Overlooking the obvious


slabInvest in Android. Check. Sign up telco partners for Android. Check. Develop our own Google-branded phone. Check. Rehearse big launch event for Nexus One. Check. Open online store. Check. Set up customer support system. Uh… whoops.

Looks like someone at Google forgot their Boy Scout motto. Thanks to a surprising lack of preparedness, Google’s support forums are now flooded with Nexus One owners searching for answers. No luck with T-Mobile either — they just send you back to Google, where the best you can do is send an email and wait up to 48 hours for a response.

Chalk this up to Google’s rookie status in the hardware biz. It took Apple many years to build a seamless, positive customer path from ads to Apple Store to packaging to post-purchase care. At this point, Google’s phone business is, to be kind, just a wee a bit looser.

No company battling for the hearts and minds of customers can rest on the the laurels of hardware or software. They have to build a rich and happy customer experience. There are many ways Google can do this — but they might start by answering their phone.

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This entry was posted on Monday, January 11th, 2010 at 9:30 am and is filed under strategy, technology. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.

  • http://scottworldblog.wordpress.com Scott Rose

    Yep. This goes hand-in-hand with Google’s lack of support for ALL of their products.

    Good luck trying to find someone at Google if you need help with Gmail, Google Apps, Blogger, YouTube, Wave, etc.

    Google doesn’t care at all about the customer experience — they just care about selling ads.

    And none of their products ever end up in a finished state. Gmail is still half-baked, they bought Blogger and then let it wither and die on the vine (Blogger hasn’t seen a single improvement since Google bought it), and don’t even get me started on the completely broken statistics system on YouTube.

    Google should stop trying to be Microsoft — trying to break into every single market in the world — and stick with the only thing they know: SEARCH.

  • no

    This is just regular modus operandi of google.
    to invite super nerds to build the hype
    and be tester for them.
    but this time they have gone too far
    because regular media hyped to regular
    people.
    Of course Android is just a giant beta product
    but they just can’t use that as an excuse any more.

  • http://Jorgephotoblog.com Jorge Carvalho

    I was waiting for this to happen also :

    “Suspicious applications that may have stolen users’ online banking credentials have appeared on the Android Market, the Google-run app store for its mobile operating system.

    Although the potentially-malicious applications first appeared on Google’s online mart in December, news of them went public only Monay as several outlets and security companies noticed warnings posted by banks and credit unions. Google has since removed the applications from the online market.”
    …
    “Unlike Apple, which runs its App Store for the iPhone, Google does not vet Android applications that appear in its online store. That’s a security risk, said Hypponen, but he urged users not to overreact.”

    Article here :
    http://www.macworld.com/article/145630/2010/01/android_malware.html

  • ken segall

    @Jorge:
    Thanks, there’s a post coming up on this topic. It’s pretty amazing that in the attempt to “improve” over Apple’s App Store, which gets criticized for its approval process, the answer is to have an unregulated store. That’s asking for trouble.

  • http://Jorgephotoblog.com Jorge Carvalho

    And now its got even funnier :)

    “A T-Mobile spokeswoman said that T-Mobile is providing support for phone service, including billing, while Google supports device sales and software, and HTC supports the hardware, including device troubleshooting, warranty, repairs and returns.”

    So basically u have to speak with 3 !!! companies to have support …
    We are on 2010 aren’t we ? just checking :)

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