
Google Fails the Turing Test - d2vid
https://plus.google.com/114419328456762929144/posts/NAJbzrZwWNj
======
calinet6
Why is it that Google gets a free pass on customer support?

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?

~~~
aditya
_but there is absolutely no circumstance in the entire company where a
customer can reach a person and receive true support._

Google Apps has great phone support if you're paying for it:
[http://contact.googleapps.com/?&rd=1](http://contact.googleapps.com/?&rd=1)

~~~
tlogan
No it DOES NOT. For example, delivery to our email is delayed by up to 48
hours and no help from them. The ticket is open for a month and each phone
conversation starts from zero (disable filters, clear up cookies, bla bla).
There is no follow up, progress, etc.

------
alanctgardner2
This man has far more faith in Google than I do... I ordered on day one, and
gave up after about 6 weeks. While the Note II isn't perfect, I could buy one
in a store right away.

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.

------
josh2600
This sucks.

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.

~~~
acc00
Indeed, dehumanization appears to be an important issue.

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.

~~~
pnathan
> 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.

------
driverdan
I ordered an item from Amazon with free 2 day shipping (prime). The tracking
never said anything more than that the label had been created. I waited about
a week and contacted Amazon. They immediately sent me a free replacement.
Eventually the lost package came as well.

This is how customer support _should_ handle this type of situation.

~~~
pytrin
Amazon are amazing and have figured out how to scale customer service and
satisfaction. Most large companies can take a note of out their notebook for
handling customers

------
Afforess
Google customer support is notoriously bad. Support for their flagship
products, gmail, google docs, etc is non-existent. For example, gmail
filtering + email forwarding have been broken for over a year, with no fix in
sight. So I'm not surprised to see that support isn't good in other area's
either. It's really a shame because Google is a great company, with great
products and a great vision, and it hurts to see sloppy execution.

~~~
quasque
"gmail filtering + email forwarding have been broken for over a year"

Could you elaborate on this please?

~~~
knite
Seconded! This is the first I've heard of problems with Gmail's
filtering/forwarding.

~~~
nivla
I think it has to do with that post where someone missed out on important
legal mails because gmail chose to only forward those mails that passed their
spam test.

~~~
Natsu
Can't you use the "never mark this as spam" option? I haven't tested that,
however, so it's possible that it wouldn't work.

~~~
nivla
Yes you can and there are other tricks too. However, since its not the default
behavior and given that most people don't realize it when setting up
forwarding, it can be considered a bug.

------
mullingitover
I've worked in customer service, and the reps use 'canned text' all the time
for common issues. I assumed this was common knowledge. Not doing so would be
a recipe for RSI within a couple weeks.

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).

~~~
dylan-m
I've never seen the software on the other side of a tech support email, but I
have trouble imagining that in practice. When I am trying to interact with a
customer service rep that only communicates through canned responses, it will
inevitably take me three times as long, with maybe five times more writing
(both from me and from them) than was necessary. I can't be the only one who
has this experience.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
That's because they are having five conversations at once.

    
    
      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
    

_Ad infinitum_

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.

~~~
mullingitover
The article is talking about email, but in the case of live chat it varies
from company to company. I did my time in chat support, but in my case I wrote
my own templates and triggered them with AutoHotKey. By the time I left I'd
written a bible of hotkeys for supporting our app.

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.

------
qohen
One point I haven't seen anyone discuss yet in the comments below: the author
mentions that, after seeing that the phone was sold out, he kept refreshing
the browser till he got a copy of the webpage that allowed him to buy the
phone.

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?

~~~
theevocater
Why should a user "know" they got a cached page and not that more phones came
up for sale? How could you possibly spin this as somehow being the users fault
for not "knowing"?

~~~
qohen
Perhaps because I've had my own odd experiences with online and offline
commerce, as well as having read about others' on FatWallet.com, I may tend to
see red flags where others don't.

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.

------
pja
I was recently asked to fill in a 'customer experience report' for my Nexus 4
purchase by Google. Lets just say, that whilst the service I got wasn't quite
the clown car special that this guy was given, it wasn't great either. Not
that I expect them to take a blind bit of notice of my carefully worded
response.

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.

------
rryan
I know using a phone is so 20th century but Google Play actually has a
dedicated call center for providing support. When I ordered a Nexus 7 back in
July I was wondering when it would arrive so I called. Within 2 minutes of
waiting I was talking to a friendly human.

~~~
luke_s
Really? When my nexus 7 had a broken screen I tried to phone them up but the
only number was in the United States. That may be wonderful if you live in the
United States, but it seems the rest of the world will just have to do without
...

~~~
usaphp
Get a Skype mate. Its just 89 cents per month to call to USA.
<http://www.skype.com/en/rates/>

~~~
Dylan16807
Can you screenshot that or something? The only price for US calls I have ever
heard is $3.

------
sergiotapia
> 10 weeks of waiting

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.

~~~
markdown
It was a pre-order.

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.

------
patejam
Cheap products, great products, and good support. Pick two.

~~~
Dylan16807
They're not cheap.

~~~
notatoad
In what universe does a $299 nexus 4 not count as cheap?

~~~
jmillikin
A new iPhone costs $200 from any major US carrier. Most other Android phones
are between $100 and $200.

At $300 or $350, the Nexus 4 is priced as a premium device.

~~~
notatoad
If i go to the AT&T website, they list the iPhone 5 at $649. you get a $450
subsidy by signing up for a 2-year contract, but that doesn't mean the phone
is priced at $199.

~~~
jmillikin
Say you buy the phone for $650, and then sign up for service at $80/month or
whatever AT&T charges.

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.

~~~
driverdan
Or, you buy a $299 Nexus 4 and sign up for $45/m no contract service instead
of $80+/m 2 year contract.

~~~
jmillikin
Please direct me to an American carrier that offers the same service for
$80/month with contract and $45/month without.

~~~
wmf
Straight Talk provides a $45 plan that's very similar to a much more expensive
AT&T plan. (Perhaps most iPhone owners are too cool to step into Wal-Mart.)

------
TillE
Copy and pasting the same snippet of generic polite text is excusable, but
what can possibly explain the lack of context? Surely you'd only need to
glance at the past activity on the ticket (ie, your own emails that you just
sent a couple days ago) to avoid giving the same stupid, useless response.

It's either a poorly-programmed robot, or a human acting very much like one.

------
pserwylo
I wonder how this fits into Australian Consumer Law (ACL) [0]. We have a
relatively robust set of rules that govern how a business selling a
product/service interacts with their customers.

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>)

------
mmuro
It's a cop-out to call Google an engineering company like they are still the
small company that is just a search engine.

If they want to be a consumer electronics company, they should probably start
acting like one and have actual humans deal with these problems.

------
webwanderings
Not making a whole lot of sense. You gamed the system by having three
different browsers place an order (imagine how it must have been like?) and
then you complain? Where is ethics of placing an order online? Wouldn't you
have been better off following what your single browser screen said the first
time?

------
baby
That's the problem with Google. There is NO customer support. I had a website
back in the days that was bringing me good money. A spam alerts from google
tells me that I have to delete some spam pages of my website (which is
generated by user content) in the 3 next work days otherwise they'll ban my
account. I look through the pages and CAN'T find anything spammy, I decide to
mail them something along those lines "I'm sorry but I can see no reference of
what you want me to erase, can you please provide more informations?". No
answers and 3 days later I was banned from Google Ads.

Twist : My website was in multiple language and the page they sent me was in a
different language, I had not think of that.

------
triplesec
Google sucks on this support. This makes me shy away from their phones and buy
Samsung's. Which is practically the same hardware anyway, but with a vaguely
human company behind it.

------
dendory
Google sucks at customer support, news at 11.

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.

------
3327
This post is scary. I have been operating under a new set of rules. I refuse
to by goods/services from customer service deficient firms. It has been
working great and dealing with small teams and companies that provide
fantastic service makes your life easy and efficient. Not to mention building
great relationships. I make sure to buy a service from a startup, e.g cloud
storage rather than for instance Amazon.

------
cardine
I've had my own horror stories with Adwords. Google has by far the worst
support of any company I've ever had to deal with in my entire life.

------
jordanbaucke
What is UPS's response? Seems you should talk to the carrier if it's stated
that it's "on truck for delivery" and ask for their explanation?

~~~
eclipticplane
You cannot get very detailed information about a package (tracking number)
unless you are the shipper. Google would have to inquire with UPS about the
tracking number.

UPS support will generally only parrot the same information you can get
through tracking it on their website.

~~~
jordanbaucke
Oh my bad...sadly all this seems very "typical" of Google support ...
something didn't go right? Visit a forum.

Ok ... 2nd idea ... charge-back the order on your credit card with the
already. Claim fraud whatever...at least you'll have your money.

~~~
xentronium
> 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.

~~~
fusiongyro
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.

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?

~~~
xentronium
> 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.

~~~
fusiongyro
I think a policy of intentionally fucking over your users would get a lot of
bad press. You can't hold people hostage.

------
damian2000
If you're parting with hard earned cash to buy something, there's no reason
you can't expect good customer service from the seller, even if some of their
service is automated. They really need to take some lessons from Amazon.

------
acqq
Daavid, I really enjoyed your writing! Near the end I laughed out loud.
Although, thinking about your experience... I could see how frustrating that
could be :)

I agree, with such an experience, Google cars don't seem like a good idea at
all.

------
YZF
UPS has just delivered my Nexus 4 today here in BC, Canada. I shouldn't have
rewarded Google with my business but there is really no competition for this
product. If there was I would have taken my business there.

------
pilooch
The last two paragraphs are hilarious, thanks for taking the time and writing
this! Like anyone else I had my share of ridiculous shipment problems, but
this guy remains playful (and cheerful!), wow :)

------
swalsh
Can you imagine how much we would accept google into our lives if they had an
equal amount of engineering, but awesome customer service?

------
matthuggins
Upvote because Google CS sucks, plain and simple. I've experienced similar
troubles with AdSense.

------
obilgic
Problem loading Google+

There was a problem loading the Google+ CSS. Please double check your network
connection and try reloading in a few minutes.

~~~
d2vid
You should probably contact their customer support.

------
badgar
Story is probably 100% true. Won't argue with any of the substance, which will
likely be discussed in other threads.

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.

~~~
d2vid
Haha, I am most assuredly a real person, not a paid actor. My girlfriend got
tired of me venting about it and actually being angry, so I turned my anger
into humorous flourish.

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?

~~~
eclipticplane
How do we know you're not a robot? We're going to need you to complete this
series of captchas...

~~~
d2vid
I think we need a "not a microsoft employee" captcha. Uh, how about, "Bing
sucks"?

~~~
Matt_Cutts
Hey, I don't have anything to do with the Play Store or the Nexus 4, but I
just wanted to say that I'm sorry that you had such a bad experience. My hope
is that Google learns from feedback like your experience so that we don't make
these kinds of mistakes in the future. But I'm sorry that trying to get the
Nexus 4 was so frustrating. :(

~~~
d2vid
Thanks Matt, I appreciate it. What's so frustrating for me is that I want
Google to be the good guys. I want to be able to recommend any and all Google
products to friends and family. I hold Google in high esteem, which made this
interaction that much worse because it was so far from what I think Google is
capable of.

------
recoiledsnake
A lot of responses here seem to say that support for cheap/free phones is not
profitable. That's not a good excuse. Amazon doesn't really make much money on
the Kindle hardware, but the support is amazing.

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.

~~~
wmf
Amazon has to mark up products over wholesale to cover the cost of things
like... the customer support that they actually provide. In the Play store
Google can sell the Nexus at wholesale to make it look cheaper.

~~~
bencxr
The question is, if Google sold the Nexus (say, $329 from $299) with a slight
markup to raise their support, would you still buy it?

