5 Tips For Delivering Good Customer Service

Drying out the walls

Five pieces of free advice for customer services departments, hard-won from five months dealing with my buildings insurance company…

1.  Make it easy for your customers to talk to you.  This is  the 21st century.  Embrace it.  Use email.   If you INSIST on using snail mail to conduct your business, build in some way of letting people know that  letters have arrived – you could do it via email!

2.  One person dealing with an issue helps your customers feel more secure.  Insurance claims can be complicated and take a while to sort out.  It would help your customers’ blood pressure if they had one person to deal with, rather than having to repeat the same information every time they speak to you.  Oh, and sending out letters giving the name of “your personal claims adviser” and sending a different name every time doesn’t help.  

3.  Keep your customers informed.  If they’re contacting you about a building insurance claim, something drastic has happened to their home.  That’s their biggest asset and the possession in which they have most invested emotionally as well as financially.  They want to know  you’re on their side.  They want to know what’s happening and they want to understand a process which they might never have had to deal with before.  Tell them what’s going on.  Don’t make them chase you for information.  Don’t assume they know what’s going to happen.  Put stuff in writing.  There is more information on my insurers’ website about how to buy a toy version of their  mascot than there is about what might happen if you need to make a claim.

4. Make it easy for your customers to tell you how they feel.   I mentioned the fact that I didn’t know what was going on with my claim when I was on the phone to them a couple of weeks ago – just after I’d had a phone call out of the blue from a “disaster recovery company” confirming that they would be coming to the house the next day to install their equipment.  I’ve now had an email request  to give the insurers the details of my “complaint” so that they can improve their service in future.  Which is nice.  Except the email just links to a standard multiple choice form about how satisfied I was (or was not) with the member of staff who dealt with my complaint.  It’s not the staff I’m worried about, it’s the  process that needs changing.  There is nowhere for me to tell them what I’m concerned about. It looks like a tick-box exercise, not a serious attempt to engage with a problem.

5.  Communicate  Actually all of this boils down to one piece of advice.  Communicate with your customers.   Put yourself in their shoes.  Mentally walk through the process your company asks your customers to go through when they deal with you.  What would you like to know at the beginning, middle and end of the process?  How would you want to be dealt with while it’s grinding on?  Do that.  It’s not hard.  A nodding dog should be able to do it.

The golden rule of crisis PR

Six days into Gategate and Andrew Mitchell may have moved off the front pages, but he’s still popping up inside the papers, with the ”did he /didn’t he say Pleb?” debate showing no sign of flagging.  His local paper is today reporting calls for him to stand down as an MP, and Radio 5 has just announced pro-police, anti-Mitchell demonstrations taking place in his constituency.  All in all it’s another illustration of one of the unbreakable laws of PR:  it’s  not the original sin that generally does the reputational damage, it’s bodging the response that does for you.

As I’ve said here before, if you’re in the wrong the best thing to do is say so.  It gives you a bit of control over what happens next and makes you look less as though you’re trying to wriggle out of the blame.  Mitchell should have ‘fessed up straight away.  If he did call the policeman a “pleb” he should have said so. He certainly shouldn’t have implied that the officer wasn’t telling the truth.  There would have been a bit of argy-bargy in the press over the weekend about Tory toffs with anger management issues.  The Flashman reference would have been tiresomely over-used.  But essentially the story would have been done and dusted by the time the Sunday papers were being put to use as litter-tray lining. 

Instead he gave a non-apology apology, a clarification which left things murkier  “I am very clear about what I said and what I didn’t say. I want to make it absolutely clear that I did not use the words that have been attributed to me.”  As Polly Toynbee pointed out, that just makes everyone believe that he did say the P-word and is trying to cover it up.  It turns an essentially trivial matter into an issue of integrity, puts the party of law and order on a collision course with the police and offers a seemingly endless opportunity for the papers to rehash just why this is so bad for the Tories. 

There’s another law of political PR – that the longer a Minister stays on the front pages apologising for a personal misdeed, the less likely he or she is to remain a Minister.  Let’s see.

Politics, PR and the art of the image

Good PRs know that communication isn’t just about words.  Sometimes it’s not about the words at all.  It’s about getting the images right,  plugging into the visual cues audiences respond to, even if they’re not consciously aware of them (see the supreme example of Barack Obama’s Imperial entrance to Parliament  last year).   It’s corny but still true that a picture’s worth a 1,000 words. In that context, yesterday’s Nick Clegg/David Cameron re-dedication on their second anniversary was an extraordinary piece of PR.  And not in a good way.

I’m not talking about the political content of the event (although I wonder how someone who is having their Disability Living Allowance cut might respond to hearing “what you call austerity, I might call efficiency” from Cameron.)

But ignore the content, for the  moment.  Just look at the pictures.  This could be used as a training exercise for how not to do it.  So for their handlers’ future reference, here are some tips:

1.  Don’t show the talent with its back to the audience.

A slightly unfair criticism - they’re standing in a circle of people, so inevitably some people are behind them.  But the fixed camera position – and Cam/Clegg’s relentless focus towards the lens – means that the TV pictures show them apparently ignoring the people in the room.  The audience seems to be just there as set dressing, not a good look for people commonly portrayed as being out of touch with working people.  A more informal setting would have worked better, allowing Cam/Clegg to interact with people in the room without awkwardly spinning round – at tables in the canteen perhaps, if you’re determined to do it in a factory setting.

2.  Mix up the audience

The audience is almost exclusively white and male. The two woman you can clearly see are placed so that they are visible behind Dave and Nick when they speak, somehow emphasising that they’re different.  The pictures should reflect the diversity of the population.  We’re all paying for it, after all.  It’s not a useful image for a government accused of causing record levels of unemployment among young black men, and women to be seen addressing themselves almost exclusively to white men.

3.  Avoid the impression of Toffs lecturing the Workers

Again, slightly unfair – Cam/Clegg go to work every day in suits, you could argue it’s a uniform just as much as the factory workers’ overalls are.  Sending them along in anything else would be hugely patronising.  But the image of two expensively be-suited men standing in front of a passive crowd in overalls has a whiff of the Young Mr Graces about it.  The impression isn’t helped by the artificiality of the set up – a less formal atmosphere might have avoided the sense of the young masters coming down to talk to the hired help.  I wonder if Cameron felt this at the time and that’s why he took his jacket off?

4. It’s meant to be a conversation not a speech

Interaction with the audience seemed very limited.  It would have felt less like a staged PPB and more like a proper event if they had mixed up where the questions came from, so Cam/Clegg had to talk to different parts of the crowd, and had the confidence to actually ANSWER THE QUESTION without reverting to pre-prepared speeches.  No wonder members of the audience don’t look interested in what’s going on (I wonder how much choice they had in being there?)

and finally,

5. Have  a good reason for doing the event in the first place

I’m still puzzled why this was done at all.  It looked like a slightly panicky response to bad local election results. There were no new announcements (and so close to the Queen’s Speech there couldn’t have been).  A re-affirmation of their determination to stick it out together just draws attention to the possibility that they won’t.  Successful partners – in business or marriage – don’t keep banging on about how well they’re getting on, they just get on with doing stuff.  As celeb watchers the world over know, public declarations of devotion are usually followed by acrimonious splits.

It’s cotton, by the way, the second anniversary. In case you were thinking of getting them a gift.  It’s apparently traditional to give towels.  Useful for mopping up messes.

The joy of pitching – 10 ways to get the job

I love pitches.  I like doing the pitching, and I like being pitched to.  I like getting a new brief, working out the idea that unlocks the puzzle and thinking about how to deliver it.  I like the teamwork that goes into putting a proposal together.  I like the nerves before the start and the blissed-out half  hour when it’s over.  And when I’m on the client’s side, I like seeing the different answers people offer to the same question. 

I spent a day being pitched to by PR agencies yesterday.  It was, as always, fascinating and made me think about the basic stuff everyone should remember before they fire up the PowerPoint and go:  

1. Answer the brief you’ve been given – not the one you’d like to have been given.  But…

2. Think outside the brief.  What is the client looking for beyond what’s actually in the tender document?  Longevity? New relationships? Skills transfers from your team to theirs? Can you see the thing they need that they don’t even know they want yet? Tell them about it.

3. Be surprising.  Don’t put in the first thing you think of, that’s likely to be the dullest answer – and the one everyone else comes up with.  Use the flash of inspiration that comes next, when your brain’s had time to mull over the problem for  a while.  That’s the answer that’s authentically yours, the one no-one else will think of.

4.  Be yourself.  You’re going to be working closely with your new clients, they need to be comfortable that you’re going to get on.

5. Get as much information as you can about the client and their industry before you start. ALWAYS go to the Q&A session if there’s one on offer – it’s not only polite, it also might offer you the vital clue you need to tackle the brief.  And you need to know what your competitors know, too. 

6. Don’t expect your audience to be mind-readers.  You might think it’s obvious that you’ll cover the nuts and bolts of the job, but if you don’t say you will your clients might think you can’t be bothered with the basics.

7. Show you’ve thought about the audience – being able to build and manage new channels or produce celebrities at the drop of a hat is only impressive if they’re the right channels – and celebrities – to reach the audience the client wants to talk to.  This isn’t an opportunity to show off everything you know, it’s a chance to show how cleverly you can match your expertise to your potential client’s needs.

8. Show you’ve thought about the audience in the room, too.  As the client, it’s hard to concentrate when you’re watching four or five PowerPoint presentations in a row.  Mix up how you present – use props, good visuals, video, audio – one of the best presentations I’ve seen (not from yesterday’s crop) included filmed vox pops with the target audience to show that the agency knew who they needed to talk to and understood the issues.  Be entertaining, be conversational, be enthusiastic, look people in the eye, SMILE.  (Oh, and if you’re going to use PowerPoint, check your spelling and find someone who knows how to use apostrophes to give it the once over.) 

9.  Think on your feet.  The client’s questions at the end inevitably bring up issues you haven’t thought of – else you’d have put them in the presentation and they wouldn’t ask the question.  Working out an answer as you speak, asking them questions to clarify what they mean  and picking up the clues they give out are just as important as hitting on the “right” answer.  Your job is to prove that you’re quick on the uptake and flexible enough to cope with new ideas.

10.  Don’t forget about the numbers – budget breakdowns, evaluation methods, targets.  They may be broad, and you might have to qualify them later, but they’ll help the client understand that you care about being business-like as well as being creative.

And that’s all there is to it. 

They were a good bunch yesterday.  Now, I need to stop prevaricating and work out who I’m going to recommend gets the job…

101 words of advice – find out if you’re talking to yourself

“The biggest single problem in communications is the illusion that it has taken place.”  Read that last week and cheered.

The notion that the simple act of delivering a press release or conference speech means “communication” can be struck off the To Do list is as common as it’s deadly.  It’s why outputs (number of releases/ size of events) are often used to measure success when it’s outcomes (changing behaviour/ converting enquiries into sales) which matter.  I’ve written before about how difficult proper evaluation is, but without it you don’t know if you’re actually communicating or just talking to yourself.

The language of customer services

  One way or another I’ve spent a lot of time with customer services departments recently.  Banks and internet providers and router-repair people and others.  It’s painfully obvious which companies have had the customer service police in and which ones still allow their staff to speak like human beings.  Inevitably the ones who talk to you in Human are much more approachable (even if no more able to resolve a problem)  than the ones sticking to a script that says they have to start every phrase with the words “Yes Ma’am”,  which just makes me feel that they’ve mistaken me for the late Queen Mother (TalkTalk, I’m looking at you)

The language gets even more baroque when they’re apologising for something – even for something that isn’t their fault.

I recently forgot to cancel an automatic renewal on some virus protection software.  Entirely my fault for being slow – and the company gave me plenty of warning that the payment would be taken.  When I finally woke up to the deadline and asked to cancel the renewal it was as though I’d caught them climbing out of a ground floor window with a bag marked swag: 

Dear Penny , kindly accept my sincerest apology for the inconvenience this matter has caused you. Rest assured that this matter will be taken in consideration for the improvement of our process and policy…  Penny, we regret losing you as our valued customer… we’d like to let you know that the only reason why your subscription renewed automatically is because we wanted to make sure that your computer does not become unprotected even for a day … Thank you for giving us the opportunity to assist you … we look forward to being of further service to you in the future…”

and on and on.  It’s not that I don’t appreciate being treated politely by the companies I deal with. It’s just that either they’re taking the piss (not impossible, I’ve had jobs that made me hate the public too); or they’re completely unable to communicate like normal people and need to get a better script.  I can’t be the only person who reads stuff like that and is reminded of one of the great villains in English literature - probably not the effect they’re after.

“They taught us all a deal of umbleness—not much else that I know of, from morning to night. We was to be umble to this person, and umble to that; and to pull off our caps here, and to make bows there; and always to know our place, and abase ourselves before our betters. And we had such a lot of betters!…‘Be umble, Uriah,’ says father to me, ‘and you’ll get on. It was what was always being dinned into you and me at school; it’s what goes down best. Be umble,’ says father, ‘and you’ll do!’ And really it ain’t done bad!”

Tory PPB – Smart #PR or cynical stunt?

The Tories abandoned the usual Party Political broadcast format this evening,  in favour of an appeal from a range of Ministers and others on behalf of the East African famine crisis.  Twitter’s response so far has been mixed – from Jon Gaunt castigating them for “using dying kids to get votes” to others describing it as “decidedly different” and “random” – there will no doubt be a more varied response if it’s repeated after the news at 10, when the politicos settle down with their cocoa and get ready to luxuriate in Newsnight.  I’ll look out for the debate.

With much relief I can reveal that I disagree with Gaunty.

Personally I think it might be the most interesting piece of political PR the Tories have done in a long time, as well as a pragmatic response to a difficult content issue.

What would have been the point of  a standard pitch for votes when the nearest election where those votes might be useful is far over the horizon?   And what could they say about policy and politics which doesn’t raise the spectres of the many, many problems the electorate are currently facing and drag down the public mood?  So why not try something to position the Tories as caring and generous and concerned with bigger issues than petty politics?  Why not use it as an opportunity to humanise the party a bit – getting away from the notion that they’re just posh, white men in suits -  and let them send themselves up a bit?  Why not stress the party’s commitment to international aid – a rare example of policy that appeals to people from beyond the traditional Tory vote?  Oh, and in the process, why not try to raise some money for an extremely good cause?

They’ve obviously decided that the risks - that people will see it as exploiting human tragedy or a way of ducking out of a conversation about domestic politics – are worth taking.  It’s not been a great week for the Tories’ PR machine what with the cat flap, and the hasty re-write of the Leader’s speech - but this is an intriguing note to end on.   Smart PR, cynical stunt, generous gesture or all three?

And now, something for the laydeez

I did some work last month researching gadget-review blogs and new technology sites for a company poised to bring a new product to market.  The world of the self-confessed geek and the gadget-obsessed is still overwhelmingly male,  but I did stumble across one blog, aimed squarely at the fairer sex, which boasted an array of stories designed to tempt us into the boys’ lair:   

 

• Pink moisture glasses keep your eyes refreshed
• Versetta iPad handbag doubles as a workstation
• Ultimate beauty iPhone app saves you time in Selfridges
• Jawbone wristband tracks your diet, exercise and sleep
• Burg 5 watch, even in pink, fails to tick right boxes
• HTC set to release Glamour smartphone just for women
• Microsoft reveals the Comfort Keyboard
• iPad kangaroo pouch coming soon

I guess this either makes you laugh hysterically or it doesn’t.* 

It reminded me of an old piece by Alan Coren about a new car aimed at the “typical female” customer  which failed because:

at 35mph the linkage connecting the hairdryer to the eye-level grill snapped, disconnected the telephone and threw the crib through the windscreen.  Upon applying the brakes the driver inadvertently set the instant heel-bar in motion and was riveted to the wardrobe by a row of tin tacks.

I suppose at least he had the excuse of writing in 1974, some time before feminism got into its stride (and of being a comic genius who rarely put a foot wrong).  Not sure what the bloggers’ excuse is.

* these are real stories from a real blog, which I’m not linking to because it doesn’t deserve the traffic

Who the hell’s doing the Tories’ PR?

Having spent last night watching Hackney burning on TV and listening to police sirens screaming past on the road outside, I appreciate that there are more important issues at stake than David Cameron’s PR.  But, this blog is supposed to be about communications, so what the hell: 

Who on earth is in charge of Tory PR?  And why did they not have the PM on a plane back from Tuscany immediately after the first night of rioting in London? 

For once I have some sympathy for the politicians -  what on earth do we expect them to do when they get back?  As Shaun Bailey put it on Newsnight :

 ”This is the thing that the media have been most childish about.  Do you think that David Cameron’s going to go down there with a shield and deal with the kids in Tottenham and then run over to Hackney?  We have a mechanism.  This is a big sophisticated society.  The police are here … we have leaders.  We have a Deputy Prime Minister, a Deputy Mayor, we have all manner of people.  The point is this, they are not the people who will put this problem right.  This problem is in our communities and in our economy.  What are our young people going to do for a job?  … We have lost control of our young people and that is our responsibility not politicians’ ” 

But whether there’s a practical need for them to be here or not, the image projected by the absence of senior ministers is poisonous to the Tories because it suggests that either:

• they have no idea what to do and are hiding from the cameras so that they don’t reveal this to an anxious public;   or
• they don’t want to get into a row – about cuts to police and youth services, or about soaring youth unemployment, or about how (if?) the clean-up will be paid for;    or 
• they simply don’t care – poor communities destroying themselves in unfashionable parts of London don’t matter enough to interrupt a holiday.

I think it’s the last one that’s the one that’s most damaging.   Cameron, Boris, Osborne, privately educated, Bullingdon-clubbers and multi-millionaires to a man, they already look startingly out of touch with “real people”.  It’s all too easy to imagine that they couldn’t care less about what happens on Mare Street.

Cameron cares about his image – that’s why he was  so sensitive to criticism for not tipping a waitress that he went back to find her.  But his priorities are badly wrong.  He should have been  here, striding purposefully about in Tottenham, talking to residents with a furrowed brow, sympathising with distraught shop-keepers and homeowners and promising that help is on its way. 

Of course he’s back now, but it’s too late. In PR terms the damage is done.  The mood music is clear - they don’t care, they don’t act, we’re all in this together at the mercy of the mob,  they’re enjoying holidays in expensive private villas.  They’re the nasty party again.  Little by little the brand is being re-toxified.

 

The NI guide to crisis communications in 5 easy steps

In years to come the News International phone hacking saga will be taught on PR courses as a textbook case of how not to handle a PR crisis.  Here’s why:

1.  Caught in a crisis the response should  be quick, consistent and open.  NI let the story about hacking rumble on for months, claiming all the while that it was a problem with one rogue operator.  Sticking to an incomplete story is a guarantee of greater problems down the line when the full story comes out.  Which it will.  ’Fess up straight away if you’re in the wrong, it gives you some control over the story if it isn’t dribbling out over a long period as new allegations arise.  Most experts agree that  an attempted cover up can cause bigger headaches than the original sin.

2. If you’re in the wrong, apologise – fully and sincerely, and start talking about what changes you’re going to make to ensure that this never happens again. Presumably under the influence of their new PR company, NI are now set to run full-page ads in the papers apologising for what’s happening.  Rebekah Brooks’ initial statement declaring that it was inconceivable that she knew about hacking Milly Dowler’s phone fell several miles short of what was required.

Until the new PRs got to work, there hadn’t been much in the way of apology to the victims from anyone at NI.  Today’s meeting between Rupert Murdoch and Milly Dowler’s family may be a first step to recognising that this is a tactical mistake (as well as being morally indefensible…) 

3. A bit of humility doesn’t hurt.  James Murdoch’s refusal to appear before the  Select Committee because the date was inconvenient was cringeworthy. Worse was Rupert’s apparent insistence to the Wall St Journal that the company had been handling the issue extremely well.

4.  Think about the information that everyone involved will need.  This includes regulators, customers, investors, suppliers, victims  and – a crucial group that NI has rather ignored – your own staff.  Former News of the World staff, sacked a week before Rebekah Brooks felt compelled to go, may feel this element of the crisis could have been better handled… 

and most importantly

5. You need to be prepared.  NI don’t seem to have had a Head of Comms working on this until this January. so no wonder their responses have been flat-footed.  It’s worth:

• Having a regular health check of the business to see where problems might arise and do scenario planning to see how you’d cope if the worst happened
• Having a  team in place to manage a crisis, with people who are sufficiently senior to be able to take quick decisions without having to refer to managers
• Identifying a media-trained spokesperson to deal with enquiries to ensure a consistent message gets through
• Remembering the power of the non-traditional media.  Think how you’d deal with Twitter or Facebook in full flow…
• Practising.  Running the odd “pretend crisis” session will test the systems you’ve put in place and make sure they’re robust.