Posts tagged Profanity

Google as a company pledge to not be evil and are the largest and most popular search engine, encompassing the globe for search, e-mail and other cloud based applications. I’ve watched this company start from a relatively obscure search engine evolve into a giant in providing services for consumers. I myself am very much in bed with Google. They manage my mail, my calendar, I have their phone with their operating system that syncs my contacts and settings to them. I also subscribe to Latitude and Buzz, use their Google Docs, their website analytic services and their Checkout for both buying and selling. (I even use their web browser!)

So yes, for me, Google has become ubiquitous. They know where I am, who I talk to, what I say, where I live and my bank details. It’s a tremendous wealth of information and a tremendous amount of faith that I put in to this company as I allow them to encroach more and more into my life, attempting to make it better.

The problem with all this power (excuse the cliché) is that it also means they have a large amount of responsibility. Google has to assure it’s users that it can address any issue that it’s users experience in a timely manner and that it wont provide cookie cutter answers via e-mail and hope the user goes away and figures out the problem themselves. Which may I add is probably just as likely as the user tripping over the meaning of this universe whilst out for a brisk stroll in the countryside with their dog.

The point is, over the last month, I became an Android developer and paid for that privilege. I also set-up a Google Checkout Merchant account so that if I did produce revenue from the applications that I built in my own time, I could eventually access it and put it towards server costs. However, when setting up the account the Google Checkout site completely broke down and I sent numerous e-mails to their support team via their help pages. There is no phone support and no direct e-mail, just a generic inbox. I got a response 24 hours later stating that the problem was fixed. It was not. So more e-mails were sent.

I had a look at the Google Groups and found a couple of threads and commented and added the cookie cutter e-mails that I had received so far. Quite a substantial number of users complained of the same problem and the lack of decent Google technical support. Close to two days after the incident and after many more cookie cutter responses with no time-scale on a fix or even a hint at what the problem was, The Register picked up on people getting more than just annoyed in this article. A few hours after this appeared on the internet, the problem was fixed.

Now I provide customer support at work all the time ranging from application failure and bug reports to supporting end users on varying mobile handsets and handling digital pens. The thing that stinks with Google’s so called support is that it is so impersonal and as generic as possible.

What would had been better is firstly not to send templated e-mails to users. The information is rarely relevant and shows no context of the problem that the user was having. This also infuriates users and highlights that the customer support team are either ill equipped or just don’t want to know.

Second would be to publish a public announcement to let users know that there is a problem, they know about it and any information on cause and resolution time scale. Google did none of this until The Register took notice of the users, which in my mind is shameful customer support. Considering Google make money from Google Checkout transactions, they should be hang their heads in shame at this massive failure, that is the perfect example of how not to support customers and loose business.

Now, that happened well close to 2 months ago, however the reason for this post is because yet again I am stumped by Google’s not-so-fantastic support for the same product. In my case, I’ve been trying to verify my bank details and was sent a generic e-mail with a couple of links which looked like it was copied directly from their help site. I followed one set of instructions, this did not change the situation and I spend a good half an hour running round the not-so-helpful documentation running round in circles. The Google Groups has unanswered threads on this and were informed that only direct e-mails will enable Google to sort this problem out.

So I am awaiting another cookie cutter response back from Google. Sadly I am now left with the sinking feeling that now that I have become one with the hive mind that is Google, is this the shape of things to come when I encounter a problem ? For theirs and my own sake, I really hope not.