Waymo is readying a ride-hailing service that could directly compete with Uber
qz.com
qz.com
AFAIK, based on public information, Google Fiber is well received by customers.
[1] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/10/googl...
Perhaps it's a matter of low bars, but Google's customer service and general reception definitely was far superior to, e.g., Comcast's.
The issues Fiber ran into were more about taking on entrenched monopolists, and not general uptake or customer dissatisfaction.
http://www.newsobserver.com/news/business/article49959860.ht... http://www.mystatesman.com/business/google-fiber-install-pro... http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/business/article123001...
[ disclaimer: I work at Google, but not on Fiber. This post is my opinion, not that of my employer. ]
Yea I was not happy, and insulted when service rolled out and their rep only offered me 5% discount to make up for construction.
It's not a "culture", you either hire a bunch of people or delegate to a contractor or outsource the whole thing, it's not this fundamental thing.
I pay for G suite their customer service is fine.
You can't outsource a helpdesk and consider customer service to be "done". The hard part, the culture aspect of it, is how those tickets get routed and prioritized after the support call is finished. The hard part is actively trying to minimize support calls. The hard part is your developers learning from those calls.
Everyone has a job to do, and I'm sure that some sort of a bug tracker is attainable for everyone by now, it's not a company DNA thing, you allocate enough resources to something then you can adequately support it.
Customer service is everyone's job because without customers you don't have a job.
Your backend developers shouldn't be answering phone calls from customers. That's the job of the helpdesk. But if the helpdesk doesn't know how to fix a problem, they should forward the call or the ticket to the developer. If something is messed up in the database, the helpdesk should have the ability to put the customer on hold, call the developer, and have them make the required change. If the documentation doesn't match reality, the helpdesk should have the power to get the developers to update the documentation. The helpdesk should be analyzing tickets and sending reports to development teams with the mindset that it is the responsibility and the expectation of the development team to make sure these calls stop happening, or that the helpdesk is empowered to resolve them without escalating a ticket.
That is a culture where customer support is everyone's job. If the development team is under no obligation to respond to ticket escalations, that is a toxic support environment. If development is under no obligation to reduce the helpdesk's call volume, that is a toxic support environment. If there is no helpdesk to call, or the helpdesk you've called has no direct line of communication with all of the supporting teams across the entire company no matter their role or function, that is a toxic support environment.
In every sensible development environment I've encountered there is a wall between the developers and the rest of of the company: their manager, who's responsibilities include shielding their team members from outside bullshit + the product owner who is the one collecting feedback / feature requests from other teams and prioritizes their requests according to the companies goals (which can of course include "build a user-friendly product").
In a system where there is direct line between the development team and other teams, most of the times the developers will only be able to get very little work done due to constant interruption, and/or they will end up spending most of the time fullfilling the requests by the people who cry the loudest, regardless if that's in the companies overall best interest not.
I'm talking about "your product documentation says to check the box on the third page, but there are only two pages". If the response is "I'm sorry our developers are too busy getting work done to be constantly interrupted", how many customers are you keeping?
I'm talking about "I purchased your product but it redirected me to something called http://localhost:3214/test/test_page.html". If the response is "Hi, I'm the manager who is shielding my employees from your bullshit" yeah you get the idea.
These are things an outsourced helpdesk (or even an in-house helpdesk) can't fix. But they are problems that real customers are having right now. Maybe it sounds like a horrible work environment to some people. To me it sounds like absolute bare minimum customer support.
Unless you are running a business where each customer pays a relatively big chunck of money (I'd say enough to employ a single developer), you always have to run the numbers, no matter if it is a feature request or a "holy shit" bug.
Another way is: Google is good at things it wants to be good at and, as most corporations, it wants to be good at making money.
I can't speak to Google Fiber but if you were running AdSense (a self-serve ad buying and publishing operation at a massive scale), you would also be "bad" at customer service or you would loose all your money trying to help not-so-bright people that can't be helped or engaging in good faith with very bright people who want to defraud you and will use every trick their smart brains come up with to con you.
You have to understand that the bottom worst 0.1% of AdSense would-be customers is still a massive number of people in absolute sense. They want help just as much as a savvy digital marketer running ad campaigns for McDonalds but will cost you more in support than they will ever spend on AdSense. And if you're dropping McDonald's budget on AdSense, you get assigned account rep.
Google's customer service for AdSense is exactly the kind of service that is needed to make money in that business.
A taxi service will require a different kind of customer support and Google will excel at it, just as they excel at so many disparate things like writing search engine that can search unimaginable amount of data in millisecond, designing and building their own data centers, laying their own fiber or running a cafeteria that serves excellent food to their employees.
You sort of neglected to mention all of the lawsuits filed by cable and telecom companies to prevent its expansion.
God forbid the help page doesn't suffice, when your ride bootloops in the middle of nowhere or a bad neighborhood.
They have the financial resources to do a move into this field -- or most any field -- right.
Until they actually demonstrate doing so, they deserve the continued criticism.
Still waiting on my Android updates, so I can turn wifi back on on my 6 month old phone. And I'd have them, if my year and a bit old Nexus 5x hadn't bootlooped.
Google Fiber got one town away, and crapped out. Granted, they don't "owe" me service, in that case. But another venture we started hoping in, effectively snuffed out.
As for self-driving cars, I spent 3+ months helping someone get back on their feet, who'd lost their license. Uber were a real "godsend" for her. But at the same time, I watched Uber breaking regulations and grabbing marketshare by burning investor dollars, pushing towards an effective monopoly or duopoloy. The exit strategy for same apparently being to switch to self-driving vehicles to reduce costs, before their runway ran out. Dumping all their "non-employee" drivers at that point.
And learning more about how drivers, especially after eating vehicle expenses and such, weren't actually making that much. And this at a time when, eventually, "free market" Republicans were pushing to take away the primary health care option (the ACA) available to those drivers who actually pursued the work as a full-time job.
And that person whom Uber helped out, turned out to be as big a user as they are. A rather symbolic synergy, in anecdote.
Meantime, Uber now proposes [yes, that change in verb case is intentional] that they have an effective monopoly on driverless vehicles in urban areas.
Yeah, so I've been paying a bit of attention to this.
Now, some effective competition would be nice. And my parents are going to need it, pretty soon.
But they're my parents, and they're going to need more than the typical Google level of non-support. They already have that with their smartphones.
So, if Google wants to do this, they should... Well, I think it was actually better when the engineers ran the place. Things would get missed, but once they were pointed out, the engineers would honestly -- if not always effectively -- be interested in addressing them. Problem solvers.
Whatever's going on with Google, now, it seems to transcend the "why doesn't everyone just understand this" mindset.
If you're going to have thousands upon thousands of vehicles interacting with ordinary people including a lot of seniors who are more or less just "getting by" with their phones. Well, then, you'd better provide some effective human oversight and involvement, down to the customer level.
When I call Google Fi, I get actual U.S. based associates who seem, some at least, relatively smart and engaged. That's a start.
Next up, stand behind your product. Doesn't matter who made it, you're selling it. And for those pointy-haired bosses: Yes, "goodwill" does have a value -- to accountants, even.
Dude.
You need an outlet, HN isn't a healthy place to dump this stuff. Have you tried talking to a professional? It may help you.
Good luck, you sound like a nice bloke.