Thanks for your help and for responding here, but I hope you guys at Google know that this seems like a major organization-level problem. There's a big perception that Google has no real customer support for anything, even if there's pretty serious amounts of money involved, fueled by a regular drumbeat of blog posts about people who had their entire livelihood shut down for unexplained reasons with no possible recourse. It's kind of like the "five whys" failure analysis. Yes, this particular automated workflow was broken, but that's not the real problem. The real problem is the lack of human support that can turn issues like this from a crisis to a minor hiccup.
It seems like you guys really need to get some call centers filled with people with some level of diagnostic ability and problem-solving authority. Yes, this is expensive and difficult to get built, but if you really want to Reduce Customer Anxiety, nothing can do that like the knowledge that there's a real person available 24/7 who can fix any problems on Google's side. Make it pay per incident or by subscription if needed to keep the jokers out, but anything is a whole lot better than nothing.
Even the phrase "Reduce Customer Anxiety" would increase my anxiety if I were a customer (and steels my resolve not to become one of their "acceptably-anxious customers").
"Reduce", not "remove" - it's stinks of implying there's an acceptable level of "customer anxiety" that their platform should generate, and someone's set some easily-measurable metrics and a bunch of people's KPIs - and those people are now all working out how to game the metrics instead of solve the problems. "Hey, my bonus depends on reducing the clicks on the "Request an appeal" button. What's the easiest way to meet that goal? I _could_ start handling customer service in a professional and sympathetic way - but that's not "The Google Way". I know, I'll just move the button to a different place this quarter, rename it next quarter, and remove it all together before the end of the year."
Sorry Google-people - I know you all don't think you're doing evil, but there'a a hell of a reputation you got to overcome on the "Google just doesn't do customer service" issue.
It seems like you guys really need to get some call centers filled with people with some level of diagnostic ability and problem-solving authority. Yes, this is expensive and difficult to get built, but if you really want to Reduce Customer Anxiety, nothing can do that like the knowledge that there's a real person available 24/7 who can fix any problems on Google's side. Make it pay per incident or by subscription if needed to keep the jokers out, but anything is a whole lot better than nothing.