Why Google can’t technically do customer support (2011) | Hacker News Reader

Why Google can’t technically do customer support (2011)

seroundtable.com

32 pointsToFab12348 comments

20k support employees sound eminently reasonable for a billion users. If not a bit low. Having worked a bit with support I think 10 minutes is a gross overestimate for average issue resolution time, perhaps even an order of magnitude off. However, an analysis like this is probably best served by a probably distribution of solve times (50% of issues take 1 minute, 20% of issues take 5 minutes...) instead of a point estimate, and that’s where things have the potential to go off the rails. Your really gnarly support issues are (a) where the customer can’t articulate the problem coherently, (b) where there is undefined/unexpected product behavior or (c) both. A is astonishingly common and unfortunately b isn’t too rare either (bugs, undocumented features, ill communicated launches). A seems to be essentially intractable (teaching your customers how to communicate better is probably the responsibility of the public school system) but I’ve seen some novel attempts at solutions. I’ve personally used a tool called FullStory to replay a customer session to understand what’s going on but that solution probably doesn’t scale well and there may be privacy concerns based on the product area. B isn’t a tech problem at all. It is best solved by better internal processes around catching bugs and communicating product changes to users.

I think this article (and most comments below) failed to grasp a component that is highly relevant to the discussion: Google doesn't have a billion customers.

Google is a company that collects data from over a billion human beings, then structures and organizes it in a profitable way for a very small group of large corporations that want to spend millions$/year to reach their targeted audience. To that matter specifically, and I speak from personal experience as part of a digital marketing department at a retail group, Google offers not very good, but quite "ok" support.

People complaining about Google offering them bad support for software (google apps) or hardware (google phones and/or android in general) forget they are not Google's customers. We are basically raw resources with purchasing power and Google is trying to help its customers influence our purchasing decisions in their interest. That's it.

To my opinion, a question worth much more of our attention is to discuss how and why we, as human beings, have accepted becoming reduced to a simpleton with a wallet by our own peers (other humans...).

I fully agree that the little guys aren't the customers; they're the product.

> To my opinion, a question worth much more of our attention is to discuss how and why we, as human beings, have accepted becoming reduced to a simpleton with a wallet by our own peers (other humans...).

In war, the first step is to dehumanize the Other. Many here have experienced or heard of the arrogance of some Google engineers in dealing with Others, be they seeking support with GCP, Adwords, Apps or something else.

Its a short step from that dehumanization to "Let's take `em for all they've got"

I'm pretty tired of "you're the product" mantra, even when you dressed it much more eloquently.

The brutal truth is that there is very little human support any company can offer for a $5/mo product (like G Suite). From my experience, many customers everywhere expect support far in excess of what they're worth and they're also unwilling to pay more for support, and definitely unwilling to pay what it actually costs, even with offshoring, to have a reasonably intelligent person look deeply into their particular problem.

Uncustomized products and solutions usually cost 1/5th to 1/10th of their custom counterparts (think shirts and suits which people still routinely order custom so there is competition and reasonable market rates) with the ratio easily going to 1000:1 and more for software or industrial products. How much would I need to spend to get a customized email/drive/docs version of G Suite? Would it be even close in quality and security? How much are CNC parts vs mass produced ones?

So the reason human beings have accepted standardization or, as you call it, becoming reduced to simpletons with a wallet is that it's vastly financially preferable to bearing the cost of being treated differently.

Customer support is an group insurence for the costumers. Most wont use it. Profit per customer is irrelevant. It's profit for all customers per support event that's the metric.

If the users are the product then the sites that shows the ads are the retailers or whatever. As a small reteiler 200 USD/month I got no support what so ever when Google closed our account for unspecific policy violations. Just autoreplys.

It would be nice with some law like the signs on ciggaret packets when signing up for a Google account.

"WE COLLCECT YOUR PERSONAL DATA AND SELLS A ANALYSIS OF IT. WE MAY DELETE YOUR SUBMITED FILES AND MAILS WITHOUT PRIOR NOTICE AND WE PROVIDE NO SUPPORT TO USERS. WE MAY CHANGE THESE RULES WITHOUT PRIOR NOTICE."

I don't think most users are aware.

Enterprise Google suite is $25/user/mo.

The one who ask gsuite support the most are domain administrators, not users. Users cannot even reach the support page https://support.google.com/a/answer/1047213?hl=en

the service cost is not $5, you should multiply that by avg number of users in a domain.

Google's reputation with their paid services which paying customers pay them payments to use isn't stellar, either. Basically it's them and PayPal in the finals of the candidates tournament to see who takes on US cable companies for the worst-customer-service championship.

I risked reading below the line on the article, and among the frothing rants is one very salient point - not that long ago, old-guard public utility companies (the example in the comment is AT&T prior to the 1980s, but other firms in other countries are also good examples) had everyone as a customer, and nothing seemed to stop them from providing at least a bit of personal support. It may have been second-rate a lot of the time, but one could contact them, and directly - in the case of the telephone network, one could speak to an operator more or less immediately and more or less any time of day.

Obviously it isn't the case that Google's support operation is in the exact same problem-space, but I was interested to realise that the pure statistical "there are too many users" argument doesn't immediately excuse them.

But you were paying money to that utility company.

I have some sympathy for free services not offering customer support.

I assume google's point is that an individual free user probably isn't generating enough value to justify customer support.

Why don't they sell support contracts then? That would solve the whole problem.

>not that long ago, old-guard public utility companies [had reams of money]

Back then the phone service was rather expensive as compared to present day - especially long distance calls.

Til very recent Google was free for most users; currently its taking a sizeable cut from Android app sales and Youtube donations & subscriptions. Not sure how that'll develop into the future.

Google is definitely not free. Users pay with their data and their eyeballs. Framing this as “free” is cynical at best.

Who slipped the word 'technically' into the article? Obviously Google can technically do tech support, and they explain how - hire ~20k people.

It is an economics problem - they don't think there is any marginal profit to be made hiring a support person (and Google services are pretty straightforward, they could easily have a clear read on the situation). That has nothing to do with the number of users though.

Google has ten-thousands of people working on tech support, see gTech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcjR6ZngQcw

Seems to me it's not that Google cannot do support, they're just not willing to do so.

And they wonder why some people are unwilling to buy services from them...

Apple now claimed 2 billions iOS devices activated, hence active users should be over 1 Billion. Not only do they offer customers support, but they have brick and mortar a customers support in every Apple Store.

So at least this article will put thing in perspective next time I’ll internally rant on Apple because scheduling an appointment at a specific time that suit me is hard. They offer human face to face support where Google doesn’t even try online support because they think it’s not "scalable" for them.

There are 7+ billion people on earth. No way every 6th of them has apple device.

It's not 1 per person. Many people and families have several devices, and I think you'd be surprised at just how many people do have an iPhone.

I seem to recall that my father once had trouble installing MS Windows due to key validation. He was able to contact a MS representative who spoke his language, and the issue was sorted out quickly.

If Microsoft can do it, why can't Google?

I've done this twice with Microsoft and both times things were sorted promptly whilst in the phone. They were also very interested in the causes of the verification failures so they could try prevent the bug occuring again. It's was a good support experience.

Because you're Microsoft's customer and Google's product?

I have since stopped comparing Apples to Googles since the following realization hit me: Apple is a tech company. Microsoft is a tech company. They sell technology. Google and Facebook are not. They're advertising companies. This is not necessarily a bad thing. It's just that we can't expect the two types of companies to behave the same way.

So tv stations, radio stations and some newspapers are advertising companies too?

And if Microsoft makes Windows free and displays Ads to makr revenue they are suddenly an ad instead of tech company?

And what about Google (actually Alphabet?) having multiple products out of which only a few make money by advertisement. Think of Android and Maps.

> So tv stations, radio stations and some newspapers are advertising companies too?

Yes, they are.

> And what about Google (actually Alphabet?) having multiple products out of which only a few make money by advertisement. Think of Android and Maps.

It's still adtech. If some product doesn't make money by itself (citation needed however) it still feeds the data and lures the users. And fleeces them for the data. You get the picture.

> Yes, they are.

By this reasoning, Netflix isn't a media or tech company, it's a subscription company. Similarly, Comcast isn't a telecom company, it is also a subscription company, just like Netflix!

This type of definition is so absurd as to be useless. The monetization system doesn't entirely define the company or industry.

I'm having trouble understanding the strong emotional reactions this is creating. A business is generally categorized first on the basis of what it sells (e.g. a car company, real estate company, consulting company etc) and secondly on the basis of what methods they employ. Outside of Silicon Valley, the monetization system is the business.

It's not about the monetization system, it's the business model, meaning what they sell, not how they sell it.

Google and Facebook are ad networks (not advertising companies) because they sell advertising space to customers. Netflix is a media company because it sells original and licensed content to consumers (subscriptions just being a method of payment).

Some tv stations had become advertising company for sure.

And same lake of concern is present for customer satisfaction. The metric used is "do they watch enough so my ads bring in enough cash?" And not "are my customers satisfied with my shows?".

And it’s also why you can’t compare Netflix to regular tv stations. They sell contents to customers, they make no money with ads.

> So tv stations, radio stations and some newspapers are advertising companies too?

If you have been keeping track of the quality of news and articles (now indiscriminately called "content") for the past twenty years, you will realize that it is in fact the case for many (though not all) such media companies.

It's a bit subjective, of course, but if a company makes most of its profit by selling ads why shouldn't we label it as an advertising company? Profit maximation is what ultimately drives a company and thinking of Google and most TV/radio stations or newspapers as ad companies helps a lot to understand the decisions they make.

Because we label a company by the thing that gives it it's competitive edge. Google's edge is search - so it's mostly a search company.

Of course the monetisation scheme of a company matters in understanding it's actions - but it doesn't define what "kind" of company it is.

> And if Microsoft makes Windows free and displays Ads to makr revenue they are suddenly an ad instead of tech company?

Insofar as they shift from making the best OS they know how, from how to get the most eyeballs in front of ads, I'd say yes.

It's interesting to compare the reaction to tech companies peddling ads, and this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18479383 If the ads don't take away from the technology, why in that case do the surrounding ads take away from the words?

Who would you consider more of a cook, someone who makes the best meal they can, or someone who makes an acceptable meal that still makes people thirsty enough so they buy a lot of drinks? At what point does craftsmanship turn into selling out the craft for something else? Who do you think is more of an "actor's actor", or a "comedian's comedian": someone who sometimes compromises on maximizing gain for the love of their craft, or someone who just takes the highest paying gigs, regardless of quality?

So on that sense, sure, they're all tech companies, but so are IBM and Oracle. Just like Adam Sandler is an actor and a comedian. As most fields it's a wide field, it has a high end, a bottom end, and a lot in between.

To expand on that: when we say that "Y is an X-company" then what we mean is that X is the thing that gives Y it's main competitive advantage.

The monetisation scheme of a company is of course relevant when trying to understand the actions of the company, but I the English language, it we usually don't call companies by their monetisation scheme.

Maybe we should, though? Because calling companies by "it's main competitive advantage" leads to unending confusion.

The rule of thumb seems to be: most companies don't give a shit about the actual product or service they provide. It's only a means to an end (profit), and if replacing their current product line with toilet paper would make them more profitable, they'd do it in a heartbeat. This means you can't really look at the product - or the promises made by sales&marketing about the value it provides - as a way to understand what the company will do. Their monetization scheme, however, makes it easier to predict future decision.

But the fact that they are aiming for profit beyond everything else is already implied by the word "company" I'd say.

According to this reasoning, almost no 'journalists' are journalists, because almost all media is ad supported, therefore, they're all just advertisers.

This reasoning would also say that an organization that doesn't sell any thing, but gives away its product, is essentially, 'nothing'. So most open source organizatons are not technology orgs, but charity orgs.

So for example, Wikipedia isn't really an encyclopedia, it's really just a charity.

A tech company is a company that employs engineers to create technology. How that is funded, be it directly, indirectly, charitable contributions, or even government grants, doesn't really change the fact that these institutions are creating technology.

You could argue that how they obtain their funding influences their behavior, but you could also argue that public companies are not just beholden to their customers, but even more beholden to their shareholders, and so for example, whether or not Apple behaves in a way that protects privacy will in fact, come up against the need to show EPS growth to wall street, which means that no amount of piety on privacy will get them to give up their domestic Chinese revenues by directly opposing the Chinese government.

Microsoft's direct monetization of Windows licenses did not prevent them from getting into ad tracking, so clearly, being a paying a direct paying consumer doesn't insulate you from corporations trying to diversify revenue streams.

This 'meme' has been repeated over and over again on HN, but it's a radically simplified view of the motivations of the boards of these trillion $ cap companies, one that appeals to idealists.

The GP comment is much more about the financial model of the business than what we might mean from regular language. For instance, I'm an advertiser, Google and FB for me are just another publisher like CBS or ESPN and clients like us pay most of their their bills - whatever their "industry" status and we're basically buying and space.

On the other hand, we buy tens of thousands of licenses from Microsoft to use their software and clients like me also pay most of their bills and we're clearly buying tech from them.

The business model defines the business, in terms of what it produces for sale.

"Tech" company is probably the most meaningless term. Technology is knowledge, strategies, and processes used to solve problems. Every company creates and uses tech in some way.

Google and Facebook are ad networks as they primarily sell ad space and targeting software. Apple and Microsoft primarily sell general computing hardware and software. Wikipedia is not a business.

Arguments about who is actually Google's customer aside, the article doesn't really make a coherent point even if you do assume that users of their products are customers in a meaningful sense.

I mean, the entire argument is that Google's userbase is at "Internet scale" - one billion users. Okay, but each of those users enjoys many other products and services, and those usually come with support - maybe not good, but generally better than what they get from Google. So, it is demonstrably possible to provide support to one billion customers! Of course, that support comes from thousands of different businesses, each of them effectively carrying a part of the overall load. (Side note: isn't "Internet scale" supposed to be all about decentralization? Ah, that was a beautiful dream while it lasted...).

So, imagine if instead of Google, we had thousands of small companies, serving different groups of customers. And all those companies could then provide support, each one only to those customers they service - and would do so, because competing in the market would require some basic level of it.

And if those mini-googles were to gradually merge, then we'd get Google, except with support that actually scales to their number of users. But actual Google does not, because actual Google is not just an aggregate. Evidently, it can extract the same revenue from those customers as many small companies would, but then it can drastically shrink its expenses compared to what those companies would have. Why? Obviously, because it doesn't have meaningful competition, and so it doesn't need to care about what the users think all that much. It doesn't have to spend resources on customer support - and so it doesn't.

So this whole argument is basically a roundabout way to say that Google is a monopolist that is abusing its dominant position in the market to the detriment of the consumers. I'll take their word for it...

Some backround: Barry Schwartz is /was Danny Sullivan wannabe. A "Google insider" that was fed rotten crumbs from Matt Cutts & Co. They used them to satisfy the hand that fed them and to get clicks and business from desperate webmasters as Google stopped sending clicks to non-Google sites.

As others have pointed out, Google doesn't have a billion customers. People that complain were email users, adsense, adwords and website owners. If google wanted to do the right thing, with some software magic they would have cut the load by 95% and hired 500-1000 people to provide excellent support to the rest. After software has gathered all the data it takes minutes to determine guilt or innocence. But that's not Google.

The problem is google apparently can't deal with reported issues either.

Check out this page of google map issues:

https://issuetracker.google.com/issues?q=componentid:188814%...

There are issues with NEW status going back to August which I guess means nobody looked at them.

It's really hard to get an appointment at the apple store though, I recently had to stay awake until after midnight to catch one of the online reservations.

I'd have thought the real answer is that the people expecting customer support are under the delusion they are the customer when in reality they are the product.

Delusion? Not everyone reads tech articles like you. Bugs & freak accidents happen that aren't the fault of users. Without support, you'd frustrate, and anger such users. Normally, angry users leave and never return. But monopolies with considerable lock in like Google...?

On my first eBay purchase, I bought two quantities of a 3m usb cord. PayPal deducted my money and my PayPal dashboard showed transaction successful. On the other hand, my eBay dashboard was still nagging me to pay for what I'd already paid for.

Both eBay and PayPal make it extremely difficult to reach support. After days of search, I eventually found PayPal email (it isnt on my account). They quickly responded and asked me to tell the seller to check their PayPal account or message PayPal for assistance. Seller didn't. Insisted that I only paid for a single item instead of two.

I tweeted to eBay, Facebook messaged em - no response. Wrote on their wall, it was automatically deleted. Wrote on their wall again a few days later and got a response. The support person was surprised by their error and fixed it.

Now tell me, which FAQ would have helped in this situation?

Sounds like an awful experience. Glad you did get successful resolution eventually.

I was really talking about the likes of Facebook, Google, etc... I would say that you are a customer of eBay and PayPal (although the eBay case could be arguable) and definitely PayPal should make resolution better as they are actually handling people's money - which is a whole new ballgame.

But really, come on, if you are getting a whole lot of useful services for free, expecting support when things go wrong is surely a bit greedy. In this world you get what you pay for, and if you pay sweet FA you can surely expect no more than sweet FA in return.

It would possibly be useful if they provided a paid tier that guaranteed swift resolution if something goes wrong, but we've all been so conditioned to expect everything for nothing now that they probably wouldn't get enough takers to make it worthwhile offering it.

Anyway, the whole thing is a mess and a hugely complicated subject. I could probably go on boring you with my thoughts on it for ages more, but I'll spare you any more :-)

Even if you insist on calling them cattle, you may still want cattle support to keep the herd happy and productive.

So this isn't really a relevant point here.

Though if we talk about customer lifetime value of one customer vs the cost of support, we might get close to an answer why they don't offer support.

I agree with you but the way you express this is still too distant from each individual's experience for the audience to actually understand it. I tried above in another comment but I suspect I will get the same answers that you received...

Probably a better way, as I replied to a previous poster, is "you get what you pay for; so if you pay sweet FA why should you expect to get more than sweet FA?" I think most people would understand that :-)

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