If you want to see the future of Google support, look no further than AdWords "support". This is Google's money maker, and most customers are largely ignored.
Google's "support" is basically a series of weak decision support systems that yield nothing of value, unless you're a complete noob. Email support is a guy in India that does a look up in the public knowledge base and sends you the result.
If you can get your hands on the unpublished support phone number and call it, you'll have to enter your account number. Then the system tells you nicely that you're not important enough to talk to a live person. Fine, for me I understand, I was only spending $400 a month, but there were people on forums that were spending $10K a month and getting the same treatment.
Sometimes I wonder if Google will ever be more than a text box and a button. People knock Apple and MS but these are real software companies who understand much of their business is customer support.
"If you can get your hands on the unpublished support phone number and call it, you'll have to enter your account number. Then the system tells you nicely that you're not important enough to talk to a live person."
I believe AdWords now has phone support for all AdWords customers? I did the Google search [adwords support] and the #2 link has a title of "How do I contact Google AdWords?" and that page has the toll-free phone number. Here's the blog post from April: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/free-phone-support-fo...
Google's "support" is basically a series of weak decision support systems that yield nothing of value, unless you're a complete noob. Email support is a guy in India that does a look up in the public knowledge base and sends you the result.
If you can get your hands on the unpublished support phone number and call it, you'll have to enter your account number. Then the system tells you nicely that you're not important enough to talk to a live person. Fine, for me I understand, I was only spending $400 a month, but there were people on forums that were spending $10K a month and getting the same treatment.
Sometimes I wonder if Google will ever be more than a text box and a button. People knock Apple and MS but these are real software companies who understand much of their business is customer support.