Automated support doesn’t come close to the breadth and depth of support you can get just by talking to people. If a support document or link doesn’t exist for your concern, and you can’t talk to a person, then you are just SOL and subject to an algorithmic black box you can never understand nor reason with.
The sort of phone support Google would offer on a phone line would be the same sort of "algorithmic black box", just with a human voice. Call a major bank, airline, or utility provider to experience the fun of it.
Experienced it recently with UPS in fact. They’re a trash organization with no respect for their customers that make Comcast look like a shining beacon of humanity.
That said, I fairly regularly deal with phone support for different companies because when push comes to shove to varying degrees of success, I want a human on the other end to deal with my problem. Rarely do I regret taking that path.
Automated support doesn’t come close to the breadth and depth of support you can get just by talking to people. If a support document or link doesn’t exist for your concern, and you can’t talk to a person, then you are just SOL and subject to an algorithmic black box you can never understand nor reason with.