By B.L. Ochman
Google is making a play for enterprise domination, hoping businesses will consolidate their email, transactions, documents, records, videos, phone service, advertising, photos, mobile apps and social networks into Google products.
Great idea. The missing link? Customer service: Google has none.
Want to contact a live human being at Google? Best of luck to you baby!
And lest you think Google servers never go down, or that Google is completely secure, think about the 150,000 gmail accounts that were vanished in Feb. 2011.
Who you gonna call? Ghost Busters? Go find a phone number on a Google site and share it with us all please.
Google is launching paid gMail for business and nowhere among the promises is there one about great customer service.
Tom Crandall at SEM Report Card said, on a post that got 730 comments, mostly from exasperated Google users:
Take the promptness of a doctor’s office, the incompetence of a DMV, and the worst customer service experience you have ever had with a phone company and multiply it by 500 = Google Customer Service.
That’s the epic fail that will keep Google from meeting its goals, and that should be scaring enterprise away from converting to Google APPS.
Google’s new Apps for Business cost $50 per user per year. Here’s the Google Cloud Calculator that explains what your company will get for $50 per user. Type in your company name. Learn about the services your money will buy. Note that nowhere is there a promise or even a mention of great customer service. Or any customer service.
o Your gmail is down? Or corrupted, or hacked? Tough
o Your video taken down from YouTube because of some mysterious “violation?” Tough
o You need help migrating your Google accounts to the new Google APPS? Tough.
Google has no phone number you can call. No human being you can speak to. Nobody. No one. No available humans.
Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
And Google Help groups are, well, go look at Blogger. Heart-wrenching pleas from people whose first language is far from English … you could shoot a cannon thru the place.
Totally irresponsible.
this is going to be so much bigger than blogger, and the people with the complaints will have so much more klout. they’ll have to pay attention to customers!
BL – So often .. too often companies that position as part of the “social” media world are less than “social” when it comes to customer care.
that certainly is ironic, and you are absolutely right. That’s going to have to change for companies that want to survive, let along thrive.
I use a host of Google’s free services, including some like Analytics, which are invaluable. And I use one which I pay for: Google Adwords. I often call Google Adwords customer service, and typically have a person on the line within a minute or so. Their Adwords reps are among the most expert and professional customer service/tech help people I’ve ever experienced. Apple tech help is very good – Google Adwords help is better, and a lot faster.
It seems a little unrealistic to have such unforgiving expectations over free services. I am not an apologist for Google. My alias for Google is The Googorilla, as they seem to want fingers in all aspects of information and communication services and more. Overall, though, I consider they are offering me and the company where I work an incredible value proposition with a combination of free services — and paid services which deliver great results for the money and offer fabulous customer service.
yes, overall, gmail is great, and so are the other free services. but i am having an issue that will soon be unleased on millions of other business owners: Google is requiring a transition to a new GoogleAPPS suite. and instead of providing a migration tool – which is what they should have done – they provided confusing instructions. i am one of the first businesses they demanded migration from. they will roll this out in earnest this week and trust me, there will be chaos.
There is no way Google can ask companies large and small to put all of their business needs into the hands of a company that will not respond to issues via human beings. don’t forget, Google disappeared 150,000 email account in Feb 2011. 40,000 of those are still missing. who you gonna call when that happens? Ghost Busters? good luck.
Nothing replaces having a live person to talk to when something unusual happens. I have been in customer service and sales my entire career, and I don’t know how Google will be able to manage this. They have redefined the customer experience — you’re on your own. Good luck! Why didn’t other companies think of this instead of investing so much time and money in technology, people, and processes. Maybe Google is on to something!
I’m following this issue on two fronts – a personal one, since my YouTube account was “permanently disabled” for some unknown reason a couple of years ago; and casually, as I see many people who signed up for Google+ under pseudonyms and who have ended up losing access to Google+ and to other services. Granted that neither of these issues are truly business issues, but if your consumer offerings begin to get bad word-of-mouth, that may help Microsoft and others win on the business side.
I recently had my adsense account disabled reason none
I went to adsense/google forums the only answers there are from other users no google staff ..I started a blog about what google is doing or not doing no nast words or anything bad about google that was closed by google today and my google account closed that was linked to my youtube so thats now gone along with lots of other sites I was useing linked to google …
they are becomeing a dictatorship and own more of the net and what you use than you know and if like me you dare to speak out . they take everything away with out warning or reason.