- Typically speaking, when someone thinks about Google, the first thing that pops to mind is not phenomenal customer support. I know for a fact that most of us have had trouble with Google products in the past, and we don't know where to find support. There's not a number you can call to get support from Google or from any of the big online services for that matter. But you can get good support from Google. You can get the answers you need from Google. You just have to know where to look. Where's that? I will show you today on Dotto Tech. Steve Dotto here. How the heck ya doin' this fine day? At Dotto Tech we make technology easy so you can do more. Now, one of the most common things that I see in my inbox and in my comments on YouTube are questions about Google. I've lost my password how do I get it back? How do I do this in Google? How do I do that? And where I can, I answer the questions. But, to be honest, it's too much for me. It's way too much for, and it's too much for you as well. But it shouldn't be too much for Google, should it? No, it shouldn't. Yet, try and find support from a company like Google and it can be a major challenge. I have found three areas where you can get some pretty decent support from Google, including one excellent area. This is my number one choice for getting support on Google. Let me show you how to get support from Google today. It starts with this. They've got, and by the way, I will have links to all of these in the description below or in the blog post. So, how do you get support from Google? Google has a help page. Ti's called Google Help, I'll have a link. And if you need to know how to do anything on any of their tools, you can click here, and you can say if I need to know in Google Chrome how to enable cookies. Documents, support documents on almost every topic in the Google Help area. You have to know what you're looking for and search for it. This isn't necessarily great for troubleshooting problems, but this is great for finding out how to do things that you can't figure out how to do. The Google Help Forum. If you are using G Suite, Google's paid service, there is additional level of support available if you're an administrator. Only, apparently, if you're an administrator. They have this Google Help section that allows you phone, email, or chat support if you're an administrator, which does most of us absolutely zero good. What does us all good is my favorite Google, oh, Farley's gettin' excited, is my favorite Google support area, and that is the Google product forums. I share this more often than any other help asset in Google, because not only will they tell you how to do things, but also the problems that. What are you? Farley help forum. The Google products forums I share more often than anything else, because not only do you get support here on technical issues, how do I do this, but also the problems that you're into. I'm having this conflict. Things that might be coming up due to new versions of operating systems coming out. That will be discussed in the product forums, because it's dealing with current issues. And scroll through this and you'll find you really get down into the weeds here with Google in this. You need help in Chromecast? It's right here. You need help on somethin' called Tilt Brush? I don't even know what Tilt Brush is, but Google makes it, it's available here. You want to go into get support on Google Calendar? Are you having trouble syncing your calendar? Let's go there. Now, I'm going to this one because I wanna show you something. Some of these forums, Google moves around occasionally. They aren't always left in the exact same place, so here they've started a new Google Calendar Help community, which we find here. So, now actually, they've actually started an entire other venture supporting Google Calendar, which is fantastic. But here we go in and we find the support that we look for there. So, within any of these Google community forums areas, you can post your question. Other users are looking for the same issue if they're having the same problem when they're searching on that, and there are support people who are going through constantly answering the questions and then rating the questions. So it's an evolving and ever-changing database of support answers to questions and fixes for problems. This is the place you go if you're having issues with Google. That's it. A short, concise video today. As I mentioned, links are below for all of these community support locations. If you haven't yet subscribed to Dotto Tech, please hit that Subscribe button and ring the notification bell so you hear when we upload new videos. Now, if you have any questions, well, go to the Google Help Forum. Until next time, I'm Steve Dotto. Have fun stormin' a castle.
Getting good customer service from big technology and social media companies can seem like a Sisyphean task, no matter how much time you spend on the phone or in a chat window with an agent you just go around in circles and never make any progress!
However, there are a select few cases where I have found great success at getting good service and actual help from Google.
Google Help and G Suite
The main portal through which you can get help from Google is called…Google Help…very creative right?
Well fortunately we care less about what Google names things and much more about whether Google can help us fix our problems. The first thing you will notice about the Google Help page is it is broken up into services, so if you are having issues with Chrome or AdSense you go through different sets of FAQs and supporting documents which helps narrow and focus the scope of inquiry.
If you are a using G Suite, Google's paid service, and are an “Administrator” then there is an additional layer of help you can access by following this link: G Suite Help.
Unfortunately that service is only available to Administrators and I am as perplexed as to why that is as you probably are when trying to solve whatever problem you might be having.
Fortunately, there is one area where Google support really stands out as excellent.
Google Product Forums
The Google Product Forums are, by far, the one service I recommend more than any other when troubleshooting problems with Google products.
The reason is that the product forums are being updated in real-time to developing issues, crashes, bug fixes etc…
For example, perhaps there's a conflict between Chrome and a new version of your operating system. Chances are you aren't the only person having this issue so going to the forums to learn about it is a way of crowd sourcing solutions to common problems.
Additionally, the forums have specific subforums for the widest range of Google products and services you can imagine. You'll find specific forums for products and services you never even knew about!
Until next time,
Have fun storming the castle!
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