Let's be honest here. It's not that Google and Microsoft don't have support departments. It's that the price you're paying for the product is too low for them to provide general support on an individual basis.
Of course, that doesn't mean they shouldn't be working on ways to identify those very rare issues that need manual intervention and provide ways to get the support you need at that point, but that may only be 1 case in 100,000 or so.
If one out of 100,000 cases requires support staff, surely the $50 or so per year (for Google Apps business) should be enough to cover that?
Low price doesn't mean that you can never afford any service. I received a personal response/apology and vouchers from a marketing representative once after I complained by e-mail about a €2,99 food product (Iglo brand).
Google is either just greedy and reckless, or their prices are below the cost of the actual product (with no support costs factored in), but even then they could afford some level of support. But hey, if they get away with it, no big deal, right?
(Edit: another example, I have a €0,90 per month e-mail account from df.eu and receive personal, thoughtful reponses when I ask them about technical issues like TLS support - how is a much smaller company able to do that and Google isn't? It's obviously not the product price.)
Google has a fiduciary duty to shareholders, and supporting anything other than their ad products doesn't make sense from a cost-benefit perspective. I'd wager that most google products lose money, and I'm almost certain that GV is unprofitable.
Is this morally correct? That depends on ones value system. Google tells customers that they don't provide support and users continue to consume the service. If you want support, the price tag is higher than free.99.
Plenty of public companies have support departments. Support services hurt margins from a naive analysis of a business. Good support services can strengthen a brand, which can create loyal customers over time.
Amazon is a perfect example of this. Their site is convenient, Prime is handy (even though their streaming is useless), but it's their customer service which made me 'loyal.' Over the years, I've had a few items arrive damaged, including a few very expensive ones. The customer service calls seem to take at most 5 minutes. For instance, I had a computer arrive completely destroyed. I called them, explained what happened, and the rep asked whether I wanted a refund or replacement. I said "replacement," and she replied "I'll have it to you by tomorrow."
That level of service, as a consumer, means so much to me.
That doesn't make much sense. If the products are losing money and Google's fiduciary obligations to shareholders consist only of maximizing margins, Google should shut down those products. Not supporting paid products for businesses(!) will hurt more than just the reputation of those products, as a shareholder I would consider it irresponsible on behalf of Google (I'd assume that they're also pissing off some shareholders who use those products).
> It's that the price you're paying for the product is too low for them to provide general support on an individual basis.
Exactly. It's always puzzled me why they don't offer a higher tier of support for more money.
The only reason I've been able to come up with so far is that they want to keep the flexibility to rapidly evolve their services. Customers who pay more money tend to get bent out of shape when you do that. But I think there ought to be a happy medium where 1) it's understood that things can change, and 2) you have at least email support for the service you're buying, and maybe even phone support. Peace of mind is worth a lot of money for some things.
There's a real tension between stability and pace of change and finding that balance isn't easy.
That said, some Internet companies--I'd add eBay in my experience, Facebook also based on lots of stories--use huge amounts of automation and just don't seem to have the processes (and likely the staffing) to resolve problems with competent individual attention when a person has to intervene. It's partly a matter of scale but Amazon, for example, seems to do a much better job overall.
Retail, in general, is a low margin business. In any case, notwithstanding Amazon's current financials--it's been investing a lot in expansion--any retail business, even a large volume one, that can't do a reasonable job at customer service (a fair bit of which will inevitably involve talking to a human) is probably not going to be very successful.
After years of jealously/furtively reading HackerNews at my BigCo IT job, finally an advantage! I can get my account manager at MSFT and GOOG on the phone whenever I need something, and they make sure we get help quickly.
All it takes is spending a significant amount of money with them, year after year...
Of course, that doesn't mean they shouldn't be working on ways to identify those very rare issues that need manual intervention and provide ways to get the support you need at that point, but that may only be 1 case in 100,000 or so.