You didn’t misread that title. I actually spoke to Google, on the phone no less!
A couple of weeks ago, I received a report that Google searches for “my employer, the city we are in, state” (names of employers and cities changed to protect the innocent) returned a Google Local result that had an incorrect phone number. The phone number belonged to our organization, but it was a phone number that went to straight to a voicemail. And anytime a voicemail was left for that number, a pager went off. And this was happening dozens of times a day. Not optimal, right?
So I Googled the problem, and the general consensus was that we’d have to claim that Google Local listing, wait to confirm (which requires about a week or two wait) and only THEN could we change the number. Again, not optimal. So I did something unorthodox, crazy really – I clicked the ‘HELP’ button! Shocking, I know. When I clicked the help button, there was an option on the right side of that popup to initiate a phone call. I thought “What the heck?” and clicked the button.
I was not disappointed.
After filling in my contact info, I was greeted by a ringing phone in less than a minute and began a conversation with a very nice young man named Sawyer. Sawyer took note of my problem and offered a resolution rather quickly: provide him with a published phone number on our company website that could be independently verified and he would be able to change the number. He sent me an initial message from a transactional email server, I replied, and then in less than 10 minutes the change showed up! I was absolutely delighted!
Here’s a little secret…Google is HUGE! But two weeks ago, they acted like a small business and interacted with me on the phone to solve a problem in 15 minutes that would have otherwise taken what (I’m sure) would have seemed an eternity to the person answering those phantom pages. Three cheers, Google!