Live data from Hacker News

I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next

gamefromscratch.com

341–350 of 362 posts

Re: I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next

#341
post #100
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Instead of actually trying to create the best customer service I've worked in high volume customer services. It's not easy for the agents doing the work or the companies operating them. I've worked in multiple call centers dealing with calls and tickets. I've worked in companies in which I dealt with mobile phone bill queries and hardware issues right up to Cisco networking problems and then eventually enterprise g…

They might have 1 billion free users, but they definitely don't have 1 billion partners or 1 billion paying customers. Google's customer service is horrible even for organizations that pay them +$10k/month or make them +$10k/month for ad sales, and that is a far smaller number. You would think they could at least scale customer support properly for that much smaller number, but they don't because culturally they do n…

> They might have 1 billion free users, but they definitely don't have 1 billion partners or 1 billion paying customers.

Paying or not, people will complain.

Re: I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next

#342
post #219
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Instead of actually trying to create the best customer service I've worked in high volume customer services. It's not easy for the agents doing the work or the companies operating them. I've worked in multiple call centers dealing with calls and tickets. I've worked in companies in which I dealt with mobile phone bill queries and hardware issues right up to Cisco networking problems and then eventually enterprise g…

Oh please, I've worked on the anti-fraud/abuse system of a large hosting/internet provider in Europe. It was a flexible "if then scoring escalation/ticketing rules". I'm not saying my knowledge applies to all customer support cases, but what happened here would never have happened with our system. Just very simple tricks go a loooong way dealing with malicious people: how old is the account of the "reporter" ? is the…

I doubt you came close to 10% of the complaints YouTube gets via its reporting systems. It's the largest video hosting platform in the world.

Re: I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next

#343
post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I guess YouTube should just shut down?

They should. Their existence sucks all the oxygen out of the room, preventing lots of smaller competitors from gaining traction.

> They should.

That's an insane statement. YouTube should shutdown because they're successful?

What, do you think a monopoly is a bad thing? The market place decided YouTube was the better platform and continued to pile on (sure, they had market timing too.)

If you can suggest something better than YouTube do let me know.

Re: I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next

#344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we assume that each CSR can handle an average number of cases then the absolute number of cases handled by a human increase with even 1 CSR taken on. The Mythical Man Month doesn't apply as there's no time limit on it. So no, I don't need to answer that beyond any number greater than there are now , which I already did.

Sure it would go up. But will it be significant? Or will it be a drop in the ocean. You do need numbers to answer this question.

Average wage in the US is ~$50,000 per year - without holidays I might add - and their total workforce was ~120,000 strong as of 2018. If someone claims that Google increase its workforce 6-fold by only hiring CSRs and not make a significant difference in customer satisfaction then what can be said?

Or let's make it 3-fold and claim the other hundred grand is for training and office space (yeah, can't get a CSR to work remotely and definitely can't earn less than minimum wage nor those jobs be abroad because I'm building an unrealistic quibble).

It's like people arguing that you can't know the sky is still blue on Earth because you haven't been outside yet today. Please. Worse than that, it again obscures the real questions - what level of CS does Google need to provide to stop customers going to a competitor, which is the level they have now, and hence, since they're too powerful to be competed with what should be done about it? What can be done about it?

Re: I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next

#345
post #224
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Instead of actually trying to create the best customer service I've worked in high volume customer services. It's not easy for the agents doing the work or the companies operating them. I've worked in multiple call centers dealing with calls and tickets. I've worked in companies in which I dealt with mobile phone bill queries and hardware issues right up to Cisco networking problems and then eventually enterprise g…

I work in the public sector of Europe. One of the primary reasons that we prefer Azure and AWS to google cloud is support. When things go really wrong on our office365 platform or any part of Azure, Seattle will call us on the the hour with updates until it’s fixed. We have programs within Microsoft support where our developers and sysops can suggest changes, and if the suggestions gather enough popularity and fit wi…

I've had the same experience with GCP too.

I work pretty exclusively with AWS these days as a CloudOp. I remember building an environment in GCP and getting answers from support was terrible. I eventually left that job after 11 months.

The next job was pure AWS and sweet Jesus was the contrast strong. AWS not only had people who would phone you within 10-15 minutes, more often quicker than that, but they had a frickin' account manager who visited us every month and we only spent a thousands per month with them. Absolutely worlds apart.

Re: I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next

#346
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Instead of actually trying to create the best customer service I've worked in high volume customer services. It's not easy for the agents doing the work or the companies operating them. I've worked in multiple call centers dealing with calls and tickets. I've worked in companies in which I dealt with mobile phone bill queries and hardware issues right up to Cisco networking problems and then eventually enterprise g…

So just give me priority support when I need it. Let me choose to use the free robot support or pay for a human to answer my call. Be upfront, that the human might not resolve the issue, but at least look at it and give me a non-automated answer to my problem.

That's not a bad idea: premium YouTube creators. If you pay a premium then you can get issues resolved more directly.

Re: I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next

#347
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Instead of actually trying to create the best customer service I've worked in high volume customer services. It's not easy for the agents doing the work or the companies operating them. I've worked in multiple call centers dealing with calls and tickets. I've worked in companies in which I dealt with mobile phone bill queries and hardware issues right up to Cisco networking problems and then eventually enterprise g…

> Google has approx' one BILLION customers. > What is your suggestion here? Which means they also have one billion potential workers. They could tap into the power of crowd-intelligence. It's probably somewhat easy to forge some processes to oursource certain support-problems which need low human interaction. Something they do with Recaptcha already and IIRC at Google Maps. They could sell Youtube Premium to some tho…

> ... let them instead check a handful videos per day for some cases of copyright infringment and such.

They'd all have to be copyright lawyers, then?

Re: I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next

#348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easy to say "there has to be something between the best customer service and things like letting shitting "AI" ban accounts" as an armchair hackernews user. But maybe, there isn't, currently. Maybe there simply isn't a solution at the scale of companies like Google.

Then your company doesn't get to scale. Sorry, but you can't skip support because it's not cost effective, just like you can't skip financial regulations or data regs. You don't get to use the excuse of "Sorry we are too busy making billions, maybe we wouldn't have to cut corners if we weren't so successful."

Why not? If support is so important, then an competitor will show up with better support and take people away from your service.

Re: I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next

#349
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Instead of actually trying to create the best customer service I've worked in high volume customer services. It's not easy for the agents doing the work or the companies operating them. I've worked in multiple call centers dealing with calls and tickets. I've worked in companies in which I dealt with mobile phone bill queries and hardware issues right up to Cisco networking problems and then eventually enterprise g…

We should question the assumption that we need services to be at Google's scale. Especially when it comes to pushing user-generated content to all those costumers.

I like having services that Google provides so the answer is yes.

That was easy, thanks for asking the question so that I can answer it.

Any more questions you think "we" should answer? I'll be glad to resolve them since you only seem to ask them.

Re: I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next

#350
post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should. Their existence sucks all the oxygen out of the room, preventing lots of smaller competitors from gaining traction.

> They should. That's an insane statement. YouTube should shutdown because they're successful? What, do you think a monopoly is a bad thing? The market place decided YouTube was the better platform and continued to pile on (sure, they had market timing too.) If you can suggest something better than YouTube do let me know.

The market could suggest something better than YouTube, if it were actually competitive. Monopolies may briefly be efficient, but they're always evolutionary dead ends, and getting out of one is more costly than any short-term benefits.
Post reply on HN