4 ms·

Is there any way to avoid this at a company where huge scale of 'free' products is the norm? It doesn't seem feasible to provide proper customer service in tha

Is there any way to avoid this at a company where huge scale of 'free' products is the norm? It doesn't seem feasible to provide proper customer service in that business model, and that business model seems to be where things are headed...

pavel_lishin 15y ago
For the company, sure - they could have better policies in place, could outline clearly which part of the TOS was violated, etc. For the customer? Well, you can try to write a story and tweet it around, and hope someone notices.
DenisM 15y ago
Of course there is. It's quite simple - if a user account is creating problem, put that account in read-only and give the user a few months to export his data and move on. Thus the account cannot continue to cause harm, and yet any innocent victim suffer an inconvenience of migration, not a disaster of total loss.
ja2ke 15y ago
How much financially is a customer worth to Google? I know its a coarse metric, but in the "Twitter should have paid ad-free Pro accounts!" conversations, people always point out that if you look at Twitter's userbase versus its valuation, customers are worth more to Twitter as advertising eyeballs than customers would be willing to pay to become ad-free subscribers. If that's the case -- if people are actually worth more to the company "for free" -- then the company should take care of those users when they try to leave. I don't know if that metric actually holds water, even in the Twitter examples where it's frequently used, but the point remains that while customers aren't directly paying money for Google services, they are not without value when it comes to Google functioning. Google isn't offering its services to the public as a public service.
mcherm 15y ago
Google is missing an opportunity here. If they offered a paid service where for an annual subscription I can REACH someone when I need to (subject to a reasonable max number of contacts per year) then I would pay fairly well for that. I would also not use the service unless I REALLY had to. And I wouldn't expect the subscription to guarantee that everything was resolved in my favor, just to guarantee that I got an opportunity to speak with someone and make my case. If Google doesn't want to be in this business (because customer service is NOT one of their strengths) they could work deals with 3rd parties who would be glad to provide "customer support" for Google. But they'd have to be willing to talk to the 3rd parties. If they are willing to talk to NO ONE, then we wind up with situations like this one.

pavel_lishin 15y ago

For the company, sure - they could have better policies in place, could outline clearly which part of the TOS was violated, etc. For the customer? Well, you can try to write a story and tweet it around, and hope someone notices.

DenisM 15y ago

Of course there is. It's quite simple - if a user account is creating problem, put that account in read-only and give the user a few months to export his data and move on. Thus the account cannot continue to cause harm, and yet any innocent victim suffer an inconvenience of migration, not a disaster of total loss.

ja2ke 15y ago

How much financially is a customer worth to Google? I know its a coarse metric, but in the "Twitter should have paid ad-free Pro accounts!" conversations, people always point out that if you look at Twitter's userbase versus its valuation, customers are worth more to Twitter as advertising eyeballs than customers would be willing to pay to become ad-free subscribers. If that's the case -- if people are actually worth more to the company "for free" -- then the company should take care of those users when they try to leave. I don't know if that metric actually holds water, even in the Twitter examples where it's frequently used, but the point remains that while customers aren't directly paying money for Google services, they are not without value when it comes to Google functioning. Google isn't offering its services to the public as a public service.

mcherm 15y ago

Google is missing an opportunity here. If they offered a paid service where for an annual subscription I can REACH someone when I need to (subject to a reasonable max number of contacts per year) then I would pay fairly well for that. I would also not use the service unless I REALLY had to. And I wouldn't expect the subscription to guarantee that everything was resolved in my favor, just to guarantee that I got an opportunity to speak with someone and make my case. If Google doesn't want to be in this business (because customer service is NOT one of their strengths) they could work deals with 3rd parties who would be glad to provide "customer support" for Google. But they'd have to be willing to talk to the 3rd parties. If they are willing to talk to NO ONE, then we wind up with situations like this one.