I hired Joe Bavonese at Uncommon Practices as a consultant to help me with an online marketing campaign for my sexuality counseling practice. I've been in practice long enough and have had enough experience with marketing campaigns in the past to know that I was taking a risk with my money. But the Uncommon Practices website touts its hit rate and follow-through, and I thought that if I got just a fraction of the appointments they got, I'd be doing well.
Joe created a Google AdWords campaign for me that, to be fair, was not ideal because of the restrictions Google has on words related to sexuality. So the ad wasn't as specific as I had hoped it would be. But I had paid for the consulting and decided to go ahead with the campaign. Midway in the campaign I was contacted by a Google rep who told me about certain ad features that Joe hadn't included. I was surprised he didn't think of using them, especially since they were available for no extra charge. He also used phrases in the ad that I had not given prior approval for.
I found that Joe was very uncommunicative. I had to request the stats from him any time I wanted to know how many hits the ad was getting. He never volunteered any information. As it turned out, over a 3 month period, I got only one response directly from the ad, and that person didn't even come for his appointment.
The last 3 times I tried to contact Joe, I had to send the email twice to get a response. In my last email, I asked if he would consider a partial refund considering the absolute failure of the ad campaign. I waited 10 days before contacting him a second time. He response essentially was, "Thems the breaks."
In my experience, a good customer experience is always worth a small loss in income. Smart business people know the value of customer service. Unfortunately, customer service does not appear to be a top priority for Joe. read more