4 ms·

They might have 1 billion free users, but they definitely don't have 1 billion partners or 1 billion paying customers. Google's customer service is horrible ev

by novok 6y ago

They might have 1 billion free users, but they definitely don't have 1 billion partners or 1 billion paying customers. Google's customer service is horrible even for organizations that pay them +$10k/month or make them +$10k/month for ad sales, and that is a far smaller number. You would think they could at least scale customer support properly for that much smaller number, but they don't because culturally they do not want to. Even people who have used google cloud services say the support is bad compared to AWS. Google stands out as a corp that is really bad at customer service. While apple, amazon, AWS & many other companies provide customer support that mostly works for customers who provide maybe $40/month max in revenue. They don't even let you self pay for your own support at google in most cases. I bet youtubers who live on their work on youtube would gladly pay $100 to deal with one off incidents like these that might happen once a year if it meant they had proper thought applied to their issues for example.

rezonant 6y ago
Yes, Google has never been good at customer service. They believe that providing feedback tooling is the better approach. I think Google has succeeded _despite_ this not because of it
- SXX 6y ago
  Google was always great at _customer_ service, but their only customers are in advertisement, paid subscription SaaS and cloud departments. When you use any other services you are not customer, but a product and no one owe you anything.
greggman3 6y ago
> Google's customer service is horrible even for organizations that pay them +$10k/month or make them +$10k/month for ad sales, and that is a far smaller number. Is this true? As a paying customer for gsuite, the 4 times I've contacted customer service I got someone immediately and they solved my problem immediately. I'm not a big customer either I have one account. I pay them $72 a year.
- judge2020 6y ago
  It's all anecdotal but I also had fast support for my G Suite issues, even when marked at the lowest priority level P4.
- verst 6y ago
  It's very product specific. Google Cloud Platform and GSuite have support plans and offerings distinct from other Google services for example. In a prior life I was one of the Googlers handling those support inquiries (all while also trying to scale the support operations)
  - coding_lobster 6y ago
    As far as I remember YouTube still isn't directly profitable for Google in terms of ad revenue and YT Red. For services like that Google would probably naturally try to minimize spending as much as possible.
    - xyzzyz 6y ago
      Do you have any recent source for this?
- _puk 6y ago
  Personal supporting anecdote: I have a grandfathered free GSuite plan on a domain I hardly use. The few issues I have had have been promptly solved by a real person.
SXX 6y ago
Personally I had very much opposite experience with Google Ads support. For the person who buy ads it's exceptional and with available phone support even if you only buy ads for $100. They can literally explain how every single thing work on their system, giving advice on how to improve campaigns or fix something. It's very much opposite when it's come to AdSense, but again they don't really care when some webmaster lose his source of income since there will be other webmasters to replace him.
- disiplus 6y ago
  that's not true in my experience. the rep had no direct answer and sometimes it would take a couple days till they reached somebody that knows the answer. and for everything else that i asked that they did not know directly the answer was "it's algorithm, even when i found the answer later somewhere deep in forums or faq". i have dealt with google europe, i even visited the offices in dublin but i do not have a confidence that they know the answer, most of them are there to try to convince you to try this new thing and incrase you budget.
  - SXX 6y ago
    > i have dealt with google europe, i even visited the offices in dublin I guess I should be perfectly honest: ads is obviously no my specialization and I only worked with Google Ads for small businesses with quite a small budgets not more than $10000-$20000 a month. So obviously my impression might be limited to quite superficial questions or problems. It's very much possible that if you work with something actually complex their support isn't anywhere as useful as it's for entry-level customers.
- HenryBemis 6y ago
  > person who buy ads Fundamental difference: person who buys adds --> Google gets money person who uploads videos --> Google gives money It's pretty clear to me what the antithesis is here. Sorry to over-simplify, but yes, imho this matters.
- azernik 6y ago
  And that's how you know it's their core business, and everything else is just gravy.
doomslice 6y ago
I don't have experience with AWS to compare, but I can say that my experience with Google Cloud support has been exceptional, and even for a P4 case I opened I got an initial response in 4 hours and a person who dedicated some time for the next week setting up a cluster and application in the exact way to reproduce and diagnose my issue.
movedx 6y ago
> They might have 1 billion free users, but they definitely don't have 1 billion partners or 1 billion paying customers. Paying or not, people will complain.

by novok 6y ago

rezonant 6y ago

Yes, Google has never been good at customer service. They believe that providing feedback tooling is the better approach. I think Google has succeeded _despite_ this not because of it

SXX 6y ago
Google was always great at _customer_ service, but their only customers are in advertisement, paid subscription SaaS and cloud departments. When you use any other services you are not customer, but a product and no one owe you anything.

greggman3 6y ago

> Google's customer service is horrible even for organizations that pay them +$10k/month or make them +$10k/month for ad sales, and that is a far smaller number. Is this true? As a paying customer for gsuite, the 4 times I've contacted customer service I got someone immediately and they solved my problem immediately. I'm not a big customer either I have one account. I pay them $72 a year.

judge2020 6y ago
It's all anecdotal but I also had fast support for my G Suite issues, even when marked at the lowest priority level P4.
verst 6y ago
It's very product specific. Google Cloud Platform and GSuite have support plans and offerings distinct from other Google services for example. In a prior life I was one of the Googlers handling those support inquiries (all while also trying to scale the support operations)
- coding_lobster 6y ago
  As far as I remember YouTube still isn't directly profitable for Google in terms of ad revenue and YT Red. For services like that Google would probably naturally try to minimize spending as much as possible.
  - xyzzyz 6y ago
    Do you have any recent source for this?
_puk 6y ago
Personal supporting anecdote: I have a grandfathered free GSuite plan on a domain I hardly use. The few issues I have had have been promptly solved by a real person.

SXX 6y ago

Personally I had very much opposite experience with Google Ads support. For the person who buy ads it's exceptional and with available phone support even if you only buy ads for $100. They can literally explain how every single thing work on their system, giving advice on how to improve campaigns or fix something. It's very much opposite when it's come to AdSense, but again they don't really care when some webmaster lose his source of income since there will be other webmasters to replace him.

disiplus 6y ago
that's not true in my experience. the rep had no direct answer and sometimes it would take a couple days till they reached somebody that knows the answer. and for everything else that i asked that they did not know directly the answer was "it's algorithm, even when i found the answer later somewhere deep in forums or faq". i have dealt with google europe, i even visited the offices in dublin but i do not have a confidence that they know the answer, most of them are there to try to convince you to try this new thing and incrase you budget.
- SXX 6y ago
  > i have dealt with google europe, i even visited the offices in dublin I guess I should be perfectly honest: ads is obviously no my specialization and I only worked with Google Ads for small businesses with quite a small budgets not more than $10000-$20000 a month. So obviously my impression might be limited to quite superficial questions or problems. It's very much possible that if you work with something actually complex their support isn't anywhere as useful as it's for entry-level customers.
HenryBemis 6y ago
> person who buy ads Fundamental difference: person who buys adds --> Google gets money person who uploads videos --> Google gives money It's pretty clear to me what the antithesis is here. Sorry to over-simplify, but yes, imho this matters.
azernik 6y ago
And that's how you know it's their core business, and everything else is just gravy.

doomslice 6y ago

I don't have experience with AWS to compare, but I can say that my experience with Google Cloud support has been exceptional, and even for a P4 case I opened I got an initial response in 4 hours and a person who dedicated some time for the next week setting up a cluster and application in the exact way to reproduce and diagnose my issue.

movedx 6y ago

> They might have 1 billion free users, but they definitely don't have 1 billion partners or 1 billion paying customers. Paying or not, people will complain.