a) First responders actually being engineers who know the code well, can reference the open source repositories pointing to where issues are and suggesting workarounds.
b) Full workarounds being coded by the first responder (in Python for our use but they officially support other languages too) which are simple drop in replacement to fix the problem temporarily until the root cause is addressed.
c) Fast troubleshooting of critical issues (within minutes) with helpful debugging advice to resolve the issue.
d) A single contact owning the issue by default, with handover to alternative timezones on requst e.g. when an issue is long running or (in my case) you were in one location for a few weeks then change to another.
e) Consistently achieving the above over 1+ years worth of tickets, including responses handled from Google support teams worldwide to fit into the timezone e.g. Tokyo based support answering questions UK time Sunday night (Monday in Tokyo).
f) The same level of support offered for alpha and beta products even though the official word is "best effort/no SLA"
Where it has been more frustrating is with bugs discovered in the products. These have tended to be escalated to the engineering teams which take a while to fix the root cause, although acceptable workarounds are provided in the meantime. Their support ticket UI is also pretty rubbish.
Google might have a poor reputation for support when you're a consumer, but then you're not paying them anything. For both Google Cloud and Google Apps, their support has been excellent.
