 8y agoIt's great that Google is taking these steps. An over-reliance on automation can be hazardous.
- dkoston 8y agoKudos to Google for taking feedback and working internally to make things better. Too often do people expect every process at a company to work perfectly so it's great to see that the community has done a good job of providing feedback here and Google using it to improve. I tend to stick with vendors who are open to improvement rather than expecting perfection up front. There's always something that can be improved.
- jbob2000 8y ago[]
- TheIronYuppie 8y agoA couple of points: - Going "offline billing" is free and available to any sized customer. - we already have/had 7x24 support which is how this was resolved in the first place. We're adding chat as well, specifically for billing issues. That said, every other bit of your feedback is correct, and we know. Nothing will prove that we take this seriously other than time, and we hope to show you all that we are committed for the long haul. Tl;Dr We screwed up. We're sorry. Disclosure: I work at Google on Google Cloud.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- dantiberian 8y agoWhen I asked for more info on setting up offline billing I was told that I needed to spend $2.5k/mo and up to qualify - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17559784 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17559784.
- dantiberian 8y agoThis was the full context I meant to link to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17563439 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17563439
- hguhghuff 8y agoGoogle fails even here to reassure the market because this is all carefully worded corporate speak about “account management”. What they are really trying to say is “Google Cloud is now less likely to delete your entire business computing systems over some minor credit card issues.” For this reason, this press release will not get the attention that google wants it to. Note however that google has included human reviewers in the process and googles humsn reviewers are notorious for being ruthless. It’s googles attitude to customers that is the ingrained and deep problem. Google has built into its DNA from the beginning that it does not want to be in contact with you, that you cannot get emergency attention, and that you are probably wrong.
- TheIronYuppie 8y agoTo be clear: we're fixing the algorithms, adding extra humans, and showing customers how to take action on their own. We never want to let what happened here happen again, and we are definitely listening to any and all suggestions. Tl;Dr We screwed up. We're sorry. Disclosure: I work at Google on Google Cloud.
- hguhghuff 8y agoThen you should have have press release that says “We screwed up, we’re sorry, and we won’t delete your accounts any more”, instead of all this many-lawyered garbage about “account management policies”, words that no one is interested in. This post has 7 comments and 11 points after an hour. Compare that to the post that led to this outcome. If your trying to reassure the market that you don’t delete a companies entire back end infrastructure then yes this meets some internal management butt covering goal, but does not tell the market definitively that google cloud no longer deletes your entire computer systems.
- TheIronYuppie 8y agoWhile we debated that exact thing for a long time, the reality was that we knew customers would want to dig deeper and understand HOW we wouldn't let it happen again. We tried to do that here. We tried not to make it sound too lawyerly, but I'll definitely take your feedback internally. Disclosure: I work at Google on Google Cloud.
- jey 8y agoCan someone link the original blog post and its HN thread? I'm having trouble finding it.
- mark_element 8y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17431609 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17431609
- gruez 8y agocontext: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17431609 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17431609
- ben_jones 8y agoWhat incentives exist for Google employees to fix these problems at the lowest levels other then feeling like they work for a great company? If I'm making 300k on Monday, delete someones entire production stack to great disdain on Tuesday, and am still making 300k on Wednesday, how incentivized am I really? Google's macro level incentives based on contrived metrics have proven to not be very good i.e. "let's launch a chat app" style promotions and bonuses. Presumably there are high level metrics for "customer success" but I feel like those are too hollow to solve this. I'm interested in how this hole was actually dug in the first place, presumably by intelligent and well paid individuals, and how it might be fixed. Maybe its already on the path to being fixed and it'll be great to recap in a couple years, maybe these attempts will also prove hollow. Time will tell. They deserve some credit as individuals for trying.
- jacques_chester 8y agoThere's no law barring the having ordinary good intentions while also earning $300k. Just as there isn't a law against being a jerk at any price.
- lmeyerov 8y agoI'm more curious how Amazon avoided it. Switching from low-touch/trust consumer culture to high-touch/trust enterprise culture is tough.
- lovich 8y agoWhat event happened to make google come out with this blog post? I missed the hub bub apparently
- js2 8y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17431609 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17431609
- oneplane 8y agoOne of the big problems is companies with "too many" customers not having enough humans to deal with them interactively. It's probably possible, but it always seems like a side-job or afterthought, often shipped to low-wage countries, and hidden behind a wall of 'support documents' that hardly cover the many cases you might need to get in touch with a vendor. Google being Google (and this probably goes for many tech leaders) probably thought that using an algorithm and some documentation would be enough, even if it means about 1% of customers slips through the cracks and loses all of their Google-stuff. The problem is that in the real world this generates enough backlash that people don't want or trust your services anymore. While a cloud and even a more classical MSP is supposed to take what they are good at and make it available at a reasonable price (so you can focus on what you are good at instead of everything you might ever need to know to function) at this point you need a second service to backup your first service just to be sure you don't lose everything over some stupid automation you cannot influence. It's like an older HN post (week or 2 ago) about someone being transferred between systems during a company merger and the system deciding that he is fired. No human could influence it, everything was revoked and removed automatically and security just acted on what the computer was saying, and escorted him out. They had to wait until the automated process was done before he could re-enroll in the system and continue to work. That, and GC (and to an extent others like PayPal, Amazon, Apple, MS) are examples of trying to put nuances in human interactions into algorithms and failing, have bad real-world effects.
- TheIronYuppie 8y agoTo be clear, there was always a human in the loop here. We've added a second one, just to be sure.
- oneplane 8y agoThat's good to hear! What is the general ratio between humans-servicing-humans and humans-needing-service?
- dantiberian 8y agoA note on offline billing, it seems like this is only available for people paying $2.5k/mo and up. I tried to find out more information about it two weeks ago and got this response: * Hello Daniel, I'm <Sales Rep> and you have reached the Google Cloud Platform sales development team. I understand that you're looking for an Invoice Billing. Prior to applying for monthly invoicing, please review the following minimum requirements to determine if you are eligible to apply. These requirements include, but are not limited to: 1. Being registered as a business for a minimum of one year. 2. Spending a minimum of $2,500 a month for the last 3 months. You can also look through the Cloud Billing Help Center which should hopefully provide answers to your questions. You can also contact the billing team through the Cloud Console Billing Support Request Form in the event you need more assistance. Thank you.
- Johnny555 8y agoOnline customers with established payment history, operating in compliance with our TOS, AUP and local laws, will receive advance notification Isn't this a meaningless promise since a customer that's been compromised is likely to be violating their TOS or AUP? So, for example, a customer that's had their webserver hacked and used to host some malware can still have their entire account shut down (as opposed to just the compromised server).
- codeisawesome 8y agoWhere money is immediately on the line, second line human review is still a requirement for reliable operation - at the world’s most commercially successful ML powered company.
- p3llin0r3 8y agoGoogle improving their support? I'll see it when I believe it. We used to pay for gold level support. It's hilariously bad. I once had a production outage that ended up being a low-level GKE bug. Support de-escalated my ticket and linked me to this blog post: https://cloud.google.com/solutions/scalable-and-resilient-apps https://cloud.google.com/solutions/scalable-and-resilient-ap... I ended up getting help by going into the google slack and kicking up a fuss. Never heard back from the "official" support channels.
- ntnn 8y agoSounds just like SUSE Enterprise Support, quality wise. When in doubt "we don't support it" or "we don't support it like that".