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Overture sucks for marketing agencies. Why? Because the way it is set up now, it is very easy to have one client’s credit card charged for another’s PPC charges with no notification whatsoever to either the Client or the Agency. When it happens, fixing it is a challenge because, as I’ve said before, Overture’s customer service is horrible.

How can this happen? Very easily. Let’s say you are an agency and you put all of your customer’s accounts under your own login for ease of use. Your customers still have access to only their account with their own login. It is not uncommon for an agency to take over PPC from their client, and in that case, there might be a credit card still on file under the customer’s login. And, as an agency, it is also not uncommon to have many credit cards under the agency login for different accounts. Here’s a picture of an agency credit card list:

Agency List

So, one day, the credit card under the Client account expires. What happens? By default, Overture’s system will automatically go to the Agency account and use the first credit card listed in the Agency account regardless of if it is the credit card that belongs to that client or not. The change in credit card happens without any notification to either the customer or the agency. So, one day, the agency gets a call from one of their customers asking why their credit card is charged for PPC that is not their own. Then, the agency has to go through Overture’s accounting department to fix everything. A big headache for all parties.

The thing is, the fix for this is a small change to the user interface. It would take all of 2 minutes for a competant programmer to make the change. All Overture needs to do is put a default choice in the credit card drop down box called “Choose a credit card”.

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That way, when the system goes to the agency account to charge a credit card, it will flag an error because no credit card is chosen. It would solve a lot of headache on both Overture and the Agency. I mentioned this to my list of contacts at Overture, three months ago, but so far, nothing has happened.

Or, here’s a better idea Overture: how about you realize that PPC is seen as an advertising expense and will be controlled by advertising agencies? How about you make a user interface especially for the needs of agencies that will put credit card information in only one place instead of potentially being in two? While it is possible to put many accounts under one login right now, the system is clearly a hacked-together piece of crap that’s been in use since Overture’s early days.

Or how about just starting with the blatenly obvious: notify the agency and the consumer that their credit card is about to expire or that it has expired and do so with the subject line of the email in BIG BOLD LETTERS. That’d be a big help. Or maybe putting the client’s name in the subject line of all emails instead of just a number when an incident has taken place? Jeez, what a concept.

The reason this gets me so riled up is that I KNOW that Yahoo’s Overture *can* do better. I know that if Yahoo really wanted to, they have the resources to contact Jacob Neilson and get usability testing to make their system the easiest in the world. But apparently, they won’t even take time to audit their own system.

Come on Yahoo! Get your stuff together!

So here’s something to ponder. Google and Overture have the ability to report how many clicks you have for any given term. So why can’t they also tell you exactly what the searcher typed into the search box as well?

Why would you want something like that? It’d make it a lot easier to hone your negative term lists and only purchase terms that make you the most money.

Just something to think about.

Customer service at Overture is horrible. Sorry Overture, but that’s the truth.

After much frustration with Overture, I used a method I learned back when I was in sales to build up a phone book of Overture.

(I also learned through this method that overture reps don’t use their real last names, and they do this because they’ve had livid advertisors screaming in the phone at them. Overture’s technique to dealing with those people is to tell the angry advertisor that “so and so” doesn’t work there anymore, and transfer you to someone else. Like I said: Horrible Customer Service.)

I will tell you now, this method is of ~questionable~ taste. I use it only when I have tried every other avenue.

You build a phone book. That way, when you need to talk to a person, you can keep dialing until you get a person. The process is a little time consuming, but simple. What you have to do is listen to people and write down the important stuff. If you ever talk to a person, get a name. Always. And if you can, try to get something else about which you can talk to that person.

I start by demon dialing — that is dialing the main number and then entering a random extension to see who you get — just to talk to a voice. Make sure you note the number and the extension. (I usually dial the number and then start at 100, then 101, etc)

If you talk to a person, get as much information as you can from them. A good way to do that is to act lost.

The conversation goes something like this:

When they answer the phone, they’ll usually say “This is ___.” (We’ll say ‘Michael’ answered the phone.)

Me, “Oh. *pause* Um. *pause again* I’m sorry, Michael. I’m trying to get Cathy in the sales department. Is this the sales department?” (Cathy is a good name to use because it is a common female name. “Dave” is a good male name.)

Michael,”No, this is the accounting department.” (You write that down.)

Look at the information you have so far: you know that a guy named Michael works in the Accounting department, and you also have his phone number. The conversation continues:

Me,”Oh, I’m sorry, I’m trying to get ____ I must have written their number down incorrectly, I dialed [the number you dialed.]”

Michael,”No, that’s my phone number. Here, let me transfer you to Cathy at extension 456.”

Now, you know that Michael, is in accounting, and you know his extension and that he is very helpful. If you ever need his help again, you can tell him that he helped you before, you don’t mean to bother him again, but could he help you.

Then, I repeat the process.

If you need to speed up the process a little, it is actually much faster to do it on the weekend when nobody is there to answer their phones. It is amazing how much information people leave on their voice mail messages:

“Hi, I’m so and so, the [position at company]. I’ll be out of the office from [date] to [date] but if you need immediate assistance, you can talk to my assistant [name here] at extension [number here].”

You’ve learned a wealth of information from that voice mail:

• phone number
• Name of person
• Their department
• Where they’ve traveled to (which is a good conversation point for later.)
• That person’s assistant
• The assistant’s extension

Now, I know what you’re thinking. I know you’re thinking. “People will know that I’ve never talked to them before and know you are feeding them a line of crap.”

Well, *most* of the time it does work. You’d be surprised.

Usually, if I get into a pinch and the person insists they don’t know me, or says something “Now *who* are you again?” I give them a name of a person in another department and say they referred me. At that point, they’ll usually say “Oh” and try to help you, or they will say “I can’t help you, but I think [someone else's name] can.” At that point, try to get the new extension by telling them that you’ve been cut off before, and they’ll usually do it.

Don’t call around too much in the same department at the same time, or else people will start to understand the game.

This is not a technique you can use with small companies, but it works really really well for large corporations. And, it is how I deal with Overture. Good luck.