Google Rep Service Experience

[jogrady]

Our company has made considerable investment with Google Ad Words. Overall we have had great campaign results, but our dealings with account services team has been a mixed back. Here are just a few of the issues we face.

- Hard to reach reps.
- No direct access to campaign optimizer
- Bad campaign recommendations that drove up CPL.
- Excessive waiting periods.
- Lack of industry trends and performance feedback.
- Rollout problems.

I could go on, but won't bore you with the details....

My question is.

What is your relationship like?

Do you have any designation such as "Platnum", "Silver", or "Gold"?

Do you deal direct or through an 800 number?

Do you get credits when you ask and are justified?

Do you have your reps cell numbers, personal emails, etc?

Do you get trend data for your industry?

Do you get help with organic placement?

Don't get me wrong. I love Google. I just think they are having growth pains. My goal of this thread is to set proper service expectations for someone who will probably spend well over a million dollars with them this year.

[AussieWebmaster]

If you are spending that number then you should have a rep... if you are an agency covering numerous different areas possibly it is difficult to find one person that is knowledgeable in all your advertsing areas - but you should have someone who can help you with the day-to-day things.
We spend a bit more than that and have a client services person (direct numbers and email) as well as an account rep that spends time helping us find the right inventory and goes to bat for us when needed.
I am much more satisified with the services we get from Google in comparison to Overture - but they have given us a separate rep and moved us to Diamond with a rep and an supervisor - with direct numbers etc.
Google even takes me to dinner occasionally - though I have developed a close relationship with the people there.

[jogrady]

AussieWebmaster,

Thanks for the feedback. We are not an agency. We are a single business.

To give you so more background....

After spending over a half million dollars and a year of neglect we finaly got someone to return our calls from the local direct office. The guy who came out and helped us was fantastic, but he was off the record. I think he just felt bad about our situation and decided to come out on his own initiative. The local rep wen to bat for us a made a huge push to get us excepted into the direct program. After weeks of delays we finaly got word that we were accepted as a national account and even had our first iplementation/planning meeting. The ball was rolling, then half way through the roleout Google pulled the plug! Someone at Google decided we were not national account worthy. As hard as we tried we never got a chance to talk with the person who made that decsission. All we ever heard was the PR line, "we feel you are best served via the 1-800 number." The orignal account rep that stuck his neck out for us was devasted. Additionally, this little fiasco cost our company thousands of dollars. (We have 70 sales reps who depend on Google leads).

You bring up another intresting point. We have asked Google directly numerouse times about thier Diamond program. We know about the Diamond program only because one of our executives use to work with Google in another industry. They were spending about the same amount we are spending know and they had a "Diamond" relationship. Everytime we have asked Google about the "Diamond" status they swear it does not exist.

Anyway, Google says they are sorry about the trouble they put us through, and I got a nice mood light radio for Christmas. Do you think we are even?

I agree with you about Overture. I get frustated with Google, but Overture is worse.

I want to keep things positive. The ppc industry is still young and immature. Thats great for us now because we get to exploit the market while it is young, but all the channels are going to have to get there act together if the want to survive long term; Google included.

[Mel66]

Hi Jogrady,

We, like you, are a single business spending big bucks with Google. It would be even bigger bucks if we got more cooperation from them. We do have a rep with a direct phone number (actually, an extension through their Adwords 800#) and email, but no cell number. We've had about 4 different reps in the past year. Makes it kinda hard for them to get to know us and our business. I also asked about the diamond thing and they swore they had no such thing. Their attempts at "optimizing" our account were disastrous, especially once they switched to their new keyword review process. It was very obvious to me that their optimizer(s) did not bother to take the time to learn anything about our business or industry and were just writing ads that would get a lot of unqualified clicks. We get no trend info or help with organic, although I wouldn't expect organic help from Adwords as Google works hard to separate church and state.

My biggest frustration with Google is that our best-performing keywords keep getting disabled, and the reps I've had have been no help in overcoming this. The new keyword system has made the problem 10x worse. I would spend a lot more money with them if they would just let my ads run.

We are a diamond level at Overture and their service is WAY better IMHO. Our rep has gone out of her way to help push new listings through quickly, help with mass changes that would take forever to do manually, pull reports that I can't get thru the DTC, etc. I've gotten none of that from Google.

I do think Adwords is a good value, and their system is easier to use than Overture's, but I'm very disappointed that they don't treat their large advertisers better. As for getting to know any of them personally or having a rep visit, I thought you had to live near the Googleplex to get that service. Maybe that's different in Aussieland? We are in the midwest (US) and no one has ever mentioned a local office or anyone paying us a visit. I would jump at the chance to meet one on one with somebody from Adwords. I'd even buy them lunch.

[jogrady]

Mel66,

We are kindred spirits. Your experience is almost exactly the same as mine.

At first I was pretty angry about the issues we have discussed. I've decided to stay as possitive as I can so they don't tune me out. My goal is to give them the constructive feedback they need to improve. I'm sure you feel likewise.

We are a Dallas company. There are other Google offices in the larger cities throughout the United States. You won't find them in the phone book or see a sign hanging on the side of a buidling though. The Dallas office has maybe 5-10 employees that hide out in a non-discript executive suite. I don't think the whole SE reagion has no more than 20 people. Clearly, they do not have the support structure they need.

My account team is in California via a 1-800 extension. Actually, they are nice people who do the best they can. If they were the ones handling my $50 a month phone bill I would be happy. Since I spending several hundred thousand dollars it would be nice to have a set of eyeballs looking back at me in my office that could understand and address my specific needs. Ideally, the local people would help me with setup and rollout. California could handle day to day maintance and 24 hour support.

Hopefully we will get more posts of people telling thier stories. Thanks for sharing yours.

John

[Mel66]

At least I'm not the only one.

Our reps have been very nice also - but nice only goes so far. I'd put up with "marginal" if they could just do what I need them to do.

I also look forward to hearing others' stories.

Melissa

[AussieWebmaster]

I passed both of your contact info along to the people I know at Google and hopefully your situations will be dealt with in some satisfactory way so things improve.

[AdWordsRep]

I passed both of your contact info along to the people I know at Google and hopefully your situations will be dealt with in some satisfactory way so things improve.

Thanks for that AussieWebmaster.

Of course this thread has not escaped my notice, either - and I'll certainly pass on a link to the thread to the right folks here - as well as excerpt verbatim comments for the Advertiser Feedback report that I send out each week. This report goes out to a really large number of folks here at Google, among them many 'decision maker' types. So, jogrady and Mell66, please know that your comments will be heard.

AWR

[jogrady]

AWR,

Thank you for your help. If you like, I can send you a case histroy you can pass around.

Thanks,

JOhn

[AdamJewell]

We've always found Overture reps much more helpful and wiling to go the extra mile, respond more quickly, address concerns, correct mistakes. The Google folks are very nice but it would be nice if there was more of a focus on achieving awesome results for the advertisers instead of increasing bid prices and selling content syndication.

IHMO both OV and Google could do a much better job of picking keywords and developing creative. Virtually all of that is now done in-house.

[jogrady]

Adam,

Excellent point. We had a campaign that was working great from a CPL standpoint, but we needed more volume. Google's solution was to scrub our old campaign and replace it with an "optimized" one that had more words.

That sounded reasonable to us. At first our CPL did go up, but after two days our CTR tanked. As a result our CPL doubled and our volume went down dramatically. The only thing that increased was our spend! It was a disaster. That was not quit the help I was looking for. ;-)

This went on for three weeks. Everyday I was on the phone with my account rep crying for help. Strangely, I asked many time to speak directly with the “expert” who created my campaign. This request was denied. I was only allowed to speak with my account rep and account rep’s supervisor. Their response was always "wait and see", “give it time”, etc.

After 15k down the drain I could see we were defiantly not going down the right track. I grew tired of waiting so in desperation I started buying some e-books I kept seeing advertised about how to succeed in AdWords. I implemented the suggestions on my own and my situation was resolved almost overnight.

The problem was that the new campaign was a bunch of almost unrelated keywords packed into very large ad groups. We definitely got more impressions and clicks, but our relevancy went south. That in turn drove up our cost.

When I pointed this out to Google I got a "Gee Wiz" response and apology that things did not work out. (but not sorry enough to issue a meaningful credit that would realign us back to our old CPL.) However, I did get a box of t-shirts and a mood light for Christmas.

It’s clear to me now that the technical expertise on Google Adwords is found mostly outside of the organization. It’s also clear that they do not take the time to get to know our business. That is unacceptable given how much we spend with them. (They actually said to me at one point "...we can't know the ins and out of your business." I said, "Why? I had to get to know yours. Shouldn't it be the other way around?").

This is great news for all you consultants out there. Feel free to print out my story and show it to all your prospects.

John

[Manny2]

Helpful post!
Manny~