Given the regular references we make to how important your feedback is to us, we thought it might be interesting for you to hear a bit more about how our products and features get developed. For today’s blog post, we’re talking to Susan Palmer, a Customer and Partner Experience (CPE) manager for Microsoft Advertising. She works on our search advertising platform and tools, including adCenter and adCenter Desktop.

Susan, how long have you been working with the Microsoft Advertising CPE team?

Four years! I started with CPE back when the team was just getting started within the engineering organization for Microsoft Advertising.

Some of our readers might not know – what does CPE do?

As Customer and Partner Experience managers, our job is to listen to customers, gather feedback to really understand their pain points, and then drive that feedback into actionable plans with the adCenter engineering teams. We then look at how we’re doing over time, from release to release. We're charged with moving the needle on product quality and advertiser satisfaction over time.

How do you connect with customers?

We emphasize connecting with our customers through direct meetings with them -- whether it’s bringing product teams and customers together on conference calls, visiting them at the office, or meeting up during industry events. We truly value this level of interaction. In fact, we’re in the process of recruiting for a new small to medium business (SMB) adCenter advisory group. These are special groups of customers who provide input on early design concepts, get access to beta features, and give us feedback on current experiences. We also talk to and listen to the adCenter Support teams and both Microsoft and Yahoo! account managers, and other people who work directly with our advertisers.

In addition, we have other “listening posts” within our larger advertising community, where we manage and monitor feedback from our customers. Twitter is big, not to mention the feedback that comes from the adCenter help system. We’ve also got the Microsoft Advertising blogs and the adCenter Feature Suggestion forum, and we pay attention to blogs managed by other people across the advertising industry.

How does the work you do impact what features get built? Have there been any wins here that you’re proud of?

We continuously meet with the product teams to share our findings, and use structured action plans to drive customer feedback into the prioritization process for features.

Some recent wins include the redesigned campaign management experience that just recently rolled out. It streamlines user workflow, and initial feedback has been enthusiastic, which is great. We’re also making investments in adCenter Desktop based on feedback we’ve been getting from customers. Performance and features in the adCenter Desktop have improved significantly over the past six months. If advertisers haven’t given it a test drive lately, I strongly encourage them to! It’s a great bulk management tool.

It may seem like we're not releasing things fast enough, but we're working really hard to prioritize things appropriately. This can sometimes result in tough tradeoffs, but we are always listening; advertiser satisfaction is extremely important to us.

Is there anything coming up for CPE that you’re particularly excited about?

Definitely! We have several exciting things that are in development right now, but I can’t mention them yet. Among other big initiatives, we’re gathering input on improving the agency experience with adCenter, growing our advisory groups, attending usability studies and interacting with advertisers as much as possible.

We’ve also released a bunch of cool features recently, and the feedback from customers has been great! We partner closely with Tina Kelleher and the team tweeting from @adCenter, but you can also reach CPE @adcenterCPE, or vote on suggestions at the adCenter Feature Suggestion Forum. If advertisers are interested in our agency research, advisory councils, or user studies, they should definitely get in touch! You can reach us at adsfbk@microsoft.com.

This is such a fun job. We’re always striving to improve usability and satisfaction with the adCenter platform and tools. We love hearing from our advertisers, and appreciate everyone who’s taken the time to give us their feedback!

Thanks, Susan!

Until next time,

Eleanor Pachaud, Technical Writer - adCenter User Assistance