Google Apps for Business users finally get phone support

Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) Apps for Business has been making waves recently--it just announced a major deal with GM and its Apps for Government has become something of a darling among federal and state agencies looking to go to the cloud to reduce expenses--but one stumbling block for many enterprises has always been its lack of customer support.

The company this week took the support layer deeper than its standard email contacts, offering 24/7 phone support for users who pay a periodic fee for Gmail and Google Appsl.

"Since we launched Google Apps for Business in 2007, we've been working hard to build a global support offering that's responsive to the needs of our business customers," said Jocelyn Ding, VP of Google's Enterprise Operations. "We now provide 24x7 phone support to small, medium, and large Google Apps for Business customers for all issues affecting the core services."

Core services include Gmail, Google Apps and Google Calendar, among others. Customers also can get help through Google's web-based support portal, online help forms and online help center.

Google said that customer satisfaction, measured on a seven point scale at the time it closes a support case, rates 80 percent for business customers and 90 percent for large business customers.

"While we're proud of these ratings, we want to do even better," said Ding. "Our goal is to achieve an overall satisfaction rating of 95 percent."

U.S. tech support can be reached at 87-355-5787; international support is available at 404-978-9282.

For more:
- see this Google post

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