Google Fails the Turing Test
plus.google.com
plus.google.com
We somehow implicitly trust that they're doing good in all other areas, but there is absolutely no circumstance in the entire company where a customer can reach a person and receive true support.
Why do they get to do this, and no other company can?
Google Apps has great phone support if you're paying for it: http://contact.googleapps.com/?&rd=1
That's not true. Their customer support will call you so frequently it's almost harassment if you're actually a customer to them; i.e., have an Adwords account. Now they've started selling consumer electronics, they should expand of course and I'm not giving any free passes. But don't pretend that they don't have a very, very large and extremely active and excellent customer support department. They do. They just choose not to use it with 99% of their customers.
Every human using Google is a customer. For most customers, the product is search results, and their payment is to let part of their screen be occupied by ads. For advertisers, the product is X pixels of advertising text, and the payment is dollars (or euros, or yen, etc).
Currently, the exchange rate between pixels and dollars is so extreme that it's not cost-effective to provide support to those customers who are only paying in pixels. Customers who pay in dollars (advertisers are one, but also people who have a paid Gmail account, or have bought more Drive storage, etc) do receive support.
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But that's all beside the point. The original story is about someone who paid hundreds of dollars for a phone, and received terrible support. Even if you hold the position that all free services are inherently exploitive, don't you think that someone who spent that much money should be receiving top-quality support?
It is useful to distinguish transactions that involve money from transactions that don't, and to restrict the word "customer" to apply only to those situations where money is exchanged, if for no other reason than that only in situations where money is exchanged is it clear who is the customer: it's the person who pays.
Google's advertisers are its customers. The (attention of the) people doing the searches are the product. Search results are the means by which the product is procured, not unlike the bait on the fisherman's hook.
A doctor and an armed mugger are different because even though in both cases they are given money in exchange for life, the doctor's patient[1] consented to do so.
Also, restricting customers to people who pay with money excludes transactions based on bartering or favors. If I design a nice website for someone and they give me a bottle of wine, that's still a customer relationship even though no money has changed hands.
[1] Or their guardian, legal representative, etc.
As for voluntariness, it is arguable that the fish enters into the transaction voluntarily, if perhaps not fully informed. But here's a better example: my cat provides certain intangible benefits to me in exchange for food. I can assure you that my cat is entering into this exchange voluntarily. Who is the customer?
Still not satisfied? Fine. Two kids collect baseball cards. They agree to trade a Hank Aaron for a Babe Ruth. Who is the customer?
Unlike a barter relationship, a customer-provider relationship is necessarily asymmetric. The only way to reliably identify which way the asymmetry runs is to follow the money.
> As for voluntariness, it is arguable that the fish
> enters into the transaction voluntarily, if perhaps not
> fully informed.
> [...]
> my cat provides certain intangible benefits to me in
> exchange for food. I can assure you that my cat is
> entering into this exchange voluntarily. Who is the
> customer?
> Fine. Two kids collect baseball cards. They agree to
> trade a Hank Aaron for a Babe Ruth. Who is the customer?
If both (or neither) know the value of the cards, and there's no coercion, then the customer is whoever initiated the trade. They understood what was involved just as well as the other kid, and made the informed decision that they wanted to exchange the cards.
> Unlike a barter relationship, a customer-provider
> relationship is necessarily asymmetric. The only way
> to reliably identify which way the asymmetry runs is
> to follow the money.
Would you say adblockers are theft?
Is every consenting value exchange a customer-provider relationship?
>the ideal of such a relationship assumes perfect balance -- two people with things worthless to themselves, but valuable to the other.
Not worthless, just worth less. If I buy a product/service, I felt my money had less worth than what I was buying and the provider held the opposite stance.
Now come over to my house and try to pet my cat without her consent...
Not really on-topic in any way but I just dislike people who disrespect animals.
But who is the customer?
And that summary judgement follows a familiar pattern: 'This is meant to be insightful, but actually... let me show how the prevailing wisdom is wrong, with my new improved analysis'
The problem here, is that you're trying to be too clever in order to stretch words beyond their common usage.
Some personal perspective: Myself and the rest of the EA (Enterprise Architecture) team at my prior company spent almost a month painfully debating the meaning of word "Customer". Yes, I know, crazy and yet we had good reason for the corporate dictionary to be accurate. Financial control systems and exec reporting relied on it. But I digress, and while I can't remember the exact definition we used, the essential fact is:
A customer pays for goods or services.
It doesn't matter if they use dollars, bitcoins, or bushels of corn. Nearly all users of Google are NOT customers, and indeed do form part of the product offering, as the OP stated.
Additional references:
"A customer (also known as a client, buyer, or purchaser) is the recipient of a good, service, product, or idea, obtained from a seller, vendor, or supplier for a monetary or other valuable consideration. [1][2]
For your position (that ad-supported implies searcher is not the customer) to be correct, there would have to be some minimum amount of cost involved before a human can become a customer. Say the search engine charges one dollar per query. The searcher must be the customer, obviously. What if the search engine charges one a penny per query? Is the searcher still the customer? What about one thousandth? One millionth?
At what point does the searcher's expenditure fall so low that you consider them to be a product, rather than a human?
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Aside:
Apart from my day job, I write a lot of software. Some of it is made available for use for no monetary charge, and supported by ads. I do not consider the humans who use my software to be "products", nor the advertisement networks to be "customers". To say that someone is a product just because they don't want to pay money for something strikes me as borderline sociopathic.
Subjective feelings, while perfectly reasonable and acceptable in their own right, should maintain little bearing on the objective and consensually derived definitions of words, if one is being intellectually honest.
Simply put, it would be a stretch to convince us that your distaste for the concept (calling it 'borderline sociopathic') is not influencing your POV.
True
> It doesn't matter if they use dollars, bitcoins, or bushels of corn.
Or, say, personal information that can be used in targeting advertising.
> Nearly all users of Google are NOT customers
I'd describe them a suppliers, but unless you've suddenly decided that, contrary your early statement, it does matter what they provide in exchange for the services they receive, they can also, by your logic, be described accurately as "customers".
> and indeed do form part of the product offering, as the OP stated
No, the users do not form part of the product offering; the slave trade is not part of Google's business models.
They are suppliers of inputs (both information used in targeting advertising, and the advertising opportunities through which the actual advertising is delivered being the key pair of inputs) that are used in Google's product offerings; insofar as these inputs are exchanged for services Google provides rather than for cash payment, they are also customers purchasing those services in a non-cash exchange.
This time, it's the word 'pay' that is being shoehorned.
Let's assume I run a survey company, and I invite a bunch of people over for a BBQ. During lunch I passively monitor their interactions and sell that data. Did the guests pay for the BBQ?
">I'd describe them a suppliers,"
That is a bit more specific and possibly more accurate, but at least 67% less sexy ;).
However it does not invalidate the original product claim. Often suppliers are part of that chain. They supply raw goods (personal data in this case) that gets packaged as part of a product offering (aka adwords) or service, and then sold to the customer.
> Let's assume I run a survey company, and I invite a
> bunch of people over for a BBQ. I then monitor their
> interactions and sell that data. Did the guest pay for
> the BBQ?
If you did not tell them, then you spied on them without consent, and they would be victims.
At the end of the day, real estate on a screen is means to an end, not the ultimate end itself. The ultimate end is of course money, which is paid by advertisers. The means to an end is more properly viewed as a factor of Google's production than an end itself.
I would distinguish linguistically by saying that I am a user of google's products, but not a customer. A customer pays.
What Google does is use information it receives from users to sell targeted advertising impressions in services that the users use. The users are suppliers -- both of the information and the advertising opportunities -- rather than either "customers" or "products".
I think you mean "catchphrases."
They get less individualized attention then either customers or many other kinds of suppliers because there are lots of suppliers of the same inputs and the marginal value of each one of them to Google's business is very, very low, such that spending significant resources on direct support would very quickly turn them into a net liability.
Why must it be one or the other?
BTW, Comcast brand has been damaged by their bad customer service (and bad service in general). So they just renamed their service to Xfinity.
http://consumerist.com/2007/10/19/legend-of-comcast-office-s...
American Express? Quick call and fraudulent charges are immediately removed.
As such, I spend millions of dollars through American Express and virtually all of my retail shopping through Amazon. I've dumped service providers who don't accept American Express and avoid purchasing countless products not offered for sale through Amazon.
My response to inadequate customer service is as follows. In the name of efficiency I'd recommend the following:
1 - Answer about problem being resolved 2 - Problem not resolved (24 hours) 3 - Inadequate answer 4 - I am sorry I will have to issue a charge back for your failure to deliver on services as represented. 5 - Problem solved, either by me or them.
Negative example eBay: when something goes wrong, they take no responsibilty and ask you to take a lawyer if you are not satisfied with that. Even with pure humans this is fast enough.
I'm just saying Google is hardly unique. Amazon and Amex are notable for their good support, not the other way around.
And agreed for Amazon as well. Their support is good enough it changes my shopping choice. I'll choose Prime even if the item is a bit more to be sure to ship from their warehouse and have their service.
And those that do pay do get support http://support.google.com/adwords/answer/1385067?hl=en
And I believe there is some support for apps for business.
Even Android and all these devices are probably not directly making them that much money, they just want you to use the web more and use Microsoft and Apple products less.
In practice I find that the most sophisticated internet users are among the heaviest users of Google products, which implies that the value proposition that Google provides is good even if you understand how their business works. The product doesn't generally extract value from the producer when it's sold to the consumer, but I get an enormous amount of value from using Google.
It most certainly does not make sense to cancel the order for someone that doesn't want to cancel.
I agree it is inconvenient to ask a customer to cancel and replace an order (the support rep could be doing that transparently for the customer), but it seems it was a very unusual case (theft or loss of the package) so it is reasonable to expect a somewhat unusual process to resolve the situation.
http://www.google.com/chat/voice/
I've personally learned the hard reality that most people currently alive cannot use email correctly and therefore demand that everyone they do business with provide phone support. Because of this, the path of least resistance is to just be like them and get used to calling when you need something resolved. (And the reality is, it's faster for the people at the other end, which is why it persists.)
Assuming more than that is unwarranted, and assuming that free additional services not advertised are included with products because of high price is especially unwarranted.
Not only that but, don't forget Google does get audited annually, which their "customers" [businesses] do see, read, and determine whether or not they feel comfortable continuing to do business with Google.
[I'm an IT auditor]
On the robot CSRs: it honestly seemed like they had been given about 4 hours of training, which consisted of madlibs-style repetition of whatever you said. I got a bit hyperbolic in a later support call, and one of them honestly said:
"I understand it can be a bit frustrating when, uhh, companies play with your emotions and lie about when your Nexus 4 device (tm) will arrive."
This wasn't a text chat. This was someone acting like a 80's AI over the phone. After they parroted my complaint, they would immediately escalate me to a specialist. Once I talked to a manager, who escalated me 'differently'. I have no idea if any specialist ever replied; I got a few follow up emails which basically said 'Thanks for calling! Keep on keeping on'.
Cancelling was actually the best, easiest thing I did with Google. Ordering was painful, waiting was aggravating, but telling them "I don't want the damn thing" went over surprisingly well.
Google is an engineering company, but one has to believe that they wouldn't purposefully engineer a robot to be this foolish. I have to believe it's actually people you're dealing with, people who have been programmed to behave like computers (YOU MUST PASTE THIS AT THE BEGINNING OF EACH EMAIL).
It's frankly too banal and too non-sensical to be a robot programmed by Google; but in a way, a programmed customer service employee in a call center is a bit of a robot.
We should consider the impact repeated nonsense has on a persons ability to deal with situations in a fashion beyond rote memorization. We should consider the impact of dehumanizing folks in call centers. Google should try to understand how unique human interactions can make a contact center/email experience that much easier, instead of dehumanizing these moments for the sake of expediency.
The most unusual occurence I had was with VFS Global (visa handling company) employees. Every one of them had a paper sticker with a number on their tie; and all refused to tell me their name (asked out of courtesy), insisting I refer to them by their number if I have the need.
Is that a common thing in the US/UK? All this looked distinctly dystopian, and mildly surreal, to me.
never ever seen that in the US. ever.
From what I've heard from friends at Google, internal tools like this have a notoriously hard time getting engineering resources. I wish they could turn it into a sexy machine learning project and actually get some resources on fixing this issue.
The support rep can then chain together the macros for some or most of the response far quicker than they could ever type. And of course that increases their productivity (messages handled per hour) and possibly even has an effect on happy customers per hour although that is harder to measure and seems less of a interest.
The net result are email responses that are indistinguishable from robots, and I suspect the systems would take an initial stab at which macros should be used for a response.
The real problem is companies rarely seem to take the effort to work out why people used email or call centres instead of self service. For outsourced providers there is absolutely no incentive to do anything to reduce call volumes.
Joel also has a good article http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/customerservice.html
This is how customer support should handle this type of situation.
I get that they can't profitably provide any kind of support for, say, Google Groups. As we like to say around here, if you don't pay them, then you're the product and you can't expect good service. But once they start moving into markets where you pay them money, the bar is higher. In this case, I'm the customer and their support is by far the worst customer experience of my life. Worse than the time a US Airways stewardess took my carry-on bag off the plane before take-off without telling me.
If you click on each sub-forum, you can see from the official response icon column, on the right. That most of the threads do get an answer. That's far from non-existent. I think their big failure here, has been to poorly communicate how people can get help, most don't know about the forums.
Could you elaborate on this please?
Also: http://productforums.google.com/forum/m/#!topic/gmail/jCukq7...
It's pretty easy to reproduce. Create a filter for your emails, any filter at all. In the rules section, have the filter forward to a forwarding address. Now receive an email that matches the filter, and watch the forwarding not work.
How are they flagship products? Their flagship profit maker is ads and I hear their support for advertizers is top notch.
I doubt Gmail makes enough off its ads to justify its costs, I think its value is more in getting people to sign in to Google so that if you search for something at work, ads related to it are shown at home etc.
The problem with canned text is when it's reused on the same person, which leads to anger on the part of the recepient (or suspicions that they're being serviced by a robot).
Click canned response one
Switch to conv 2
Click canned response 5
Switch to conv 3
Click canned response 1
See there is a response from conv 1
Switch to conv 1
The systems (especially for tier one support) have complete conversation templates. The people supporting the products at tier one often have no clue beyond trying to search for keywords in the knowledge base. Turn over is high enough that training is too expensive (of course, turn over is high due to lack of training).
In short, it's a complete joke.
You're right about there being five concurrent conversations though. Part of this is that the customers would take a great deal of time to respond, so it made more sense for me to be helping multiple people because I could juggle five conversations better than most people could handle one. The alternative was keeping all the other people in the queue while one person took two minutes per sentence to describe what their problem was.
The bigger problem is that customer service is a McJob, and pays like one, and the staff only deliver service on par with the salary they're given. Generally the people serving you could be getting paid multiples of their current salary if they could find a pizza delivery gig (no joke, pizza delivery can pay up to $30 an hour counting tips).
I'm wondering if perhaps that copy of the webpage was an out-of-date cached page from a server that hadn't been updated recently enough (or that the page was created based on a copy of data in a cache that hadn't been updated recently enough) and that buying from such a page somehow led to a phantom purchase being created -- since there were no actual phones left to buy -- which got pushed through the system to the point of creating a UPS record for a non-existent phone.
Obviously, one would hope an ecommerce system would catch issues like that so spurious purchases would not be allowed through in the end, but -- in any case -- should the buyer perhaps have realized (in retrospect, at least, if not at the time) that there might be a problem if all his previous attempts to load the webpage were telling him the phone was sold out?
There were thousands like him, and we were (within a day or two) told that our orders were actually pre-orders, and we were given specific delivery timeframes (2-4 weeks, 3-4 weeks... 8-9 weeks)
At any time after this point, one could simply cancel their orders. Many did so.
Once it was realised that orders weren't being shipping in order of placement, many placed new orders (canceling the second once one was delivered).
Folks here are making this out to be par for the course, but this was a very specific messup, and shouldn't be taken as the usual Google Play purchase experience. Google and/or LG severely underestimated how popular the phone would be, and that was their biggest mistake.
For example, in my experience, online inventory doesn't typically get updated very quickly. So, seeing inventory suddenly show up for a sold-out item as I was rapidly refreshing, I think, might trigger my spidey-sense but perhaps other people might not think this way.
In any case, my comments aren't meant to excuse any poor customer service, or any other issues, on the vendor's end and I hope the author's case is resolved to his satisfaction.
At this point, I wouldn't advise any of my friends or family to buy physical hardware from Google Play: the customer service is just atrocious & if anything went wrong I'd feel responsible.
Absolutely unacceptable. I would have issued a chargeback immediately after three weeks of tardiness. At that point what Google has done is fraud, especially if you couldn't reach an actual person on the phone.
Google were out of stock, but their massive load broke their system.
The OP knew this within 2 or 3 days and could have had his money immediately refunded if he wanted to, but most of us were willing to wait.
I for one was on the 8-9 week schedule, and got my phone in week 7, so I was very happy with my purchase.
At $300 or $350, the Nexus 4 is priced as a premium device.
Meanwhile, your friend Susan buys $200 for the phone, and signs up for the same service at the same $80/month.
The only difference is that she promised to pay a fee if she decides to switch carriers in the next two years.
Do you still think the phone is really priced at $650? To me, it seems like some fairly trivial market segmentation. The phone's regular price is $200, but they're making some extra money from people who place an abnormally high value on being able to switch providers on a whim.
> A new iPhone costs $200 from any major US carrier.
In Europe, that's a down payment on a standard financing deal, and after the phone has been paid off, your monthly bill goes down.
In America, that's the price to straight-up purchase the phone. Your monthly bill will be the same regardless of whether you bought your phone from the carrier, or brought your own.
Also, no law dictates that you have to sign a contract to get cell service in America. One can as well choose from few of the cheaper prepaid services.
> Also, no law dictates that you have to sign a contract
> to get cell service in America. One can as well choose
> from few of the cheaper prepaid services.
If you're comparing different service providers, then of course there will be some who have lower monthly rates and higher initial purchase prices. The tradeoff is that these providers usually provide much lower-quality service.
Whether you buy Nexus 4 from T-mobile for 50 bucks and pay more monthly bill with contract, or choose one of their prepaid plan and pay less TCO, the phone and software is exactly the same. I thought you would know this, you work at Google.
The cell companies do what you have effectively said before, they price differentiate based on who can pay what. Don't have money to buy phone upfront, well we will sell you for cheap and make the difference in contract rate. Have more money? Well then BYOD and get our cheaper prepaid services.
I will concede on one point, the big 4 (except T-mobile) make it incredibly hard for you to find and compare their prepaid services, for obvious reason that contract customer bring in more money over years.
> No they do not. I personally use T-Mobile $30 monthly
> prepaid plan with 100 minutes/5 GB/unlimited text. The
> service is no way inferior to any regular service that
> T-mobile provides.
> Equivalent service from the same provider is typically
> charged at the same rate, regardless of whether the
> customer has a contract. That's my point -- since there's
> no difference in service price, it's silly to say the
> phone is more expensive under a contract plan.
Second, even putting aside T-Mobile for a moment, there are plenty of other cost-of-ownership differences between a contract iPhone and a non-contract iPhone. For instance, absent additional coverage (e.g. extended warranty or equipment insurance), suppose you break it. How much will it cost to replace? If you haven't signed a contract, you have the option of signing one to subsidize the cost of a replacement, but if you have a contract, then what? Or suppose you take a trip overseas. Will you be able keep using your iPhone without exorbitant roaming charges by getting a local SIM? It depends. And so on.
http://www.att.com/shop/wireless/devices/apple/iphone/5-16gb...
http://shop.sprint.com/mysprint/shop/phone_details.jsp?prodI...
If you don't want to pay the straight-up price, you can subsidize it with a minimum voice and data monthly plan. Then it becomes a bundled package. You cannot separate the phone from the bundle and say that the bundled price is the straight-up price.
For Sprint, their minimum plan (advertised online) is $79.99 a month. So for 2 years, that's a bundle price of $2119.75 for the iPhone 5 and service. If you don't want the bundle price, your only option is to pay $649.99 for the iPhone 5.
Also note that cell phone service is not a requirement. You can use the iPhone as a WiFi iPod and get an inactive SIM so that you can use the phone for 911 calls, to which the carriers must complete all calls even if you have no service.
But most people do not cancel their contract after one month; they just wait out the term because carrier quality rarely changes so quickly that it's worth eating hundreds of dollars in termination fees to switch.
> But most people do not cancel their contract after one
> month; they just wait out the term because carrier quality
> rarely changes so quickly that it's worth eating hundreds
> of dollars in termination fees to switch.
That they don't break or lose their phone during the contract.
That they don't go overseas for a trip and end up paying expensive roaming charges or not using their fancy new phone.
That they can't save money by switching to another carrier (and this can be unexpected: see T-Mobile refarm).
That their home (or office or other place they care about coverage) doesn't move somewhere where their contracted carrier doesn't have acceptable coverage.
And that their definition of acceptable coverage doesn't change (e.g. being comfortable with HSPA coverage at the start of a contract, but later wanting LTE coverage for their new LTE phone).
That they don't end up in a committed relationship with someone on another carrier (preventing them from saving money by consolidating to a family plan).
And, and, and...
Do plenty of people win the gamble? Absolutely. Do plenty of people lose it too? Absolutely.
But you can't pretend that the gamble is cost-free. There are plenty of costs and strings attached.
It's either a poorly-programmed robot, or a human acting very much like one.
For example, if you purchase something and it is not as described, or it is faulty, or certain other conditions then the business must be able to remedy the situation. I fail to see how you could satisfactorily comply with the ACL if you're only form of customer service is AI bots.
[0] http://www.consumerlaw.gov.au/ (overview at http://www.accc.gov.au/content/index.phtml/itemId/963190)
If they want to be a consumer electronics company, they should probably start acting like one and have actual humans deal with these problems.
Twist : My website was in multiple language and the page they sent me was in a different language, I had not think of that.
Honestly reading this, nothing surprised me. We all know Google is incapable of decent customer support, and even if we do pay money for something like a phone, the very corporate nature that reigns in this company still sees us as products of free services. Here's a thought, instead of hiring outsourced help for their Nexus sales crew, why not use their AdWords support staff? Those people are obviously the only ones trained to deal with humans.
UPS support will generally only parrot the same information you can get through tracking it on their website.
I conveyed that information to Google, and Google strung me along giving me the impression that they were doing something about it, albeit slowly.
Ok ... 2nd idea ... charge-back the order on your credit card with the already. Claim fraud whatever...at least you'll have your money.
I don't know about you, but perspective of losing all my gmail over chargeback is very scary to me. And I'm not sure I am safe from google just pulling a switch from my email.
That said, it would be ridiculous for them to do that. Wouldn't that imply that they can perceive problems and act on them--a faculty this story illustrates they are profoundly lacking?
Why would it? That could be an automated response to chargeback — block all the services for that person. Just in case.
> Are you going to keep hosting your email with a company you trust so little you actually think they would disconnect you from their free service over a chargeback on a product they actually failed to provide? I get more and more glad I'm not a prisoner to their "free" services every day.
You are right, of course, but gmail brings a lot of value to me. I know that I should take a day off and get my own domain, set up regular backup from gmail and change accounts on various services to new domain, though.
If there had been absolutely no support from Google, that's what I would have done. But they claimed to be making progress in helping me. Fool me 32 times, shame on me.
I agree, with such an experience, Google cars don't seem like a good idea at all.
There was a problem loading the Google+ CSS. Please double check your network connection and try reloading in a few minutes.
But this writing reeks of Microsoft astroturfing. Especially the "I got #googleplayed" dig which sounds just like their "Don't get scroogled" campaign and failed #droidrage stunt. It's not like Mark Penn would have any trouble bringing back their famous astroturfing policies to earn his keep at MS.
My goal in this is to get some kind of human being at Google to respond. #googleplayed - what do you think? Could it catch on?
Wow. Google really can do no wrong.
As someone who carries an Android, Google really screwed this up, and deserves all of the hammering they can get in this. They will be forgiven if the next launch goes much better than this, though.
It is a systemic customer support issue that, while perhaps understandable for a free product, is horrendous for a merchant or paid product. I don't think people would care nearly so much about launch hiccups, even major, if there was customer support to help resolve the issue. But as it is, whenever you order something it can feel a bit like Russian Roulette with Google. I hope this changes soon, because otherwise they are doing awesome stuff.
That raises the question, why didn't Google just let the factories ship to Amazon and let Amazon handle sales and customer service(related to shipping, not technical)? I guess the Play Store was an attempt at branding similar to Apple store, but the customer experience seems to be damaging the brand.