Customer Support the right way

Sunday night bought with it a sheer sense of unhappiness.

I was having issues connecting to the Wi-Fi at work (not an unusual occurrence!) so I tried to reboot my Nexus 4.  The power button having been pressed, off the device powered. I pressed the Power button once again but nothing.  Nada, nowt.

My beloved Nexus was refusing to respond.

At first I thought, bah, no big deal, I’ll just plug it in and try again.  Action completed and still no response from my phone…  My next move was therefore  to try powering it into bootloader mode.

Still no response, still no power.

At this point I actually had work to get on with so the phone went into my pocket whilst I went into a sulk!

At further intervals (with probably 5 seconds in between each) I tried to power up the device with no success.

Finally it was time for a break and so I thought that I would try the help section of the Play store (where I got the phone from) to see if there was any troubleshooting online.

I borrowed someone elses phone and took a look online.

Following the steps through I came to the section which gives details of Google’s hardware support team and their phone numbers.

To my great surprise the helpline is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week here in the UK as well as in the US, Australia and Canada.  Not only were they open but the number was a freephone number.  Result.

So, with expectations of the standard call centre treatment, I dialled the number and prepared for a long wait for my call to be answered.

Result number 2, my call was answered within around 30 seconds.

Having gone through the identification procedures I was asked my issue.  I described the problem that I was having and was informed that the call would end one of two ways.  One would be that a replacement handset would be ordered or the second would be that my device would be working.

Hang on, where is the standard passing the buck, where is the usual not my problem attitude?

I was asked a few questions and instructed to try putting the device into bootloader mode once more and somehow, for some reason my Nexus booted up and was ok once more.

Crisis averted.  No need to call in the army, navy or RAF, no need for a hospital visit as it felt like my arm had been removed!

My call to customer support finished and I went on my way in a rather better mood.

There are a couple of points that should be raised at this juncture.

I contacted a technical support helpline and I was treated like a human being.  I was treated as if I had a semblance of intelligence and my query was resolved in a timely, satisfactory manner.

The operator was polite, seemed knowledgeable and more than willing to help.

Maybe its a sign of the times or maybe it is just that I have had some bad experiences however it does seem the norm now that one expects poor service and it is on that basis that I write this.

The service that I received was remarkable in every manner.

You may have issues around privacy, you may have issues maintaining a supply of new devices and you may have issues realising which services to not shut down but one thing that you do seem to have got right is your technical support helpline.

So Google, thank you for rescuing my Nexus and please, don’t go changing!!