Customer service is a growing facet of PR
Before the age of blogs, FaceBook, LinkedIn, and other social networking media, whenever people experienced good or poor service at a company, they would simply tell with their family and friends. As the saying goes, they would tell 10 friends.
Today, the moment people get upset with a product or service, they would look it up on the web site "XYZ sucks" and one would invariably find a web site dedicated to it! Then, they would tell their online "friends" (over 100 or even 500+ of them) on Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, and blog or even create a funny but pointed YouTube video about it....if they have a large base of friends and the video gets great viral buzz, it finally appears in the news for the world to see. (Somehow, the news never seems to showcase people giving positive rave reviews about something. I suppose good news is no news!)
Customer service had always been its own division in most firms. But increasingly, it should be under the Marketing division as a growing facet of public relations (PR). Whatever responses that the customer service reps type into the chat windows, email or mail out in letter form often can be found on the Web for the world to mock and disparage your firm. In other words, the customer always gets the last word in.
Re-training and focus in customer service and communications is the best remedy. After all, prevention is better than cure. One can only put out that many fires via PR spin to control the situation before the public completely loses trust in your firm. Not many firms have multiple layers of teflon coating to weather through too many PR storms (unless you're Apple!).
Today, the moment people get upset with a product or service, they would look it up on the web site "XYZ sucks" and one would invariably find a web site dedicated to it! Then, they would tell their online "friends" (over 100 or even 500+ of them) on Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, and blog or even create a funny but pointed YouTube video about it....if they have a large base of friends and the video gets great viral buzz, it finally appears in the news for the world to see. (Somehow, the news never seems to showcase people giving positive rave reviews about something. I suppose good news is no news!)
Customer service had always been its own division in most firms. But increasingly, it should be under the Marketing division as a growing facet of public relations (PR). Whatever responses that the customer service reps type into the chat windows, email or mail out in letter form often can be found on the Web for the world to mock and disparage your firm. In other words, the customer always gets the last word in.
Re-training and focus in customer service and communications is the best remedy. After all, prevention is better than cure. One can only put out that many fires via PR spin to control the situation before the public completely loses trust in your firm. Not many firms have multiple layers of teflon coating to weather through too many PR storms (unless you're Apple!).
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