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As respectable as your involvement in the situation is, this is exactly how it's not supposed to work. It seems that the only way for a small business to get i

by folli 7y ago

As respectable as your involvement in the situation is, this is exactly how it's not supposed to work. It seems that the only way for a small business to get in contact with someone at Google is to raise hell on social media (or HN) and to wait for someone to take mercy on you.

ijidak 7y ago
I agree, I don't understand why such wildly profitable tech companies willfully ignore live support... I mean, even a paid option. As a business, I would gladly pay $99 for a phone call if I have a high-pri issue. I remember using that when Microsoft had something like that years ago. If they did that, high-priority support can be a profit center (or at least break even) if they're really that worried about costs.
- zozbot234 7y ago
  To be fair, both GSuite (business oriented) and Google One (for end users) come with paid support. Not sure to what extent this includes recovering a locked-out account, but it's a thing.
  - user5994461 7y ago
    In a company using Google Apps for Business, administrators can reset any user account.
thaumasiotes 7y ago
> It seems that the only way for a small business to get in contact with someone at Google is to raise hell on social media (or HN) I'm intrigued by the implication that HN is not social media.
- TimTheTinker 7y ago
  HN is the only very large, threaded comment forum I know of that is still (a) anonymous, and (b) actually has excellent content in the comments. In my own opinion, the signal/noise ratio is nearly 2 orders of magnitude greater than places like reddit (or perhaps the mathematically correct formulation is that the noise/signal ratio is nearly 2 orders of magnitude less at HN). I credit the excellent, thoughtful moderators at HN for that.
- wolco 7y ago
  What part of hn remind you of social media?
  - thaumasiotes 7y ago
    Every part of it, with no exceptions. It's a website where you register an account and interact with the other accounts socially. Contrast Netflix, where you consume fixed content, or Amazon, where you buy things.
    - wolco 7y ago
      Social media also includes the social profile (with info about you)/friends (followers/watchers),sharing, personalized feeds. This is more like your local news site. Articles are presented with comments below. Comments can be from real people but anyone can use a fake name. And who gave the comment rarely matters.
filmgirlcw 7y ago
I’m not going to defend the lack of live customer support — especially in cases that are largely automated (like Google), but even when you do have live customer support — social media or other ways of escalating/raising a signal is often necessary. In a perfect world, it wouldn’t be — but if you are a very large company (or have millions or tens of millions of users), it’s often not possible to have live support staff who have the knowledge to handle every issue. It’s not just about paying for it either — if you have tens of millions of customers, support doesn’t scale that way, irrespective of cost (if you pay more you can generally get people more committed to gaining the knowledge to offer good support, but you still have a relative fixed number of “good enough” candidates). And that doesn’t even account for the fact that a vast majority of questions/calls are for issues that can either be automated or handled by less-skilled/lower-paid support. In the face of those realities, using external platforms to act as a signal boost/triage for the most critical issues isn’t necessarily the worst thing. Nine or ten years ago, I visited Delta’s headquarters to see how they were using Twitter to inform and re-define their customer service experiences. Airlines were some of the first industries to scour social media for issues to handle in real time and to go from being reactive (you have an issue and use Twitter to complain), to proactive (you’re invited to reach out over Twitter DMs or Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp) and I think they’ve actually done a good job. (I’d be curious to see what it has been like for airlines the last month as there have been unprecedented cancellations and support volumes are flooded across contact points). I have to give Delta immense credit, even a decade ago, they were doing phenomenal work in the space. I’m a Diamond Medallion, which means I theoretically get highest-priority phone support — and the agents on the phone are fantastic for helping me with complicated itineraries or rebookings), but for many things (like applying a regional upgrade certificate), I just DM the Twitter account because it is faster and it is a way the agent can work with multiple customers at once. It would be great if all small businesses had a direct line to their vendors, but in the absence of that (which isn’t realistic), at least there is a way to boost the signal and get attention.
SkyBelow 7y ago
Isn't that how our society works in general? Say you are the victim of a crime. You can't really do anything about it except appeal to the authorities. They will generally take pity on you and try to enforce the law, but often enough they don't and they have discretion not to. You have no other recourse for justice if they take the route of not enforcing the law other than appealing to the public or to a higher authority. Many victims of crimes have had the existing system fail them in this fashion.

by folli 7y ago

ijidak 7y ago

I agree, I don't understand why such wildly profitable tech companies willfully ignore live support... I mean, even a paid option. As a business, I would gladly pay $99 for a phone call if I have a high-pri issue. I remember using that when Microsoft had something like that years ago. If they did that, high-priority support can be a profit center (or at least break even) if they're really that worried about costs.

zozbot234 7y ago
To be fair, both GSuite (business oriented) and Google One (for end users) come with paid support. Not sure to what extent this includes recovering a locked-out account, but it's a thing.
- user5994461 7y ago
  In a company using Google Apps for Business, administrators can reset any user account.

thaumasiotes 7y ago

> It seems that the only way for a small business to get in contact with someone at Google is to raise hell on social media (or HN) I'm intrigued by the implication that HN is not social media.

TimTheTinker 7y ago
HN is the only very large, threaded comment forum I know of that is still (a) anonymous, and (b) actually has excellent content in the comments. In my own opinion, the signal/noise ratio is nearly 2 orders of magnitude greater than places like reddit (or perhaps the mathematically correct formulation is that the noise/signal ratio is nearly 2 orders of magnitude less at HN). I credit the excellent, thoughtful moderators at HN for that.
wolco 7y ago
What part of hn remind you of social media?
- thaumasiotes 7y ago
  Every part of it, with no exceptions. It's a website where you register an account and interact with the other accounts socially. Contrast Netflix, where you consume fixed content, or Amazon, where you buy things.
  - wolco 7y ago
    Social media also includes the social profile (with info about you)/friends (followers/watchers),sharing, personalized feeds. This is more like your local news site. Articles are presented with comments below. Comments can be from real people but anyone can use a fake name. And who gave the comment rarely matters.

filmgirlcw 7y ago

I’m not going to defend the lack of live customer support — especially in cases that are largely automated (like Google), but even when you do have live customer support — social media or other ways of escalating/raising a signal is often necessary. In a perfect world, it wouldn’t be — but if you are a very large company (or have millions or tens of millions of users), it’s often not possible to have live support staff who have the knowledge to handle every issue. It’s not just about paying for it either — if you have tens of millions of customers, support doesn’t scale that way, irrespective of cost (if you pay more you can generally get people more committed to gaining the knowledge to offer good support, but you still have a relative fixed number of “good enough” candidates). And that doesn’t even account for the fact that a vast majority of questions/calls are for issues that can either be automated or handled by less-skilled/lower-paid support. In the face of those realities, using external platforms to act as a signal boost/triage for the most critical issues isn’t necessarily the worst thing. Nine or ten years ago, I visited Delta’s headquarters to see how they were using Twitter to inform and re-define their customer service experiences. Airlines were some of the first industries to scour social media for issues to handle in real time and to go from being reactive (you have an issue and use Twitter to complain), to proactive (you’re invited to reach out over Twitter DMs or Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp) and I think they’ve actually done a good job. (I’d be curious to see what it has been like for airlines the last month as there have been unprecedented cancellations and support volumes are flooded across contact points). I have to give Delta immense credit, even a decade ago, they were doing phenomenal work in the space. I’m a Diamond Medallion, which means I theoretically get highest-priority phone support — and the agents on the phone are fantastic for helping me with complicated itineraries or rebookings), but for many things (like applying a regional upgrade certificate), I just DM the Twitter account because it is faster and it is a way the agent can work with multiple customers at once. It would be great if all small businesses had a direct line to their vendors, but in the absence of that (which isn’t realistic), at least there is a way to boost the signal and get attention.

SkyBelow 7y ago

Isn't that how our society works in general? Say you are the victim of a crime. You can't really do anything about it except appeal to the authorities. They will generally take pity on you and try to enforce the law, but often enough they don't and they have discretion not to. You have no other recourse for justice if they take the route of not enforcing the law other than appealing to the public or to a higher authority. Many victims of crimes have had the existing system fail them in this fashion.