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I can only speak for myself here, but let me state unequivocally that the lack of communication and path for recourse is the problem.

PR-wise it might be a tough sell, but I think a perfectly acceptable answer is a pay-per-incident support line that connects to someone who can actually fix my problem.

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I would like to see Google create a marketplace for support. They allow people to buy some access to their internal systems, who then sell support service. There would need to be careful vetting and monitoring of the people who buy the access, but if that could be made to work, end users get access to support, and Google wouldn't have to staff it.

Of course, they would have to provide support to the support providers, but that would be a much smaller, more knowledgeable population.

I badly want this particular solution. But the only way to create this startup would be to have good contacts with people in Google who have the authority to experiment with such a setup (because clearly Google WOULD need to experiment to find out whether it worked). I really DO think that someone ELSE, with a corporate structure that better supported the skillset of providing excellent customer support, could make an excellent living providing "customer service" for Google. 90% of issues could be handled just by hand-holding the customers without bothering Google at all. And the other 10% could be bundled up nicely (here's a repeatable bug report; I have 20 lockouts that appear to pass the first screening; etc.). But there would HAVE to be some way for people INSIDE Google to receive these nicely bundled reports and to respond to them.

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