Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Adsense has the worst customer support I have ever, ever encountered! It literally can take days to weeks to resolve issues.
After your initial contact they send you the auto responder case number email. After that, it can be a few days before they respond with a canned email of basic FAQ's that i've already read in their support faqs. To get a response specific to your issue can take days even weeks. Hope like hell that it doesn't take numerous email exchanges to get the issue resolved.
Adsense Support, if you're listening, YOUR SERVICE IS AWFUL. BE ASHAMED OF THE JOB YOU DO !
Responding to questions the way AdSense Support does keeps their costs down, and results in many of us just not bothering to contact them, further reducing what they spend taking care of publishers' problems.
After that 3 day wait they send you a canned response that usually misses the mark pretty much completely.
If you respond to that they start all over again.
It takes several tries at this to get a reasonable answer out of them.
Hardly worth the effort. Which I sometimes think is the whole point of the senseless automated replies from any site.
AdSense Support does keeps their costs down
Good point Car_Guy,
Two things come to mind:
a) Would we as publishers rather Google get another say 2% share of our earnings and provide a more personal service? I wouldn't mind in urgent situations which was like only one time in my case since I joined.
b) Have you seen the crap some people post as questions , now multiply that by many thousands? Automation is a must, percentage and level of automation is where the problem is, apparently it's set to max.
All the above is still no excuse for a company as big as Google when they fail to communicate and respond to urgent known issues(1) as well as silly but very repetitive woes(2) that publishers have, there is a failure to communicate as a company indeed and support is only one angle.
(1) - Vague banning, glitches, frozen stats
(2) - Folding or removing optimization report
Have you seen the crap some people post as questions , now multiply that by many thousands?
I have seen some of these questions from the clueless in other forums...
I want ads at the top of my page, but when I put the code at the top of my html it doesn't work.
I put code in but my ads won't show in my forum signatures.
I was banned for invalid clicks but all I did was click to make sure it was working.
The only customer support I have ever encountered that's worse than AdSense is PayPal.
That's interesting. Every time I've had a PayPal issue, which is rare, I just pick up the phone and the issue is resolved promptly.
On the topic of AdSense providing a means for established publishers to get support, I'm reminded of an old saying.
Sometimes the squeaky wheel gets the grease....and sometimes the squeaky wheel gets replaced.
FarmBoy
Just think about it.
You have provided web space for Google ads in exchange for unidentified share from the revenue where you have no control over ads that are displayed on your website and you are expecting some sort of customer service. How silly!
To be honest I'm quite surprised that they didn't develop an algorithm that would send you web search results kind of reply full of AdSense ads related to your email.
Don't be naive!
Have you seen the crap some people post as questions , now multiply that by many thousands? Automation is a must, percentage and level of automation is where the problem is, apparently it's set to max.
Yep, how true.
When I once contacted them because I saw a clear problem on their end (that was NOT with my site), I was as clear as possible in my mail, and of course, I gave them all the details to SEE the problem.
So it was hardly one of those questions you may find for example in other, less moderated, forums. It was a well formulated question that was relevant to a problem with the Adsense service.
They returned some off-topic canned reply, that made it clear that (a) no human read my mail, or (b) that human was as dumb as a brick. It was indeed the worst experience with a customer care person EVER.
But then again, who can blame that part-time intern who writes the customer-service-reply-bot? (I am still convinced that this is the ONLY person working in the Adsense team.)
I guess it depends on how much you earn, where you're based, who your rep is etc etc
who your rep is
Not everyone has a "rep", and reps vary widely in the quality of their service.
In two weeks, I'll be 5 year AdSense publisher and I never experienced poor service from AdSense Customer Support until this year. It is certainly not what one should expect from a multi-billion dollar company.
And a big NO to Google getting a bigger take to provide better customer support. Even suggesting that is offensive to me when we're talking about one of the most profitable companies in the world.
My only explanation is that I am Google's supplier, not their customers, and suppliers unlike customers can be treated like #*$!.
My only explanation is that I am Google's supplier, not their customers, and suppliers unlike customers can be treated like #*$!.
You're wrong! You are not a supplier. Suppliers do have set or negotiated pricing for services and products. For GOOG you are just a schmack who is giving away advertising space. (without being able to negotiate conditions and commission structure)
Basically "We are Google and we will place whatever ads on your website and will pay you whatever amount for that."
And a big NO to Google getting a bigger take to provide better customer support. Even suggesting that is offensive to me when we're talking about one of the most profitable companies in the world
Goes without saying I'm not advocating a bigger cut for Google, but your reaction is very typical, you get what you pay for, and enjoying a better payout in a mass market setting comes at a price.
Google's success lies partially in their *efficiency* in running business, if you want to cut into that efficiency and trade some of it with publisher satisfaction, you need to come up with a better argument than their size as a company, you need to show that publishers will actually walk away to greener pastures if things don't improve, and we all know this is not happening soon.
Just trimming everyone's expectations to what's possible and doable, if it gets you offended, you're on the wrong track, imho the only way for things to improve is by holding Google up to their own published standards and nudge them towards better general corporate communication, quality one on one support is a lost cause, welcome to McDonald's can I take your order?
you need to show that publishers will actually walk away to greener pastures if things don't improve, and we all know this is not happening soon.
We actually sort of walked away: moved over 60% of the inventory to Tribal Fusion and others. It simply pays more, and TF for example has a dedicated rep working with us who took us out for free breakfast at a nice hotel. And we will be moving out more.
let's see. Google's revenue from Adsense ("content network") was $5.7879B in 2007. The respective payout to publishers ("traffic acquisition cost") was $4.9339B during the same period.
That makes it an overall payout of 85.2%
(I know very well, that this means nothing with regards to the individual publishers payout. THIS may be well below 85%.)
Anyway, if they got a 2% increase, this would mean a decrease from 85.2% to 83.2%, or an increase in their share from 14.8% to 16.8%. Based on the 2007 values, this would mean
$5.7879B x 2% = $115.8M
Wow. I guess they could have the best customer service team in the world for that kind of money, especially considering that this is an add. Their reps would have golden water taps, free lunch from star cooks (and that would be ***** star cooks!). But would the service improve? But these guys get better information that, say, your traditional Indian call center guy who has no clue about the ongoings in The Plex? Would they be able to answer the questions any better?
I highly doubt that.
Thus, I am all for keeping the crap service level (and the revenue share level).
I am more than sure Google would spend that $116 m well, on more automation not cooks or reps, back to square one :-)
I am more than sure Google would spend that $116 m well, on more automation not cooks or reps
Was it worth a $50 breakfast and $150 for an hour of her time (she did not have to travel, it was during AdTech conference)?
