StarrCo

May I Help You Is Useless?

Seths Blog says that "May I help you" is a completely useless thing to say - unless you want to end the conversation.

Seth Grodin is all about marketing and his point is that there are better ways for a marketer to begin a conversation. Certainly I don't feel particularly engaged when someone asks me this question.

And when your goal is to build a relationship, you don't want to end it at the beginning.

You also don't want to end it on a note of aggravation.

I find it both useless and irritating when an organization has been unable to resolve the issue I called about and my phone contact asks: "Is there anything else we can help you with?"

I would like to see the conversation end with, "We're so sorry we were unable to help you today."

A good next sentence would go something along the lines of: "I'll bring this to (my supervisor's/the owner's/the president's) attention and see if we can't prevent this happening again."

I believe you build more confidence and trust with clients and customers when you acknowledge the facts and indicate that the issue will be discussed after the call ends.

A couple of years ago, I was the customer whose complaint got lost in the telephone tree by my local internet company. My service had gone out and even though I called every day for two weeks, and different people made service appointments, no one ever showed up. Follow up calls showed no one had heard about my service being out and the process repeated itself.

No one ever apologized - not once. They did end each call with "Is there anything else I can do for you today?

After two weeks, a service supervisor called. He had learned of the unresolved service problems (It had something to do with the fact I had finally called to cancel my account) admitted they had dropped the ball, apologized profusely and gave me his direct work line so that if it ever happened again, I would never have to go through the phone tree.

It helped a lot to hear someone admit their error; he fixed the problem and gave me a means to prevent it happening again. I also got about a month of free service as part of the apology package.

What does PR do?

I am often asked what I do.

When I tell people I'm a communication specialist and get a glazed look, I follow up with - I am a messenger.

Public relations trains you to be the messenger as well as to figure out what the message is, who needs to hear it and how best to deliver it.

Here is a basic outline of what I do:
Study the client, industry and firm.
Identify the groups who will be interested in a client's work.
Identify the messages / information important to each group.
Identify how to best communicate with the various groups who interact with the client's firm or organization - print, broadcast, internet - and develop a communications plan based on company goals and objectives.
Implement / deliver the messages regarding the client's product or service.
Report back what the market has to say about the client's products or services.
Repeat the cycle.

Effective PR moves continuously in two directions, messaging back and forth from client to market(s) and market(s) to client.

Never before have messengers had such sophisticated technology and skills to present products and services to the market.

Never before have messengers had the resources to identify and target specific groups so that messages and information may be tailored.

Well informed and polished messengers are highly sought after and messengers with experience or specializations can be well paid.

This is what we do.

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Follow-up:

Wikipedia defines PR as: "Put very simply, good PR encourages the media (newspapers, magazines, TV and radio) to say good things about your product/service or whatever it is that you want to promote so that more people buy your product/use your services/think you’re great."

However, it takes quite a bit of legwork to get to the point of speaking on behalf of the client, as seen above.

Measuring Corporate Reputation

How do you measure corporate reputation?

If you are a socially responsible company, does it affect the bottom line in a positive way?

Marketing guru Philip Kotler spoke to a fortunate group of NWU alumni in Sarasota last week about corporate reputation - and why both companies and investors should care.

Kotler had numerous statistics and studies demonstrating various ways of assessing corporate reputation and its relationship to financial performance. And when considering companies to invest in, studies show that those that practice social responsibility tend to financially out perform those that don't.

The same week Kotler spoke, Microsoft passed Johnson & Johnson to take the top spot in the Harris Interactive/Wall Street Journal survey which measures corporate reputation.

Experts are saying that Microsoft is reaping the benefits of the philanthropic work of the Gates Foundation.

The 22,480 respondents who took the survey evaluated companies within six categories from Financial Performance to Emotional Appeal. Whole Foods came in 12th overall but first in the Social Responsibility category with Microsoft only 1.4 points behind. Microsoft led in Vision and Leadership, Workplace Environment and Financial Performance. To see the top five spots in each of the categories click here:

For more details on the overall corporate reputation rankings of 60 of our most visible companies, click here.

Or type "Corporate Reputation" in your browser or blog search. You'll find it.