Google Apps For Business Users Get Round-The-Clock Phone Support

In an opening keynote presentation, which CRN viewed via live stream, Amit Singh, Google vice president of enterprise sales and operations, unveiled the new 24x7 phone support for business customers. The offer is a change from Google's previous support plans, which used to offer customers access to support via e-mail and phone support was limited to critical issues.

"To improve the experience of our customers, we now provide 24x7 phone support to small, medium, and large Google Apps for Business customers for all issues affecting the core services," Jocelyn Ding, vice president of Google enterprise operations, wrote on Google's enterprise blog. "Our customers may also receive support through our Web-based support portal, online help forms, and online help center. All support cases are handled directly by trained Google Apps experts."

Now users of Google Apps for Business can call Google for support and assistance with Google Apps applications including Calendar, Docs, Gmail, Sites, Talk and Video.

In his presentation, Singh said the launch of around-the-clock support for Google Apps for Business customers comes as Google continues to preach its 9-9-9 message. According to Singh, Google offers an SLA of 99.9 percent, which is currently at 99.99 percent; Google has a 90 percent renewal rate; and Google customers have a 90 percent of Google enterprise customers give Google a positive customer satisfaction rating.

"A support metric that we're especially passionate about is customer satisfaction," Ding wrote on the blog. "We measure customer satisfaction by asking for feedback on a seven point scale at the time we close a support case. As measured on this scale, 80 percent of our business customers and 90 percent of our large business customers indicate that they're more than satisfied with their support experience. While we're proud of these ratings, we want to do even better. Our goal is to achieve an overall satisfaction rating of 95 percent."

The launch of fulltime support for Google Apps for Business users comes as Google boasts that more than 4 million businesses have moved to Google Apps. Google counts about 40 million Google Apps users and Singh said that Google Apps experiences roughly 5,000 downloads daily. Additionally, Google App Engine application are viewed 2 billion times per day.

And during his presentation, Singh had a live ticker counting the number of customers that have joined Google Apps during the talk. It topped more than 50 new users in less than an hour.

Singh also took a jab at Microsoft, Google's stiffest cloud competitor, calling Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Co. to task for dismissing Google and saying that Microsoft continues to beat Google in cloud deals.

"Thousands of customers -- thousands every day – are turning off their Microsoft servers and moving to Google Apps … I think we're doing a bit of winning ourselves," he said, highlighting a host of new customers that have signed on to "go Google," including Burberry, GoodYear and several others. Singh added that 97 percent of the top Silicon Valley startups have also signed on with Google.

"The few is much better from here," Singh said, later adding that the cloud is "really a movement whose time has come."