Naturally, call volumes were higher than expected. I can only assume that whoever was in charge of predicting call volumes had recent suffered a traumatic brain injury and was unable to count beyond five without pulling their other hand out of their fundament.

The cheerful woman warbled through her pre-recorded script and was suddenly replaced with a hideous electronic monstrosity. I recorded the call³ so that you can experience this monument to synthetic glory!

This is from a company whose website gushes about how innovative it is. AI is transforming its business at scale! Dedicated to technological excellence and delivering ISO accredited quality in all its divisions! And yet, somewhere, someone decided that customer experience was good enough.

"Dogfooding" is a sacred practice in the tech industry. Use your own products. That's it. That's all you have to do. For example, if you work for Slack - you can't use Teams for your messaging solution. You have to show people that you have faith in your own products.

But it goes deeper than that. When I used to work for mobile phone networks, they asked us to spend time in call centres. It isn't enough to receive a quarterly report on customer KPIs. You have to hear the rage in customers' voices as they struggle with your billing system. Perhaps that will convince you to have empathy with the people paying to use your product.

There's an oft told story about Jeff Bezos pausing a meeting to call his own customer service number - and waiting over 10 minutes for an answer. When was the last time the CEO of the above company called their own customer support line?

It's all very well to experience your own product when it is working, but when was the last time anyone in the above organisation went through a "difficult" customer journey.

By contrast, I recently cancelled a subscription to a small start-up's service. Someone from their senior leadership team asked if they could call to chat about why I cancelled. I said sure and had an enjoyable half-hour whinge / chat about their failings. At almost every complaint, they replied either "Oh, yeah, I also find that annoying" or "Huh, I've not experienced that, but I can see why it would suck."

At no point did they ever say "Our metrics don't show a problem" or "Do people really care about that?"

Maybe I was being flattered. Maybe it's a waste of senior leadership time to start every meeting with a ritual phone call to the call centre. Maybe I'm the only one who gets annoyed when people can't be bothered to put the bare minimum effort into their job.

But, maybe, breathing in the noxious output of barely digested slurry is the only way to get people to improve their diet.

It was quite the culture shock.

To us, it felt weird, insincere, and creepy. But, like the over-enthusiastic whooping and cheering from US sitcom audiences, it seemed to be an accepted part of the culture.

A few years later, the Disney Store in the UK decided that they needed to import this style of greater. I remember walking into a store and seeing a clearly mortified teenager reciting the same spiel as in the American stores.

It was not a success. British culture doesn't really do over-the-top, flowery, purple-prose. It reads to us as sarcasm. I'm not saying this is an attractive characteristic of the average Britisher - but it is noticeable. It causes great cognitive dissonance when American friends and colleagues give us praise - surely they are being insincere? But, no, everything is awesome to them.

With the rise of International English, most countries' linguistic foibles get absorbed into the zeitgeist. We do the needful once we have circled back and then get into a muddle over what the verb "to table" means. Mostly, it works. Mostly.

Recently, I had a chat with an Amazon UK customer service assistant. I assume that they weren't in the UK and were outsourced to a country where the weather is hotter and the standard of written English is good enough. They were incredibly helpful so I finished my conversation with a well-intentioned "have a lovely day".

In return, I got this:

Wow! My initial thought was that they were being heavily sarcastic. If someone in a UK shop had said that to me in person, I'd assume they wanted to step outside for a punch-up. Seriously, that's fighting words over here! And the implied threat to my family...?

Of course, it is none of that. They probably have a list of canned responses which they can pre-select. Responses which have been extensively focus-grouped and found to be awesome. Or maybe I wasn't talking to a human - perhaps a bot just decided to repay my compliment as though I were an American.

Anyway, if you're doing prompt-engineering on an LLM please be sure to set the sarcasm detection to the lowest common denominator!

Reactions from the Fediverse

Recently, I received an email saying that a driver had delivered a parcel. They'd dumped it on my porch without ringing the bell, then ran back to their vehicle. That's fair enough. These people are given hellishly ambitious targets and they don't want to hang around chatting.

But this was on the email I received.

That's... weird. Right? I mean, no one enjoys delivering parcels. It's a thankless career, lifting heavy packages, trying to find suitable parking, not having a loo stop. I hated doing it when it was my job.

One of my Twitter friends explained what was going on. The courier company - in this case Hermes - encourages their drivers to add their photo and little bit of personal information. Here's the Hermes screen for drivers:

I kinda get it. If a stranger knocks on the door, it might be nice to know what they look like before opening the door to them. If a blonde woman is at the door, when the email says to expect a red-headed man, they might be an imposter.

All that assumes that I can easily recognise people through frosted glass from a poorly-lit selfie-cam. Hmmm...

But it is the "interests" section that bothers me the most. And I want to understand if I'm alone in my misanthropy.

Feedback from customers shows that when a courier engages them in conversation, Customer Satisfaction scores are much higher. Personalisation is a great tool to help you kick off those interactions.

I can't remember ever having a "conversation" with a courier. At most it is a "Cheers, mate!" or "Yes, that's my name" before they sprint away. Does the courier want to converse with me? Or are they desperate to get their round finished on time?

Perhaps it harks back to the mythical time when we had a village postman who would take an unhurried saunter through the streets and stop for a natter with everyone. I don't think that time ever existed.

Perhaps it stops drivers from receiving abuse? When you know the name of someone, and they have human interests, are you less likely to scream at them because Amazon have fucked up yet again!!!?

Perhaps it increases abuse? If your courier is a fan of that other football team, are you going to kick the shit out of them?

More likely it is a weird management fad that values the nebulous Net Promoter Score more than anything. Sacrificing the privacy of drivers in a vain attempt to cover up the brutal conditions the company subjects them to.

The CEO of Hermes UK, Martijn De Lange, doesn't list any personal hobbies or interests on his LinkedIn page. Pity.

In an ideal world, no one would ever need to contact customer services. Every step of one's interaction with a company would take place online and be hassle free. All the information would be available on the web. Problems could simply be fixed by reading an FAQ. No mistakes would be made by either party. In those rare occasions where something did go wrong, the "community" would provide free peer-to-peer help in official forums.

Unfortunately for Google, we live in the real world. Things go wrong and - understandably - people want to email or call someone who will fix it.

For the last few months, I've been gathering examples of where Google's utter contempt towards its paying customers is starting to generate real ill-will towards the company.

I want to make it very clear - moaning on websistes doesn't necessarily indicate a widespread problem and, if it did, Google is so tightly ingrained in many vital services that even a significant loss of goodwill may not immediately effect its fortunes.

These are just a few illustrative examples.

Examples

Doc Block

At the start of 2013, Oxford University's network team blocked access to Google Docs for their entire userbase. They were under sustained attack from phishers who were using Google Docs as an attack vector. So, they felt they had no choice but to totally blockade the service. What was their alternative? As they explain:

Google's own security team have advised us that the best way is to use the “Report abuse” link that’s at the bottom of each page. Easy enough.

Unfortunately, you then need to wait for them to take action. Of late that seems typically to take a day or two; in the past it’s been much longer, sometimes on a scale of weeks.

Oxford Univerty blocks access to Google Docs. Original emphasis.

Now, it's right and proper that Google takes their time investigating "abuse". We all know that spurious reports are filed in order to make mischief. But when a service is being weaponised and actively used to attack your customers, surely your security response needs to be immediate? A lag of a couple of days just isn't sufficient any more.

Nexus Schmexus

Google's flagship phone - the LG Nexus 4 - is supposed to offer a "pure Google experience". If you expect your Google experience to be fraught with delays, mixups, erratic or non-existent communication - you'll feel right at home!

Unlike most other Google customers, Nexus 4 owners have paid a significant chunk of money directly to Google. Does that buy them any loyalty from Mountain View? No, of course not.

Potential owners have created sites dedicated to documenting the abominable customer service experience Google have delivered.

A typical review of the purchasing experience is blogged by Eyal Sivan:

So I called Play support. While the rep was very nice, she had absolutely no information. All she could tell me was that my order had not gone through because there was a 'glitch' (which I already knew), and that I should wait for my email notification (which I don't believe anyone, anywhere has ever received).

After speaking to her supervisor, she also assured me that more would be available later today (which I assume is more blatant misinformation), but she could not tell me a specific time (and even if she did, who knows if it would be true, as the last one was not). So I opened a case, and am (somewhat) expecting a call back from the supervisor.

Look, delays happen. Selling out of a hotly anticipated item happens. Shit, it turns out, happens! But it's what a company does when there's a cock-up which makes or breaks them. People will accept problems as long as they have confidence that the company knows what's going on and has a plan to resolve the issues. And that requires something which isn't Google's strong suit - open and frank communication.

The worst part of this entire debacle has been the lack of direct communication from Google. Very disappointing. Nexus in shipping limbo.

Droid Rage

What would you do if your customers wrote to you with suggestions for your product? What if they all clubbed together on an official forum that you created and politely notified you of bugs? Imagine thousands of people who had paid hundreds of dollars saying "wouldn't it be cool if we had feature X" - what would your response be?

If you said "Ignore them. Don't even acknowledge their existence. Make a concerted effort to implement less important features, and concentrate on lower priority bugs." then, congratulations! You can work on Google's Android team!

Last year I wrote about how Google ignores its Android customers.

Google are ignoring customers complaining about everything from Android's poor BlueTooth support to poor calendar support.

Perhaps the most egregious example - a bug which has been open for 5 years. No one from Google has even commented on it. How does it make sense to ignore such strong feeling from your customers?

In all these examples, we can only count the number of people who have bothered to find the official forum and complain - the actual number is likely much higher.

As one wag put it

In September 2009, I had my body frozen in cryo-sleep for 3 years and 3 months... assuming that, when I would awaken in December 2012, this issue would certainly have been fixed by then, and I could go on living a happy life with a new, brilliant Android device.

Oh well... back to sleep.

Can you imagine any company which would actively solicit feedback from its users and then routinely ignored it?

These are only a few examples. Google's official forums are littered with paying customers who aren't being supported. They can't phone, their emails go unanswered, so impotently ranting on the web is all they have left.

This Isn't News

Google has been very upfront about its approach to ignoring customer service. This official video from Google explains succinctly why they don't prioritise customer service:

Google estimates that they would need to hire over 20,000 customer service people to deal with 1 query every three years from each customer. So it has decided - as far as possible - to employ zero people and rely on algorithms. That is, I would suggest, an extreme option.

Customer service is the price you pay for being a successful company. You can try to mitigate the need for your customers to contact you, but you can't eliminate it. You can't ignore them hammering on your door. You can't abdicate all responsibility.

Some areas of Google recognise this. For example, the Chromebook team reacts to complaints on official forums. But it isn't enough.

Geeks like me are very good at ignoring anything which doesn't fit into our world view. Everything would be so much better if people followed processes, and didn't have to interact with humans. Sadly, that's not how most of the real world works.

You can't sell a vision and then fail to deliver on it - that's a recipe for disaster, as I explained in Love Thy Vendor.

Google revolutionised how we search for information and how we interact with the web. It's now time for Google to experience an internal revolution and dramatically improve how they interact with their customers.