How Customer Focused Are Google?

April 6, 2009 Google Adwords 1 Comment

I had an email today asking me to provide Adwords Feedback to Google.  I could win a Google beach ball. 

Wow!

I filled in the survey as an excuse to rant at Google and repeat my “you guys don’t really understand what your advertisers want” message, and at the end of the survey it became clear how unfocused they can be.

First of all, there’s the page that comes up near the end of the survey which says:

Would you like to provide your name and address so that we can enter you into the prize drawing and send you the special Google gym bag as a gift?

To which my answer is: “lovely, but the gym bag was last time and you’re supposedly offering me a beach ball – perhaps it would be a good idea to update the survey page”.

Then the next page says:

Please provide us with an address for your gift.  Your Google beach ball should arrive in 6-8 weeks.

To be sure that the XXX is delivered, be sure to give us your whole address (including office number, if necessary).

Well, that’s progress I suppose – they’ve now decided it WILL be a beach ball after all.  Sadly, in the next sentence they decide they’re going to send an ‘XXX’ instead, whatever that is!

Throughout the survey there’s a copyright 2008 message at the bottom of each page.  Last I checked we were a quarter of the way through 2009.

OK, these are all relatively small points but they do add more fuel to the fire that Google aren’t customer focused when they don’t even have the ability to accurately create a survey.