From a scale perspective for Google, this makes sense because it’s easier to distribute the support to thousands of third parties than to hire staff to manage the inquiries.

Google has decided to task a team out of Ann Arbor (Adwords location) that calls on clients to help “optimize” their PPC campaign. While then paying around $10 for top 4 placement on searches like “Dallas Plumbing Company” Google made the recommendation (I had no idea) to create ad groups catering to “clogged toilet” and slapped a $27 Max CPC on it. Obviously I was infuriated that an “Adwords Specialist” that actually checks out as a Google employee had ever made such a ludicrous suggestion in the first place. Was it to drive revenue? Or was the “Specialist” clueless to what it costs to clear a clogged toilet and that Adwords average conversion rate would not make that keyword economically viable to advertise under (with that Max CPC)?

Sorry to rant…my concerns are that there might only be a small group of individuals at the company (Google) currently that could actually field the day to day questions that SMBs have for them. The cost of creating a trained and qualified force of reps could easily be too daunting for Google to consider.

It would be a pity, shame, and totally inappropriate for Google to reduce the current minimal level of customer service w/in G Maps.

As has been noted before in this blog, as it applies to Google Maps….”with great power comes great responsibility”.

Generally, in the past, Google has shirked meeting the level of responsbility in responding to problems, complaints, etc. Now Google is ramping up its efforts to pull revenues from smbs.

Come on fellas. If you have structured this in a way to limit service…you are going to create an outcry of complaints. Hope this isn’t the case. I’m going to test the visibility, level of comments, and responses for myself before rendering my own comments…but from Mike’s review, it doesn’t sound good for all those with problems vis a vis google maps.

I think your assessment of the cultural issues explains the early days of Google approach to social communication. But I think that they and their investors soon found that it is an extremely profitable way when it comes to customer service.

If they can drive all of the human costs out of their customer contact arena via engineering then their net income soars. However, this approach appears incompatible with a build quickly and reiterate often philosophy that regularly introduces and/or ignores bugs. It is also incompatible with the mind set of the smb that works so hard to provide personal interactions.

@Angela There are still a great many problems with Maps. I assume that you are from Europe? As we have not seen the incorrect phone format on this side of the pond…but there are a enough “features” and bugs that stand between the SMB and success that Google needs to think about increased support until they improve the process.

You’d think that some of us who are just trying to clean up Google Maps and make information accurate and readily available (doesn’t that align with Google’s overall philosophy supposedly?) they’d listen to us a little bit more…