As a long time user of Google’s services, I’ve often been frustrated and amused by the fact that the hundreds of thousands I spend with them doesn’t give me access to even having a telephone number there (we used to have one, but it’s been recently replaced with a voicemail asking us to email). In any other company in the world, if you spend half a million or so a year, you’d expect there to be a salesperson ready to jump.
Not with the Big G though, bless ‘em.
Many are also complaining about the amount of time that it takes Google to respond to queries. Google said it would answer problems via e-mail though any response may take a day or two to arrive…. A common sentiment on the support forum was that for the $500 people have paid for the phone they should be able to call a dedicated help line. bbc.co.uk
They’ve brilliantly and efficiently changed our expectations, in part through being what is effectively a monopoly, of customer service. Granted, their email response is pretty good these days, but nonetheless seeing how a new clutch of Google customers is reacting to dealing in the Google Way is a reminder that there’s still a long way to go before every buyer can be beaten down into using the “new” ways of ecommerce.
I wonder how much we leave on the table by excluding them in what we do; or more importantly what the opportunity will be to pick up the ball of old-style customer service in the new-style economy?
