14 ms·

This week I had an epiphany when dealing with both Google and Microsoft on support issues. The issues are this: when you need an answer to a question about some

This week I had an epiphany when dealing with both Google and Microsoft on support issues. The issues are this: when you need an answer to a question about something from your bank, such as, say, a fee that suddenly appears on your statement, you can pick up the phone and find someone at the company who will at least give you slow service to answer your question. But with Google and Microsoft, there is no support department. You need to know how a specific service is charged? Good luck. You need to know why a needed parameter is missing on their API documentation? Forget it. Basically companies like Google and Microsoft want to toss their products out into the wild and then go back behind closed doors to noodle on something else. It baffles me as to why enterprise businesses are able to do this.

mgkimsal 14y ago
110% agree. With 'enterprise agreements' though, which only the large companies can afford, you can get X support tickets, or call in numbers, etc. I remember working one place that had that in place, and we hit an REALLY odd SQL Server bug (or, atleast it appeared to be a bug to us). We had top level support in place, but only had X per year, and no one would authorize us to use it just yet - "keep working on it for a bit, see if you can figure out a solution", because they didn't want to "waste" one of the calls if it turned out to be our mistake. MS is in a weirder position, because offering direct support would cut out a lot of the consultants and ecosystem which they've trained/certified. You're expected to engage those people for support (although... they didn't write the software, so how they'd 'fix' something if it went wrong...?) Google has no such ecosystem to point to. Yes, who would choose a bank for your critical banking needs (or a vehicle company for fleet management, etc) where your primary or only means of support was random forum postings that were staffed by volunteer workers who had no authority to fix things? I tend to think this state of affairs evolved out of earlier beliefs that computers were "hard" and had some sort of black magic mystique around them.
- jstclair 14y ago
  I've heard the same thing about banking the support calls for an unknown future problem, and my reaction is always the same; "We have had 2 devs working on this problem for x hours, at $y per hour. MS support calls are purchasable in packs at $z each. We passed the point for calling (really hard math here) hours ago. By the way, remind me which business school did you get your degree from?"
  - mgkimsal 14y ago
    "Hours?" In my case it was measured in days with weekends in between. Overall, I've only worked at a few 'big' companies (more than 20 people) and was continually frustrated when requests of mine were framed as 'coming from a tech' or 'you don't understand business', which these sorts of requests tended to fall under. In a nutshell, someone else got to choose tech XYZ, but didn't have to work with it. The people charged with using it are not given any authority to actually contact the vendor to fix the problem (or, in some cases, buy proper training or even get reimbursed for books on the subject). And somehow this is "good business"? Few other departments in a large company would put up with this BS. Imagine the following scenario: "Hey legal department, you're not allowed to buy a subscription to LexisNexis - just dig around on a forum for 8 weeks piecing together a defense. Oh, and by the way, we already set up the subsidiary in Brazil - forgot to tell you earlier. Just learn Spanish - I found this website where you can download Rosetta Stone for free. Anyway, Spanish is pretty easy - my son's already taken two classes in high school and took at trip to Mexico!"
    - samuel 14y ago
      Brazilians speak portuguese...
      - mgkimsal 14y ago
        That was intentional, highlighting how little people who impose tech decisions actually know, think or research about this stuff. "Java/JavaScript" is the worst, but I'm sure we've all encountered others.
    - benjarrell 14y ago
      I feel your pain!
deleted 14y ago
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aviraldg 14y ago
Then you'd have to pay for the services they provide. The reason banks can afford to have support staff is because they're paid (quite a lot) for the services they provide (directly or indirectly.) Not so for Google or Microsoft (Google's profit/person << banks' profit/person)
- silverbax88 14y ago
  Ah, but that's just it. I do pay. All of these accounts are paid. But there is no reliable support.
  - aviraldg 14y ago
    Right. But the problem with Google and most other cloud service providers is that they provide services to a large number of "customers," many of whom don't pay a dime. So, their entire corporate structure is set up with that in mind and there are few, if any customer service reps. Developers and designers are expected to create "self service" products and since they work for the majority, it's expected that it'll work even for their paying customers.
    - deleted 14y ago
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- deleted 14y ago
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hhzj 14y ago
I call this BS. Ms have quite large support organization. comparing Google's non existent support Ms show how clueless you are.
- DanBC 14y ago
  You're correct that MS has a large support organisation. But your message is pretty aggressive. That kind of tone isn't liked here, and you're probably going to get down voted for it. Welcome to HN though.
  - powertower 14y ago
    The guy decided to interject Microsoft into Google's fiasco. I don't know if he had some experience that he felt represented the rule and not the exception, or if he just wanted to rub shit on them (MS). Either way, that was completely uncalled for; especially considering Microsoft does and can provide support, and even very good support at that; and especially considering that you could mention at least a dozen major corps that provide much worse support on their best day then MS does on its worst day.
    - DanBC 14y ago
      "I'm surprised to hear you mention MS in the same sentence as Google. In my experience MS has a big, well run, very good, support department. There are many other big companies you could have used as examples of poor customer service"
      - Dylan16807 14y ago
        Cut the 'in my experience'. MS objectively has a large support infrastructure that goes through to the engineers. Also 'should' fits better than 'could' when that is a sentence by itself. You don't need to neuter the message to be polite.
    - silverbax88 14y ago
      Tell you what, call up your MSFT rep and ask them to set the Smooth Streaming flag on an Azure CDN blob and see how you feel how good their support is.
yakshaving 14y ago
This is a great thing for startups to exploit who really care deeply about all of their customers. They can easily take business away from large, monolithic companies that don't really care about losing one measly person. Many of our big wins come from doing something better that Microsoft or Google already might do, but doing it 10x better AND offering great customer support.
- tijs 14y ago
  I'm still looking for a great alternative to Gmail/Google apps for my business email. Something that supports IMAP and has a reasonable webmail front end. Fastmail is the closest thing i've found but this could be a perfectly fine startup which probably simply isn't sexy enough for anything to actually go and do.
  - adiM 14y ago
    Gmail's IMAP implementation is really buggy. No distinction between tags and folders, non sorting done at the server level, etc. Frustrated, I also moved to fastmail two years ago; it is slightly expensive, but is standard's compliant and works flawlessly.
    - tijs 14y ago
      I should have maybe clarified that i too have moved to Fastmail (about a year ago) and am a happy customer. But both the price and the UI leave a lot of room for improvement, i.e. competitors. And yes moving mail out of Gmail was a pain because of the weird IMAP structure they use.
      - adiM 14y ago
        I always use a local IMAP client (alpine), so am not really bothered by fastmail's rather basic UI.
    - Dylan16807 14y ago
      I thought gmail didn't have folders; how is it supposed to distinguish the two?
ghurlman 14y ago
Microsoft has a number you can call for any problem with their paid products. Admittedly, it's not free, but the fee is refunded if the problem is found to be caused by Microsoft. Anyone can call and open a case, regardless of support contract.
- silverbax88 14y ago
  Yes, I know. I called it. It's been a week and I have gotten one minor response to what should be a routine question about a setting on Azure blob storage.
  - nathantotten 14y ago
    I work on Windows Azure. Email me ntotten at microsoft and I'll make sure you get the issue solved.
    - silverbax88 14y ago
      Will do, thanks.
OldSchool 14y ago
If you can afford it or stomach it, directly providing support is a great way to manage your product design. Get enough calls where you have to explain that same thing over and over again and your developer brain will be in overdrive with ways to make that call stop. In a big company bad design doesn't directly cause pain for the developers, but if you're a small company you can practically let your customers condition you into building the best product. There is one call you can mostly disregard: the smart guy with too much time on his hands who wants your product to be his custom design for free.
- makmanalp 14y ago
  Related: http://www.inc.com/magazine/20100201/the-way-i-work-paul-english-of-kayak.html http://www.inc.com/magazine/20100201/the-way-i-work-paul-eng...
tallanvor 14y ago
Let's be honest here. It's not that Google and Microsoft don't have support departments. It's that the price you're paying for the product is too low for them to provide general support on an individual basis. Of course, that doesn't mean they shouldn't be working on ways to identify those very rare issues that need manual intervention and provide ways to get the support you need at that point, but that may only be 1 case in 100,000 or so.
- davidp 14y ago
  > It's that the price you're paying for the product is too low for them to provide general support on an individual basis. Exactly. It's always puzzled me why they don't offer a higher tier of support for more money. The only reason I've been able to come up with so far is that they want to keep the flexibility to rapidly evolve their services. Customers who pay more money tend to get bent out of shape when you do that. But I think there ought to be a happy medium where 1) it's understood that things can change, and 2) you have at least email support for the service you're buying, and maybe even phone support. Peace of mind is worth a lot of money for some things.
  - ghaff 14y ago
    There's a real tension between stability and pace of change and finding that balance isn't easy. That said, some Internet companies--I'd add eBay in my experience, Facebook also based on lots of stories--use huge amounts of automation and just don't seem to have the processes (and likely the staffing) to resolve problems with competent individual attention when a person has to intervene. It's partly a matter of scale but Amazon, for example, seems to do a much better job overall.
    - KaoruAoiShiho 14y ago
      Amazon also is an expert at losing money and having no margins.
      - ghaff 14y ago
blntechie 14y ago
The one time we hit a problem with SQL Server and needed a solution, a MS tech support guy did daily teleconferences with us for 10 days after opening a case. I don't know what level of support plan our company had but was amazed by the responsiveness.
qeorge 14y ago
Microsoft has always provided amazing support for our Office 365 account (hosted Exchange, like Google Apps). Its a paid service though ($6/user/month), so perhaps that's the difference in our experiences. Most recently, I filed a support ticket online and my phone rang a few minutes later. On the other end was an MS support rep who stayed on the phone with me for 40 minutes, including a screen share, until my issue was resolved. At the end of the call he left me with his direct # and email, and said that I could contact him directly with any future inquiries. Really can't ask for much more than that.
- mattmanser 14y ago
  I just want to echo this to make sure that everyone understands Google and Microsoft are worlds apart on support. We've all heard about the horror stories that it doesn't matter what you do with Google you cannot get human support unless you get to the top of HN or Reddit. MS are totally different, they offer support for every service, you just have to pay for it. I think they also offer different levels of support, some of our programmers at a previous (small) company could talk to the Silverlight team over problems they were having after it just came out. Funnily enough, when I google "google paid support" the top result is this little (frightening) gem: http://support.google.com/accounts/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1752770 http://support.google.com/accounts/bin/answer.py?hl=en&a... Compare that to this, "microsoft paid support": http://support.microsoft.com/gp/services/en-id http://support.microsoft.com/gp/services/en-id I'm in no way affiliated with MS, actually use Google Apps myself.
  - azylman 14y ago
    This "Google has no support" is a myth that I see consistently repeated on Hacker News that I can't understand it's repeated. Google's support situation is actually the same as Microsoft's: if you pay (i.e. have a Google Apps for Business) account, you get 24/7 phone support. I'm pretty sure that it's for any service linked to your Google Apps for Business account (including Voice), but not completely sure since I've never had to use it. You can find it here: http://support.google.com/a/bin/request.py http://support.google.com/a/bin/request.py
quesst 14y ago
There is a difference between Google and Microsoft - Microsoft does list phone numbers for support and you can call them up and actually speak to someone at the other end - and they do provide a paid option for support for many of their products. They also sell many of their products through VARs (value-added resellers), who are generally quite helpful if you get stuck or need help.
takeda64 14y ago
The thing is that with Google, we are not the consumers, we are the product. That is true to a lesser degree even if you pay them.

mgkimsal 14y ago

110% agree. With 'enterprise agreements' though, which only the large companies can afford, you can get X support tickets, or call in numbers, etc. I remember working one place that had that in place, and we hit an REALLY odd SQL Server bug (or, atleast it appeared to be a bug to us). We had top level support in place, but only had X per year, and no one would authorize us to use it just yet - "keep working on it for a bit, see if you can figure out a solution", because they didn't want to "waste" one of the calls if it turned out to be our mistake. MS is in a weirder position, because offering direct support would cut out a lot of the consultants and ecosystem which they've trained/certified. You're expected to engage those people for support (although... they didn't write the software, so how they'd 'fix' something if it went wrong...?) Google has no such ecosystem to point to. Yes, who would choose a bank for your critical banking needs (or a vehicle company for fleet management, etc) where your primary or only means of support was random forum postings that were staffed by volunteer workers who had no authority to fix things? I tend to think this state of affairs evolved out of earlier beliefs that computers were "hard" and had some sort of black magic mystique around them.

jstclair 14y ago
I've heard the same thing about banking the support calls for an unknown future problem, and my reaction is always the same; "We have had 2 devs working on this problem for x hours, at $y per hour. MS support calls are purchasable in packs at $z each. We passed the point for calling (really hard math here) hours ago. By the way, remind me which business school did you get your degree from?"
- mgkimsal 14y ago
  "Hours?" In my case it was measured in days with weekends in between. Overall, I've only worked at a few 'big' companies (more than 20 people) and was continually frustrated when requests of mine were framed as 'coming from a tech' or 'you don't understand business', which these sorts of requests tended to fall under. In a nutshell, someone else got to choose tech XYZ, but didn't have to work with it. The people charged with using it are not given any authority to actually contact the vendor to fix the problem (or, in some cases, buy proper training or even get reimbursed for books on the subject). And somehow this is "good business"? Few other departments in a large company would put up with this BS. Imagine the following scenario: "Hey legal department, you're not allowed to buy a subscription to LexisNexis - just dig around on a forum for 8 weeks piecing together a defense. Oh, and by the way, we already set up the subsidiary in Brazil - forgot to tell you earlier. Just learn Spanish - I found this website where you can download Rosetta Stone for free. Anyway, Spanish is pretty easy - my son's already taken two classes in high school and took at trip to Mexico!"
  - samuel 14y ago
    Brazilians speak portuguese...
    - mgkimsal 14y ago
      That was intentional, highlighting how little people who impose tech decisions actually know, think or research about this stuff. "Java/JavaScript" is the worst, but I'm sure we've all encountered others.
  - benjarrell 14y ago
    I feel your pain!

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

aviraldg 14y ago

Then you'd have to pay for the services they provide. The reason banks can afford to have support staff is because they're paid (quite a lot) for the services they provide (directly or indirectly.) Not so for Google or Microsoft (Google's profit/person << banks' profit/person)

silverbax88 14y ago
Ah, but that's just it. I do pay. All of these accounts are paid. But there is no reliable support.
- aviraldg 14y ago
  Right. But the problem with Google and most other cloud service providers is that they provide services to a large number of "customers," many of whom don't pay a dime. So, their entire corporate structure is set up with that in mind and there are few, if any customer service reps. Developers and designers are expected to create "self service" products and since they work for the majority, it's expected that it'll work even for their paying customers.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

hhzj 14y ago

I call this BS. Ms have quite large support organization. comparing Google's non existent support Ms show how clueless you are.

DanBC 14y ago
You're correct that MS has a large support organisation. But your message is pretty aggressive. That kind of tone isn't liked here, and you're probably going to get down voted for it. Welcome to HN though.
- powertower 14y ago
  The guy decided to interject Microsoft into Google's fiasco. I don't know if he had some experience that he felt represented the rule and not the exception, or if he just wanted to rub shit on them (MS). Either way, that was completely uncalled for; especially considering Microsoft does and can provide support, and even very good support at that; and especially considering that you could mention at least a dozen major corps that provide much worse support on their best day then MS does on its worst day.
  - DanBC 14y ago
    "I'm surprised to hear you mention MS in the same sentence as Google. In my experience MS has a big, well run, very good, support department. There are many other big companies you could have used as examples of poor customer service"
    - Dylan16807 14y ago
      Cut the 'in my experience'. MS objectively has a large support infrastructure that goes through to the engineers. Also 'should' fits better than 'could' when that is a sentence by itself. You don't need to neuter the message to be polite.
  - silverbax88 14y ago
    Tell you what, call up your MSFT rep and ask them to set the Smooth Streaming flag on an Azure CDN blob and see how you feel how good their support is.

yakshaving 14y ago

This is a great thing for startups to exploit who really care deeply about all of their customers. They can easily take business away from large, monolithic companies that don't really care about losing one measly person. Many of our big wins come from doing something better that Microsoft or Google already might do, but doing it 10x better AND offering great customer support.

tijs 14y ago
I'm still looking for a great alternative to Gmail/Google apps for my business email. Something that supports IMAP and has a reasonable webmail front end. Fastmail is the closest thing i've found but this could be a perfectly fine startup which probably simply isn't sexy enough for anything to actually go and do.
- adiM 14y ago
  Gmail's IMAP implementation is really buggy. No distinction between tags and folders, non sorting done at the server level, etc. Frustrated, I also moved to fastmail two years ago; it is slightly expensive, but is standard's compliant and works flawlessly.
  - tijs 14y ago
    I should have maybe clarified that i too have moved to Fastmail (about a year ago) and am a happy customer. But both the price and the UI leave a lot of room for improvement, i.e. competitors. And yes moving mail out of Gmail was a pain because of the weird IMAP structure they use.
    - adiM 14y ago
      I always use a local IMAP client (alpine), so am not really bothered by fastmail's rather basic UI.
  - Dylan16807 14y ago
    I thought gmail didn't have folders; how is it supposed to distinguish the two?

ghurlman 14y ago

Microsoft has a number you can call for any problem with their paid products. Admittedly, it's not free, but the fee is refunded if the problem is found to be caused by Microsoft. Anyone can call and open a case, regardless of support contract.

silverbax88 14y ago
Yes, I know. I called it. It's been a week and I have gotten one minor response to what should be a routine question about a setting on Azure blob storage.
- nathantotten 14y ago
  I work on Windows Azure. Email me ntotten at microsoft and I'll make sure you get the issue solved.
  - silverbax88 14y ago
    Will do, thanks.

OldSchool 14y ago

If you can afford it or stomach it, directly providing support is a great way to manage your product design. Get enough calls where you have to explain that same thing over and over again and your developer brain will be in overdrive with ways to make that call stop. In a big company bad design doesn't directly cause pain for the developers, but if you're a small company you can practically let your customers condition you into building the best product. There is one call you can mostly disregard: the smart guy with too much time on his hands who wants your product to be his custom design for free.

makmanalp 14y ago
Related: http://www.inc.com/magazine/20100201/the-way-i-work-paul-english-of-kayak.html http://www.inc.com/magazine/20100201/the-way-i-work-paul-eng...

tallanvor 14y ago

Let's be honest here. It's not that Google and Microsoft don't have support departments. It's that the price you're paying for the product is too low for them to provide general support on an individual basis. Of course, that doesn't mean they shouldn't be working on ways to identify those very rare issues that need manual intervention and provide ways to get the support you need at that point, but that may only be 1 case in 100,000 or so.

davidp 14y ago
> It's that the price you're paying for the product is too low for them to provide general support on an individual basis. Exactly. It's always puzzled me why they don't offer a higher tier of support for more money. The only reason I've been able to come up with so far is that they want to keep the flexibility to rapidly evolve their services. Customers who pay more money tend to get bent out of shape when you do that. But I think there ought to be a happy medium where 1) it's understood that things can change, and 2) you have at least email support for the service you're buying, and maybe even phone support. Peace of mind is worth a lot of money for some things.
- ghaff 14y ago
  There's a real tension between stability and pace of change and finding that balance isn't easy. That said, some Internet companies--I'd add eBay in my experience, Facebook also based on lots of stories--use huge amounts of automation and just don't seem to have the processes (and likely the staffing) to resolve problems with competent individual attention when a person has to intervene. It's partly a matter of scale but Amazon, for example, seems to do a much better job overall.
  - KaoruAoiShiho 14y ago
    Amazon also is an expert at losing money and having no margins.
    - ghaff 14y ago

blntechie 14y ago

The one time we hit a problem with SQL Server and needed a solution, a MS tech support guy did daily teleconferences with us for 10 days after opening a case. I don't know what level of support plan our company had but was amazed by the responsiveness.

qeorge 14y ago

Microsoft has always provided amazing support for our Office 365 account (hosted Exchange, like Google Apps). Its a paid service though ($6/user/month), so perhaps that's the difference in our experiences. Most recently, I filed a support ticket online and my phone rang a few minutes later. On the other end was an MS support rep who stayed on the phone with me for 40 minutes, including a screen share, until my issue was resolved. At the end of the call he left me with his direct # and email, and said that I could contact him directly with any future inquiries. Really can't ask for much more than that.

mattmanser 14y ago
I just want to echo this to make sure that everyone understands Google and Microsoft are worlds apart on support. We've all heard about the horror stories that it doesn't matter what you do with Google you cannot get human support unless you get to the top of HN or Reddit. MS are totally different, they offer support for every service, you just have to pay for it. I think they also offer different levels of support, some of our programmers at a previous (small) company could talk to the Silverlight team over problems they were having after it just came out. Funnily enough, when I google "google paid support" the top result is this little (frightening) gem: http://support.google.com/accounts/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1752770 http://support.google.com/accounts/bin/answer.py?hl=en&a... Compare that to this, "microsoft paid support": http://support.microsoft.com/gp/services/en-id http://support.microsoft.com/gp/services/en-id I'm in no way affiliated with MS, actually use Google Apps myself.
- azylman 14y ago
  This "Google has no support" is a myth that I see consistently repeated on Hacker News that I can't understand it's repeated. Google's support situation is actually the same as Microsoft's: if you pay (i.e. have a Google Apps for Business) account, you get 24/7 phone support. I'm pretty sure that it's for any service linked to your Google Apps for Business account (including Voice), but not completely sure since I've never had to use it. You can find it here: http://support.google.com/a/bin/request.py http://support.google.com/a/bin/request.py

quesst 14y ago

There is a difference between Google and Microsoft - Microsoft does list phone numbers for support and you can call them up and actually speak to someone at the other end - and they do provide a paid option for support for many of their products. They also sell many of their products through VARs (value-added resellers), who are generally quite helpful if you get stuck or need help.

takeda64 14y ago

The thing is that with Google, we are not the consumers, we are the product. That is true to a lesser degree even if you pay them.