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Understanding Google My Business & Local Search

Google Expands Hours Worldwide for My Business Support

Google has expanded the hours during which they are now providing English language phone support through the Google My Business Help Center. Support is now offered from 1 AM – 5 PM PST, Monday – Friday. Previously support was offered from 6 AM to 5 PM PST.

new-hours

Obviously, this is one of the benefits of having a team in New Delhi. When you compare these time zones Google has covered business hours in the US, the UK, most of Europe and mornings in Australia (although I imagine that Berliners get to work at 7 AM. :)) and part of the afternoon in New Delhi. This would confirm what poster Jitendra Gursingh pointed out, that Google is not yet very serious about local in India.

Times Open Around the World (as best I could figure, I am time challenged even though Google offers up this very cool time conversion answer box.)
East Coast 4 AM – 9 PM
UK 9 AM – 2 AM
Melbourne 8 PM to Noon
Berlin 10 AM – 2 AM
Delhi 2:30 PM – 6:30 AM

Google first introduced live support in January 2013 in the US and it received widespread acknowledgement that it was excellent within a few months.

My experience the other day was not ideal although with training and more confident staff many of the issues I dealt with (but not all) could be fixed. It isn’t yet clear whether Google is phasing out US based support or whether they are just expanding it and using Indian support to increase their hours and cover overflow to keep response times low.

Hopefully they can do so without sacrificing quality and pushing the added costs of time onto the businesses needing support.