Ask HN: Is Google saving money in support costs? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is Google saving money in support costs?

13 pointsgtirloni10 comments

We often hear about people screwed by Google (just see the frontpage today) and not being able to contact a human or stuck with some algorithm that thinks they are a criminal.

Most common reason given is that Google uses automation a lot and their support staff is reduced. I'm baffled by this. Is it really that expensive for a company the size of Google to hire and train, say, 1-10 thousand support people and have the greatest customer satisfaction in the industry?

I have a hard time believing this is some penny counting accountant making the decisions. It sure must be more complex than that.

Thoughts?

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Their leadership doesn't think it's important, so it's not. Since their leaders don't care, it's easy for everyone else to defer to an algorithm.

I needed to contact Pixel support and the phone and text buttons were grayed out for a week and the support funnel redirected to the forum where random people pretend to be Google experts. They later put up a banner that said there would be delays due to their CS location having a monsoon or something. I can't imagine Apple leaving people stuck like that.

It's not that Google can't afford it. It's just that they don't care, because they know it won't increase their profits.

It doesn't matter if Google works terribly as long as that fact doesn't make the news. And it's Google who decides what becomes your news.

> I have a hard time believing this is some penny counting accountant making the decisions

It's not about the money, it's their philosophy. Google has one of the worst (if not the worst) customer service support in the IT world. Just because of that, I don't use any Google product if I have the chance to use alternatives.

You don't need much customer satisfaction when your products are near monopolies, there's not many alternative you can chose. For free products, it doesn't make financial sense to add support, especially when they have over a billion users each. They should invest in support in GCP and Gsuite though, because they compete there

Google has a bad reputation when it comes to intra-company coordination and cooperation.

So, aside from what others have replied, what would be the purpose of hiring 1-10 thousand support people that would have no ability to actually help the customer contacting them?

"Have you tried turning it off and on again?" would be the only response they could offer.

> and have the greatest customer satisfaction in the industry?

How much money does that translate to? They're still getting users, and lots of them. They're being paid in service fees, ad fees and data.

It's not a question of how expensive the 10k people + training + HR + management structure +... is, but whether it brings more money than it costs.

They laid off a bunch of support staff and then hired more in cheap locations [1]. That sounds like penny counting to me. Think of all the experience lost - quality must suffer.

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/google-cloud-layoffs-support...

A major reason your google account is safer then your SIM Card (and anything you use login with google for is safer then anything where someone might reset your password with access to your phone number) is that google doesn't have support, whereas with your SIM Card anyone can tell a sob story to their customer service rep and get access to your phone number.

I think Google has support for some things but not most. For example, if you are a Google Workspace (previously GSuite) customer, they do offer Live Chat and my experience was positive the last time I used it. Do they not offer similar support for GCloud ?

They are probably losing billions because of bad support but its billions to stoke egos and not have to worry about those pesky little humans.

Also, slippery slope fallacy at play I suspect

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