That's hilarious! Having run a few call centers, the costs involved in upping service levels from, say, 80% of calls answered in 20 seconds to, say, 98% in 10 seconds, grow geometrically.

If regulations were passed that mandated service levels, many companies would take Google's approach and simply not offer phone support at all. And we all know how great their support is.

The solution is to not use any services from monopolies, as the article points out. But of course, that's impossible for most people.

I recently had to call to pay a highway toll because their system for accepting payments online was broken.

The IVR was an endless tree of options, and at each option, it would point out how much time I would save if I paid online. It took several minutes to navigate the phone tree before being placed on hold. Pressing 0 didn't help.

I made a point of spending time with the agent talking about the problems with the phone tree. I did so very politely but also very slowly and verbosely - it took several minutes.

I think if we were able to create a social convention where people waste n or 2n minutes of the agent's time when the company has wasted n minutes of their times, it could change the incentives.

Right now companies save money by having long times. If we could create a movement to do this, leaving customers on hold too long would lead to congestive collapse. Long hold times would end up costing more money than simply having adequate staffing.

Google does offer phone support (and email etc), with SLAs - however this is for their paid offerings (I.e. Google Apps, which is like Gmail/Calendar/Docs/Drive etc). Google Apps start at $5 a month, so the entry price isn't astronomical.

For free products, there's support on official forums.

Uh, if there were mandated service levels then Google would have to live up to those too...? Presumably this would be an acceptable-or-you-get-fined deal, not an acceptable-or-nothing-at-all deal.

It will be hard to argue (esp. in front of judges) for SLAs on free services.

I've dropped similar SLAs on 3rd party contractors. They can hire exponentially more support people, or fix their shit. The latter is usually cheaper.

Google offers customer support by phone.

Really? What's the number for help with gmail? I can't find it anywhere on their site. YouTube either, if it's different.

Also, I need a number to reach support at Facebook, if you have it.

If you pay for Google Apps they do. I've had to call them a few times, and they were actually fairly helpful, even calling me back the next day to make sure the problem was resolved.

Judging by the number they called me from their call center is in Ireland.

Customer

Gmail: 1-877-355-5787 YouTube: 1-855-500-2756

Never done business with Facebook, can't help you there sorry!

Facebook outsources support to certified regional specialists.

You can find contact information for your region/niche on their partner directory site: https://facebookmarketingpartners.com/

>>Also, I need a number to reach support at Facebook, if you have it.

You don't pay to use Facebook, so you don't get support.

Google does provide phone support to Google Business accounts, though, since those cost money.

They offer support over the phone for products they charge customers for.

Seems like extending 30-day return policies further out might achieve this. Random commoditized tech I get off Amazon/eBay frequently has a note asking to contact them first to resolve any issues before returning and/or submitting negative feedback. I'd imagine the sellers would not be as accommodating, were it not for Amazon's no-questions-asked-customer-is-always-right return policy.

Yay, another set of regulations for business owners to navigate (it's pretty hard to keep up with the existing ones) and another government agency to manage and enforce them.

I'm more than happy to let the free market work this one out.

Yeah. My internet tech support has been incredible. I have many amazing stories. All possible because the big telecoms were forced to wholesale, allowing competitors to exist in at least a limited capacity.

I will never go back to rogers or Bell again simply because of how amazing the support is at teksavvy.

What specific regulations do you have trouble navigating?

Ever interacted with the equivalent of tech support for government processes or services? I have, and it doesn't inspire me to put government on the list of potential ways to solve tech support.

They do need a regulation that we can cancel a service using the same methods as ordering the service. If I can order a service online, I should be able to cancel it online.

Which companies would be subject to such regulation? For instance, a startup without an established customer support center would be fined and forced to shut down because of those fines or because of the money spent on customer center ?

What would be the kpi for customer service? Time spent on the wait line? Customer ratings?! Business days before an email reply? What if someone malicious starts DDoS me with fake customer service requests just to make me unable to deliver an "acceptable standard of customer support service"?

Or the "free market" solution would be to allow those calling tech support to pay an extra $50 per hour fee for priority service with a knowledgable human

This is my employer's support model, and it works pretty well - all customers get unlimited ticket/email support, and you can upgrade to phone and live chat support for a percentage of your monthly bill.

It's like the saying that 20% of your customers use 80% of your support. This way you can incentivize those customers to pay a premium for even more of the support package they obviously want. Everyone else can have the minimal support interaction they prefer.

Although if I encountered that as a customer I would be suspicious that the free support is being made deliberately bad to artificially drive revenue of the premium support team.

Hah. I would give my left nut to have competent helpdesk people on the other end, and I'm a vendor who's dealing with the higher-level management and IT people in these organizations. I can't imagine how poorly trained and skilled the front-line techs are.

Perhaps said regulator could start by regulating the IRS and the DMV.

The government can start with improving customer support at DMV Currently, it's 4 months wait to schedule a driving test and 2 months wait to schedule an office appointment. Of course, if you have an urgent issue you can just visit DMV without an appointment but you should be ready to spend 3+ hours waiting in line.

If you're not satisfied with the amount of personnel at DMV, then you should vote the guys out who cut their personnel budget time and time again.