What the Yell.com are you doing?
As this is our first blog post we waited for something to actually say.
In this blog post we will explain why Yell.com don’t understand online marketing, SEO or customer service for that matter.
It all started when we tested out Yell’s new PPC ad system for our client Logan Car Hire, it was just a light test, depositing the minimum and then measuring the results. It was going OK and the client was happy to keep testing, as with anything we do we wanted to test it over a longer period of time to give us enough feedback to make the decision as to whether or not to use it fully and include it in the marketing budget.
Then Yell got involved!
We received a call from a customer service agent at Yell asking if we wanted to try out their new PPC ad system, this was strange as we had been using it for over 2 months. Once this detail was explained the customer service agent turned into a sales agent trying to sell us everything they had – I’m sure if I hadn’t agreed to try something she would have sold me the seat she was sitting on. As she was the expert on all things Yell she had convinced me to stop using the PPC system and get full business listings as, in her words “when anyone types in Car Hire with any search, your listing will be first”. Now this is Yell we’re dealing with, a company most of us grew up with, a company that has been around forever. This sounded like a good deal, however, I pressed for more details. What was the previous months search volume? Will it be UK wide? How much will it cost? I was in the bag, ready to spend, I would be the first listing UK wide for Car Hire, over 20,000 searches the previous month, and all this for £800 a year, £80 a month for 10 months. “Send me the invoice!” I was sold.
Don’t promise and then don’t deliver
The spike at the beginning was the traffic we received from the PPC ad system, as you can see not much happens after that. In September we received 50 visitors, not the 20K promised, and in October only 31 people managed to find our site on the business listings on Yell.
Customer Service Nightmare
After about 40 days of being with Yell on the new super package the Logan Car Hire booking centre received over 200 extra calls, not from customers but from other sections of Yell and every other type of directory listing site in the UK, Qype and Local Mole phoned on a daily basis. When it was explained to them that another person had called yesterday they seemed surprised, maybe their CRM systems are still only paper note pads. Still it was taking time away from the booking centre. Then we received a call from Yell’s finance department looking for an address to send the invoice, I mentioned that we hadn’t received a contract of what we would get and that when we measured the traffic delivered, 50 visitors and not the 20,000 promised had been received – so we’re still waiting on them to call back.
It gets worse – Brand Hijacking
Just the other day we decided to analyze all the positions that Logan Car Hire operate in and the surrounding catchment areas. Everything was looking nice a dandy, the ranking positions are where they should be. Then my colleague says “The booking centre are getting calls for Paisley and that’s never been a target, maybe we should look at it?” that’s a fine idea, opened Google and typed in “Logan Car Hire Paisley” Yell are number one, great so at least it might get some traffic. But what the F&%KS that underneath the Yell listing?
Someone bought the domain name www.logancarhirepaisley.co.uk and they have copied the content form one of our sites. This has to be one of Logan’s competitors trying to get in on the act? Oh no it isn’t.
Check these whois details!
I then called Yell and they have no idea who deals with this and they apparently can’t do anything.
So not only did they lose a paying customer but they managed to piss me off enough to write a blog post about it.
Have you had a similar experience with Yell or other traditional media based directory websites?
Colin Boyd, CEO Boyd Digital