Does Your Client Service Need a Facelift?

March 3rd, 2010
by BurrellesLuce Insider

by Emily Mouyeos*

Last week while I was on vacation I had the pleasure of getting my wallet stolen. (Please note the extreme sarcasm.) This led to me speaking with multiple customer service agents from my bank, credit card, health insurance and rental car companies, and the NYC MTA. Overall, my experience was positive; so, I won’t use this blog post to vent about any frustrations. However, being a client service account manager, my recent experience made me think about what pushes customers to the point where their calls become YouTube videos.

My fellow blogger and BurrellesLuce client service team member, Lauren Shapiro,  recently described a company’s client service department as its brand ambassador. She wrote, “The relationship between the client and your client service representative can make or break your organization’s brand.” I can easily name brands that I’ve vowed never to use again because of difficult interactions with their client services. But what can we do when serving our customers, clients or patrons to keep them from reaching a breaking point and retain their business when their effort to get answers or solve problems doesn’t produce the desired outcome. It may be time to consider giving your company’s customer service a facelift in order to protect your brand and customer base.

One of the most frustrating aspects of reaching out for service support, and a recent issue played out in the media, is when is it is unclear as to how to successfully contact a company or representative regarding issues. Google came under scrutiny with the U.S. launch of their smart phone, Nexus One. Not only was there no clear contact information listed on their website, but customers weren’t even sure what party would be handling their service questions. Should they call their service provider, the phone manufacturer, or Google? Some companies purposefully bury contact information as a way to deter clients from calling. If client service departments are the face of companies, then it makes sense for them to be easily assessable.

In fact, for the most part, the client and public relations industries are becoming more keen to the importance of personal touch and communication. There are even websites dedicated to providing people with phone numbers that are supposed to have humans on the other end. But once a client locates a number to call, who will they speak to at your company? How many times have we heard others say or have even said ourselves, “I just want to talk to a human!” It may save money to filter client inquiries through touch-tone assistance to direct calls. However, at what cost is it acceptable to frustrate your most loyal clientele?

I’ve really enjoyed Ally Bank’s recent commercials that pick apart the absurdness of service policies and service support. The commercial I saw this morning involved a man telling a little girl that the automated doll she wanted to play with couldn’t understand her request to play and that the toy was in control. Isn’t that when we find ourselves most peeved – when we lose our sense of control?

As professionals that deal with clients and patrons, we should create environments where our constituents feel comfortable and confident when approaching our client service representatives, our brand ambassadors! We should never make our valued customer base feel as though the following quote from “The Office” is true.

“Okay, Dwight, let me explain something to you. I set the rules and you follow them blindly, okay? And if you have a problem with that, then you can talk to our complaint department. It’s a trash can.”  - Michael Scott

Does your company’s client service department need a facelift? Does it make economical and branding sense to do away with automated systems? How is your company making it more accessible for clients to reach the right contacts?

*Bio: Emily Mouyeos joined the BurrellesLuce account management team with a background in nonprofit communication and development. Her background and current experience with BurrellesLuce allows her to effectively address client needs and consolidate feedback for senior management. To Emily, nothing feels better than helping others achieve their goal, whether it’s professionally or personally.  By focusing on client management through the Fresh Ideas blog, she hopes to evaluate new client management trends, as well as provide insight to the pros and cons of current practices. She looks forward to connecting with the readers of Fresh Ideas for new perspectives and dialogue on issues that affect overall success. LinkedIn: Emily Mouyeos Twitter: @BurrellesLuce Facebook: BurrellesLuce

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Young Professionals: St. Louis PRSA Pro-Am Day

March 1st, 2010
by Tressa Robbins

I had the pleasure of attending and serving on a career panel at the PRSA/PRSSA Pro-Am Day in St. Louis last week. (New PRSA president/CEO Gary McCormick was the luncheon speaker, but that’s for a future post here on BurrellesLuce Fresh Ideas.)  

 In this post I’d like to share some of the advice that was provided in the “Diary of Young STLPRSAproam-youngpro panelProfessionals” session.  Allison Hughes, Lara Golike, Tanya Kath and Phillip Cleveland served as panelists and answered questions from the Missouri and southern Illinois PRSSA members in attendance.

When asked for advice about entering the job market, the panel offered these points:

  • Don’t go in with a sense of entitlement. You’ll be “knocked down a peg” and only set yourself up for disappointment.
  • Not everyone works with clients immediately. While you should have a writing portfolio, you are still the “low man on the totem pole.”
  • With entry-level positions, you may have to jump through the hoops and prove yourself until acknowledged as a professional.  It can be a long road, but you must keep on until accepted.
  • In corporate PR there can be as many as ten approvals and red lines before something is given the go-ahead.
  • Not every office is like “Devil Wears Prada!”

As far as advice about job searching and what skills should be highlighted, the panel offered this guidance:

  1. Digital PR is a must. Agencies want to hire those that already have these skills. 
  2. Be sure Facebook, Twitter and other social media pages are “clean.” With Facebook, you can set privacy filters, but keep in mind that nothing is truly private on the web. 
  3. As far as skills to be highlighted, do NOT say you are a “people person.” 
  4. Include group projects (not just individual) as this demonstrates team work.
  5. Showcase achievements rather than activities. 
  6. Be prepared for an on-the-spot writing test.
  7. When interviewing, ask lots of questions before accepting a position so you know what you’re getting into.
  8. Early in your career (or even when doing internships) – diversify. Even if you know what area you want to go into, don’t pigeon-hole your experience.

Finally, panelists were asked about some the things they wish they’d learned more about in school, to which they responded:

  • AP Style (there’s even an app for that now!)
  • Social Media
  • Reading industry magazines and newsletters as well as thought-leaders blogs.

If your local PRSA, IABC, AMA or other group has a Pro-Am event, I’d encourage you to participate in any way that you are able.  What additional advice would you offer these about-to-be young PR pros?

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Google Alerts and AP Coverage in a Post-Licensing Agreement Environment

February 26th, 2010
by BurrellesLuce Insider

by Stephen Lawrence*

Picture1

In the wake of my last post, search engine giant Google and the Associated Press (AP) reached an agreement allowing Google to return to hosting AP content.  Did the floodgates then open to overwhelm my inbox with those “author:  Samantha Critchell” Google News Alerts which I had previously set? 

Not exactly. 

During the full calendar week of February 14th – 20th, I received 18 separate alerts containing a total of 27 links. This was a slight improvement over the reporting of 16 alerts and 20 links for the previous period of January 19th – February 2nd. When broken down by source the pattern remains the same:

  • ABC News led with 14 links linking back to AP material hosted on their parent site.
  • Newspaper sites accounted for 10 more.
  • While the remaining three were either foreign or with no hard-copy editions.

The print to web ratio for the prior period, as I found, was evenly matched this week. 

  • Five of the ten Google alerted newspaper articles had a corresponding print presence. 
  • The remaining articles were web exclusives.

One might have expected to see a greater surge of articles since this most recent “experiment” coincided with New York Fashion Week and Ms. Critchell is the AP’s fashion maven.  Her subjects ranged from Marc Jacobs, Zac Posen, and Luca Luca to Naomi Campbell’s Fashion benefit for Haitian relief.  (During the previous period, topics ranged from the Golden Globes to Vera Wang’s designs at previous Winter Olympics.)

A similar Yahoo! News search supplies only six newspaper stories along with a smattering of local TV sites, a couple of which overlapped with the Google Alerts coverage.

To date, our BurrellesLuce readers have located over 80 articles published during that week attributed to Samantha Critchell (this includes the five mentioned earlier). And, these are only the ones relating purely to Fashion Week coverage.  There are an additional 100+ older articles which saw print in newspapers.

While there may well be a number of underlying factors at work here – ranging from other individual licensing agreements to spidering blocks – the raw totals are telling.

This week, we find an 8:1 disparity in Fashion Week coverage, or an 18:1 disparity in subject coverage for this print to web experiment. 

For my purposes, this was but a simple experiment. But would you be willing to subject your client to such uncertainties knowing these possible results?

*Bio: A native of Mesa, Arizona, I graduated from the University of Arizona with a major in Near Eastern Studies. I began my career with BurrellesLuce in 1997 as a reader. As with most readers, I developed a special relationship with my assigned papers – those small town dailies and weeklies of the same flavor that my family had been employed in for two generations. Currently, I hold the position of quality assurance specialist, troubleshooting daily production issues. Outside interests include woodworking, and keeping my wife and dog happy. Twitter: BurrellesLuce; Facebook: BurrellesLuce

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Say Yes To Being A Good Meeting Participant Or Just Say No To Attending

February 24th, 2010
by Johna Burke

What would you do if a colleague was commenting on Facebook instead of paying attention to your presentation? A friend of mine recently faced this dilemma. While her meltdown over the incident was wildly entertaining and worthy of its own Bravo series, she still has unresolved issues with meetings and attendee participation.Checking_Email

The scenario that prompted this post:
My friend, an attorney, was presenting to other partners at her firm about a potential class action case. During her presentation she had the attention of all of the partners except one. This particular partner was in the midst of several pleadings, so my friend presumed the feverish Blackberry activity was related to the partner’s negotiations. Sadly, this was not the case. Upon returning to her office, my friend found that the colleague in question was commenting on Facebook pictures of another associate during the meeting. Her response to the slight was to storm into her colleague’s office and berate her for being rude and inconsiderate. Her colleague then responded that perhaps she would have paid more attention if the presentation was more interesting.

OUCH!

Two alpha females in the heat of battle could only be subdued by the senior partner of the firm. The senior partner offered a resolution of “get over it” and “move on with the important business of your respective case load.”

Unfortunately doing so is often easier said than done. I, like other PR professionals, attend many meeting during the week. And while some of them may not be as amusing as the activity on Facebook, there is still something to be said about respecting our colleagues, never mind the potential of missing some important information, during a meeting.

In an effort to help meeting attendees everywhere, I believe if we all adopt these three rules of courtesy and productivity we can avoid future occurrences of hurt feelings and hostility.

3 meeting rules that promote courtesy and productivity:

  1. Attend only if you will contribute or learn from the meeting
  2. If you MUST respond to an email or phone call during a meeting excuse yourself from the room. (If you do excuse yourself, let someone else in the meeting know how long you anticipate being gone.)
  3. NEVER tweet or post an update to Facebook during a meeting. (Chances are someone is connected to you or following you and will see your indiscretion.)

I admit I’ve tweeted during web meetings and responded to emails that could have waited with no regard for the meeting moderator or other attendees. For this, I apologize. I am committed to changing my ways and will no longer be seduced by the flashing red light of my blackberry or the call of social media during meetings. I hope my BurrellesLuce colleagues will hold my feet to the fire and join me in being courteous and productive.

If we can’t follow these simple rules we need to evaluate why we are attending meetings in the first place. Will any of you take the three rule challenge? Please do, and let us know how it changes your meeting “experience.”

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BurrellesLuce Newsletter: Separating Social Media Fact From Fiction

February 23rd, 2010
by BurrellesLuce

Social Media Myths Revealed

February 2010

Social media’s proliferation has helped to advance public relations and marketing practice. Yet, despite the long distance we’ve traveled in just a short time with social media, we still have much to learn about both its potential and its limitations. So whether you’re an experienced social media user or are just now developing this aspect of your communication program, all can stand to benefit from recognizing some common myths surrounding social media…

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