Customer Care procedures and support activities

This document explains how to complete support procedures and activities for Cloud Customer Care, including:

• Create and manage support cases based on your organization's support service.
• View known issues affecting Google Cloud services.
• Contact Customer Care.
• Access additional services available to select paid Google Cloud services, such as escalating or changing the priority of a support case.

To learn about the availability of Customer Care, see Language Support and Working Hours.

For details about Customer Care's support services, see the Technical Support Services Guidelines.

Manage support cases

Important: In order to create or manage support cases, you must have the Organization Viewer (roles/resourcemanager.organizationViewer) role or another role that grants the resourcemanager.organizations.get permission. If you do not have this role or permission, contact an Organization Administrator.

You can create and manage cases in the Google Cloud console.

The details you include in a support case significantly affect how long it takes to resolve an issue. To learn about how to write an effective support case, see Best practices for working with Customer Care.

Create a support case

Before creating a support case, review known issues to see if a case has already been filed.

If no case has been filed, you can create one in the Google Cloud console by completing the following steps:

1. Sign in to the Google Cloud console.
   Go to the Google Cloud console
2. Select the project for which you'd like to have support.
3. On the Support page, go to Quick Support and click Create a new support case.

After creating a case, you are redirected to the Case page where you can manage new or existing cases. The Customer Care team responds to your case based on its priority.

Manage existing support cases

Any user with permission to edit support cases can update cases for your organization, even if they did not create the case.

To manage existing cases:

1. Sign in to the Google Cloud console.
   Go to the Google Cloud console
2. Access your project.
3. On the Support page, click Cases.

The Cases page provides a list of your organization's support cases based on the selected resource. For example, if you select an organization, all cases for the organization are displayed. If you select a project, only the cases associated with that project are displayed.

To filter cases, you can use Search or filter controls.

To view or update a case, click on its title. After selecting the case, you can make the following updates:

• Comment on the case
• Upload file attachments
• Modify case attributes
• Reopen cases

Note: You can only reopen support cases that were closed within the last 30 days. Otherwise, you must create a new case.

View known issues

Google Cloud posts information about known issues affecting its services as they arise. If there are any open known issues that might be affecting your Google Cloud services, you see a notification whenever you create a support case.

To view known issues that affect your organization's support cases:

1. Sign in to the Google Cloud console.
   Go to the Google Cloud console
2. Access your project.
3. Go to the Support page.
4. On the Support page, click Cases.
5. Select Known Issues.

To learn about incident reporting, view the documentation on Incidents and the Google Cloud Service Health Dashboard.

Contact Customer Care

All users can contact Customer Care with questions about Cloud Billing. You can also request support for technical questions about projects within your organization.

To contact Customer Care:

1. Sign in to the Google Cloud console.
   Go to the Google Cloud console
2. Select the project for which you'd like support.
3. Go to the Support page.
4. Select your preferred communication channel.
5. Start a new connection.

Additional services

If your support service is Enhanced or Premium, you have access to the following additional services:

• Change the priority of your support case
• Escalate a case
• Request follow-the-sun service for a case

Depending on your support service and language, you might also be eligible to receive 24/7 support. For information on availability, see Language Support and Working Hours.

Change case priority

If the service impact of a support case changes, you can change the priority of your case based on the urgency and the business impact. When you change the priority, Customer Care is notified and attends to your case based on the new priority.

You can change the case priority in the Google Cloud Support Center.

When changing the case priority, be sure to provide information about the reason for change, and specifically, how the impact to the business has changed.

Escalate a case

If your support case has the appropriate priority, you can escalate it if the support effort or the provided solution is not meeting expectations.

When a support case is escalated, escalation is immediately assigned to a Customer Care Manager and notifies you within an hour. The Customer Care Manager owns the escalation until escalation closure. They would identify and address the escalation root cause, and report preventative actions to avoid similar escalations in the future.

The following examples demonstrate possible reasons for escalating a case:

• Customer Care misses time commitments.
• Customer Care misunderstands the impact or the nature of the issue and would not comprehend even after you have made several attempts to clarify the impact or nature of the issue.
• The case might require additional expertise to resolve the issue.
• You think that the provided solution is completely off based on the nature of the problem and Customer Care would not provide convincing explanation that would be sufficient to prove solution validity, even after you request for an explanation.
• Your case is stuck because you and Customer Care are not in sync, despite communicating several times with each other, and your case requires additional resources to analyze the issue and determine the next steps.

When requesting an escalation, quote the case number and provide a reason for the escalation. You can make the request in the following ways:

• Go to Google Cloud Support Center, and click the Escalate case button, which appears 30 minutes after a case is created.
• Contact Customer Care.

If you have Premium Support service, you can also request an escalation by contacting your Technical Account Manager during local business hours.

Note: Escalation is meant for flagging process breaks. When you are experiencing high-impact issues, generally escalation would not make the case go faster, and the best solution would be to ensure that the case is set to appropriate priority for adequate amount of time. Escalating shortly after priority change might even cause the case resolution to be slower. More detailed explanation can be found in When should you escalate.

Request follow-the-sun service

Normally, a case is handled within one time zone by a single Customer Care specialist. Doing so allows Customer Care to offer a personalized service in the time zone closest to you.

Due to the high impact of Priority 1 (P1) cases, they are defaulted to follow the sun, which means that the case is handed off between global teams to provide 24-hour support coverage. If you have Premium support service, you can also request this service for Priority 2 (P2) cases.

Note: Since follow-the-sun cases have continuous support attention, you might need to provide information at all hours of the day. Ensure that you have colleagues that are available after-hours or in a different location to continue engaging with Customer Care specialists.

To request follow-the-sun service for a P2 support case, contact the specialist working on your case during local business hours.

Reference

Support case status

After a support case is created, you can view case status in the Google Cloud console. Below is a description of the different statuses and their meaning:

Status	Description
New	The case is not assigned yet.
Assigned	The case is assigned to one of our specialists. You'll see a response within the target response time mentioned in the priorities table.
In progress Cloud Customer Care	Customer Care specialists are working on the case.
In progress Google engineering	Google product engineers are investigating the case. Turnaround times vary, depending on the issue complexity and product component in question.
In progress Google other	Another Google team is investigating the case. Turnaround times can vary, depending on the issue complexity and product component in question.
Waiting on customer response	We need more information from you before we can proceed.
Waiting on customer action	We need you to do something before we can proceed.
Solution offered	A solution for the issue or request in the case has been offered. The customer can reopen the case if the offered solution is insufficient.
Closed	The case is resolved and closed by the Customer Care specialist. If the issue is still ongoing, you can reopen it within 30 days by replying to the last communication. After 30 days, you'll need to open a new case.

Support case priority

When creating a support case, it's important to assign it the correct priority. Per the Google Cloud Technical Support Services Guidelines, the case priority determines the initial response time for the case.

The following table defines support case priorities. For more information, see best practices for changing case priority.

Note: Response times vary by issue priority and which support service you have. For response times, refer to the Google Cloud Technical Support Services Guidelines.

Priority definition	Example situations
P1: Critical Impact—Service Unusable in Production	The application or infrastructure is unusable in production, having a significant rate of user-facing errors. Business impact is critical (revenue loss, potential data integrity issue, etc.). No workaround is available that is easy to implement (less than 30 minutes). Affected Google Cloud component or feature is marked as General Availability. Immediate attention from Google is required to resolve the problem.
P2: High Impact—Service Use Severely Impaired	The infrastructure is degraded in production, having a noticeable rate of user-facing errors or difficulties in spinning up a new production system. Business impact is moderate (danger of revenue loss, productivity decrease, etc.). A workaround to mitigate critical business impact is available and easy to implement. Affected Google Cloud component or feature is marked as General Availability. Fast response from Google is required.
P3: Medium Impact—Service Use Partially Impaired	The issue is limited in scope and/or severity. The issue has no user-visible impact. Business impact is low (for example, inconvenience, minor business processes affected, etc.). Case requires more in-depth investigation and troubleshooting and less frequent interactions.
P4: Low Impact—Service Fully Usable	Little to no business or technical impact. Recommended for consultative tickets where in-depth analysis, troubleshooting or consultancy are preferred to more frequent communications.