When Communication with Some People is Like Shouting into the Void

Photo by Julien L on Unsplash

During my career as a marketer, I’ve had to work with many different kinds of people. Sometimes these people restore your faith in humanity and the business world in general, and sometimes they make you wonder why you chose this career in the first place, or, more aptly, why they did?

In this inaugural post of The Frustrated Marketer, I’m relating the tale of my interactions with an incredibly incompetent “Account Executive Guy”. Buckle up. This cautionary tale of dealing with another service provider is a doozy. I can’t tell you the number of times I reached for a glass of wine after having to deal with him during the day. This fucking AEG literally drove me to drink.

Let me start by saying that the AEG worked for a “Major Audio Advertising Provider”, which I won’t name, but I will tell you that they provided us with an audio advertising service which we have found to be essential to building leads for our business. We had not done business with this particular company before, but had done business with another provider who got us results. We decided to go with this particular company because they gave us a deal on their services and it was during a time when we were expanding our own services into new areas. Our current provider of this service could not help us as they literally do not provide that service in that location. I was fairly excited to get started as this particular company owns a lot of market share in the industry and, presumably, could help us build our business even more using that reach.

Now this AEG is, like most people with this job title, not only a sales person but also the rep who handles our account while we’re with the company. So, it’s literally in their job description to communicate with us about results, to be the liaison between us and other departments, and to make sure that we’re happy with our business relationship. 

Now, I understand how busy Account Executives can get with multiple clients. I have been there before multiple times in my own career. The difference is that this AEG works at a major corporate company and (seemingly) has the support of multiple people that can help him answer questions (who he had to reach out to anyway to get certain answers). I do also understand how sometimes corporate culture can hinder rather than facilitate getting help, as I have worked in more than one company that was like this. All this is to say that I understand what the AEG might be going through. However, his lack of communication skills and disregard for us as a paying customer has been nothing short of astonishing.

Communicating with this guy was like shouting into the universe, except my words immediately got sucked into a blackhole. No answer, maybe (barely) an acknowledgement. Then the next time I mention it, it’s like I’ve never talked with him about it before. I have had to say so many things over and over again, on the phone, in meetings, and emails that I started to feel like a broken record at this point. 

Maybe it’s just a difference in communication style. I prefer email as I like to be as detailed as possible and make sure I’m explaining or asking things right. Email also allows me to attach pertinent documents like erroneous bills. I also believe in a paper trail (or in this case a digital trail) especially when dealing with a business relationship, as I have been burned before when someone didn’t “remember” what we had talked about over the phone. However, even when I talked to him over the phone or on a video chat, I could tell he’s struggling to recall items that we’ve communicated about before.

Here’s an example of a situation that happened just a few months into our business relationship.

I had been asking for weeks about some questions and issues we had with our billing and the reporting that they promised to provide to us. On a couple of issues I had been trying to get a response for more than two months (basically since we started with them). After several emails and calls the AEG finally sent us a detailed email on how he was working on the items we have questions on and issues with. That’s great and better than it was in the weeks before. However, instead of replying back to the email I had already sent with the items, he had created a new email. That was a little frustrating, but maybe that’s just how he works.

The AEG sent this email at the end of the day, and I let him know that I wouldn’t be able to review it until later that night and would hopefully be able to respond by then. I did work through some responses and questions, but had to review them with the owner, so didn’t respond until the next morning. Still, I expected that he would read those responses and at least halfway absorb what I said and asked. So, when he called me later that afternoon to tell me he owed me an explanation and I talked about a couple of the things on the list, I was completely flabbergasted by what he said. During the call, he asked me to provide him with information that I had clearly already sent in the email that morning. Maybe he hadn’t had a chance to review the email at that point, but I had already sent multiple emails and had calls with him on these subjects to which the only response I had received was “I’ll work on this”. The email I had sent that morning was merely a reiteration of those subjects with some attached documents for clarification. Now he was asking me to get him that information again? My immediate thought was “are you fucking kidding me”?! 

I almost lost my temper at this point, but instead decided to handle it more professionally. I let him know that these were clearly outlined in the latest email I had sent him and that he could read them there. We ended the call and I immediately called my boss to let him know what was going on. Needless to say, he wasn’t happy either, as this was not the first time we had to deal with his incompetence.

This was just one example of this AEG’s incompetence. In fact, this basic scenario played out so many times since we began our business relationship that I sometimes felt like I was stuck in a really shitty version of Groundhog Day (the movie, not the weird observed holiday). 

Here are the things I tried to make communication easier with this fucking guy:

• Asked to have phone call or zoom meetings with him to make sure we’re on the same page.

• Provided bullet point agendas for those meetings.

• Went over those points in meetings over and over again.

• Followed-up on email threads for several weeks asking for a status update on items that had not gotten an answer, or even a response to the email itself.

• Copied and pasted the same items into the latest email in an email thread in an attempt to make sure that those items didn’t get lost, because this guy doesn’t understand how to scroll down and read.

• Copied and pasted the bullet points he came up with (just the week before) when he asked me to provide him with the subjects that we would talk about in one particular update meeting. Yes, you read that right. He had generated a list of subjects and then had me send that list back to him.

• Reattached attachments multiple times when he asked, because he (apparently) does not know how to find an attachment in an earlier email.

• Reattached a report that he had sent to me as an example of what he provided me with earlier so that he could generate the same report. 

• Reminded him multiple times in emails, phone calls, etc. about reports that he promised he would provide me, which had not been provided yet.

• Kept track of his responses to my emails and phone calls (which included multiple promises to provide the information) in a separate area so I could easily follow the thread through our many conversations about the same things.

• Kept a running todo list of items that he had promised to provide and then followed up, again and again, when he did not provide them.

Those last two were done in a last-ditch attempt to keep my sanity. It didn’t completely work…

I’m sure there are more things I’m forgetting about as this all happened over the course of six months and just recently ended our business relationship with the company. Even if we do decide to do business with that particular company in the future, it will be a cold day in hell when we do business with that AEG again. 

So, my fellow marketers have you had to deal with anyone like this guy? For your own sanity, I sincerely hope not. But, if you feel like adding your own rant, let me know in the comments below. You supply the stories, I’ll bring the alcohol. ;)

Leave a comment