It’s amazing that Google is as successful as they are given their customer service.
I received the following email last night, and it still has my fur standing-on-end (defensive rage).
Subject: Google AdSense ad serving has been disabled to your site This message was sent from a notification-only email address that does not accept incoming email. Please do not reply to this message. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hello, During a recent review of your account we found that you are currently displaying Google ads in a manner that is not compliant with our program policies (https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/answer.py?answer=48182&stc=aspe-1pp-en). -------------------------------------------------- EXAMPLE PAGE: http://foolswisdom.com/ Please note that this URL is an example and that the same violations may exist on other pages of this website or other sites in your network. VIOLATION(S) FOUND: It is important for a site displaying AdSense to offer significant value to the user by providing unique and relevant content, and not to place ads on auto-generated pages or pages with little to no original content. Your site should also provide a good user experience through clear navigation and organization. Users should be able to easily click through your pages and find the information they are seeking. Please review Google's Webmaster Quality Guidelines ( http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66361 ) for more information. ACTION TAKEN: We have disabled ad serving to your site. ACCOUNT STATUS: ACTIVE Your AdSense account remains active. However, please note that our team reserves the right to disable your account at any time. As such, we encourage you to become familiar with our program policies and monitor your network accordingly. Issue ID# 3227412 -------------------------------------------------- Thank you for your cooperation. Sincerely, The Google AdSense Team ---------------- For more information regarding this email, please visit our Help Center: https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=113058&stc=aspe-ai4-en.
Emphasis was mine.
The only pieces of useful information would seem to be “EXAMPLE PAGE: http://foolswisdom.com/“. The reason is provided as an exercise for the reader to solve, and the status of disabled, but active almost makes the whole thing humorous. The email also has the feel of treating good customer’s like criminals, because of how “bad” customers behave.
So what do I do with this information? “Please do not reply to this message.” That’s the real problem, not my AdSense account. I’ve received an anxiety causing email, and I’m helpless.
Don Dodge, then at Microsoft, now at Google(!), wrote October 27, 2007 what still resonates with me today “Will Google Docs and Spreadsheets succeed in the enterprise? I don’t think Google will succeed in the enterprise. Why? Customer Support.”
“Google doesn’t understand people,” [Don Norman] said. “Have you ever spoken to a Google support person on the phone? They don’t have them. Sure, they’ll direct you to their blogs — where you’ll be lucky if you can find the answer you’re looking for — or they’ll let you give feedback. But do they ever give you feedback on your feedback?”
FROM “DON NORMAN: GOOGLE DOESN’T GET PEOPLE, IT SELLS THEM” BY BOBBIE JOHNSON ON GIGAOM.COM, SEPT 5, 2011
I think they do understand people, and have a stubborn resolve to demonstrate that machines can be programmed to help man better than man can help herself.
They’ll tell you it’s a scalability problem:
If you have a billion users, and a mere 0.1% of them have an issue that requires support on a given day (an average of one support issue per person every three years), and each issue takes 10 minutes on average for a human to personally resolve, then you’d spend19 person-years handling support issues every day.
If each support person works an eight-hour shift each day then you’d need 20,833 support people on permanent staff just to keep up.
That, folks, is internet scale.
That is cold, machine cold, comfort.
Customer support isn’t the 1 in a 1000, 10 minute on average problem, customer support is the support you receive under exceptional circumstances. This is when you need support, and when most companies fail to deliver.
So what do you do when you need support from Google? Either you know a Matt Cutts (there is only one!), or you hope your friends, like Chris Messina, working on Google+ and other promising tools with warmth, will help Google find balance and treat their customers, like you know, people.
Oh, and if there is anyone on the Google AdSense team reading this, I suspect that there is a bug in your “review of your account” software, as you probably should have terminated CloudFlare’s account, not mine.
_jussi