You are not their customer
By: Alison Marshall
Tags: Facebook, Google, Digital, Customer Service, Skype

You are not their customer

Photo by Avi Richards on Unsplash

These days there are lots of wonderful platforms, apps, tools that we all use — and they are free! All these things that make our life easier, more enjoyable and more sociable are so much built into the fabric of our lives that it is hard to imagine them not being there. As I am presently travelling, I feel like I am more dependent than usual on my digital support system.

Like probably most of the world, I use a lot of Google stuff. I use Google as my main search engine. I also use Gmail, the Chrome browser so it remembers my passwords and Google Photos. I used to use Google Drive, but no longer do — there are reasons for that, which I will come on to. I use Instagram, Twitter, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. I am still on Facebook, but got tired of it some months back, so no am no longer active. I use Zoom and, until recently, Skype. Lots of things and all free of charge.

Of course, I know that thing about ‘if you are not the customer, you are the product’. I know they are using me for my data, targeting ads at me, selling market intelligence that includes my activities. I understand this and accept it as a fair exchange. I am very careful what I share. I always manually check the privacy settings and usually set them differently from the default.

I grew up with all of this and know what the deal is. I am old enough to remember the first Internet bubble in the early nineties when there were new companies springing up everywhere, trying to work out how to make money out of this exciting new thing. Many raised investments in their business and tried for a year or two. Eventually, the successful ones emerged. They had worked out a business model, usually involving a third party using data.

I am enough of a techie to find it interesting, rather than sinister, when an app works out from a casual search I did earlier that I might be interested in some product and pings me an advert.

So the data thing does not faze me completely. On the whole, though, I would prefer it if it was not like that and I had the option to pay for some of the excellent, user-friendly products, while owning my own data.

For me, the problem is not about the data, but about the service itself.

I have had a couple of experiences recently that have made me think about this in a new light. The first was with Google (and I suspect this one is not over yet). I was using Google Drive heavily, finding it most convenient and keeping a lot of my work on there. It meant that I could work on different devices and still access my files. It also meant that I did not have to save anything on my hard drive, which felt safer. However, Google started sending me messages saying that I was close to the free data limit of 15GB. Apparently, I was using 14GB, across Gmail, Drive and Photos. I checked. The main usage was in Drive. So I removed a whole load of stuff that I no longer needed, archiving it to a physical hard drive. I got it down to about 5GB. Unfortunately, Google did not register any change. I checked a few forums and their own technical guidance. It can take a few days, so I waited. After nothing happened — and I still continued to get emails telling me I was close to the limit — I reluctantly moved my files off Drive and am now using a different cloud service. However, I suspect this one will run on. What is going to happen when they decide my Gmail allocation is close to its limit and I can’t delete enough emails?

The second experience was more recently, with Skype. A security violation was picked up and they locked my account. I have not been able to unlock it and so have had to stop using Skype. Other options are available, but it is regrettable as I was happy with Skype (and I had all my contacts there too). You can read more about the details of this experience in my Medium article below.

What both of these experiences have in common is that neither of these free services chose to provide me with any useful customer support.

Perhaps this is not surprising, because after all I am not their customer.

They get paid by other people. I am simply someone who goes along for the ride, who makes use of a by-product of their actual service.

I cannot object to this. It is the deal that I signed up to. And, after all, some of the services I do pay for offer poor customer service that can be quite difficult to access. But at least I have some kind of a contract with them.

The fact that I have no contract at all with providers of services that I rely on heavily could be quite an issue. I don’t want to stop using them, in part because they are free, but also because they do what I want them to do.

They are good products.

But I am starting to think about having contingency plans in place for each one I rely.

We all need to understand and manage risks in our lives.

This one has sneaked up on us.