After tinkering in paid search since 2001 I’m as cynical as the next guy/girl, far too many instances of what should happen but doesn’t, Google’s “quality” score being one such example, follow ups that all to often end in parrot like standard system responses etc. (although to be fair at times the support is good from Google) so it was a surprise and a refreshing change to get a stratospheric level of service from MSN.

Basically an account we had uploaded some new campaigns to had some keywords and ads knocked back on competitor brand related keywords and the reasons were pretty unrelated so I rang up and spoke to a rep there, she took a look and confirmed there was an issue and it was irrelevant and had the keywords reinstated.. that’s as much as I normally hope for with other search engine reps, anything more is a two week job to generally get a standard reply at the end of it but she said she’d take a closer look at the account and run some back end reports that clients aren’t able to do etc. I didn’t really expect anything to come of it (told you I’m a cynic).

Imagine my surprise when I get an email 3 days later with attached spreadsheet detailing every keyword that’s currently disabled and the reason why, but it doesn’t stop there, check this out for a response :

“Thank you for your patience as I have researched all editorial disapprovals within your account with Microsoft adCenter. I have run a report which highlights the details of all disapprovals which have been implemented within the account since June 2006. As I hope you can appreciate, this research has taken me a few days to complete. I have advised you that I would provide you with further information by close of business today. I have attached an edited version of this report for your reference. This report highlights the details of all disapprovals within your account.”

Now that’s commitment bearing in mind the initial problem only really affected one adgroup and a few keywords, but it still doesn’t stop there :

“I will be taking some time over the next few days to go in to each of these Ad Groups, verify the details of the disapproved terms or ads and I shall manually amend these issues for you. I would hope to have this task completed by close of business on Friday.”

So not only has the rep dealt with the issue at hand, she’s proactively gone off and found a few others that have slipped through the net too, now this isn’t a high volume account with 100,000 keywords, it’s just a steady spender doing a few grand per month mostly via the main terms so it’s really not a big account compared to the main spend on Google which is around thirty times the MSN spend!, however I’m very impressed with the MSN reps attitude and willingness to correct issues, even manually herself and it still doesn’t end there, check this out :

“These terms relate to pre-programmed reasons which have been applied via the automatic stage of editorial review. I will be researching these Ad Groups in order to establish the root cause for these rejections. They may have been made in error, so I may need to appeal them for you. I shall certainly update you either way on Friday.

There are many ads which have been disapproved for reasons related to spelling and grammar. I shall personally address these issues within the account and I shall adjust the ads accordingly”

Ok now compare that to a Google’s attitude whereby everything is your problem and you have to sort it out from standard templated replies, the MSN approach is a very different and a very refreshing change… well done MSN.. now if only there was more volume … but then again if MSN grab more market share it’ll end up costing the same in the long run… it’s simple supply and demand I guess so we’ll happily take the lower volume but higher conversion thank you