We’ve all experienced the rogue employee who wipes out any goodwill you felt for a restaurant or a service supplier with their attitude.
Well, corporate cultures can be just as toxic to the customer relationship, but instead of one dysfunctional “brand ambassador,” you have a company full of them.
Valeria Maltoni offers two examples of ways companies sabotage the customer relationship. On her Fast Company blog, she describes the way companies drive away customers with poorly thought-out cost cutting efforts.
On her Conversation Agent blog, she talks about measuring brand value, and how a weak or non-existent brand strategy can destroy your sales.
Put …read more

If Microsoft doesn’t want to buy Yahoo, why do executives keep talking about the acquisition-gone-wrong?
The continued dribble of comments about potential side-deals and semi-deals must be distracting to Microsoft employees, who are in the middle of the company’s transformation from Bill Gates’ company to an entity that embraces open architectures and web-based apps interconnecting in a cloud.
Does MSFT even know what messages it wants to be sending investors, regulators, the public and customers?
Microsoft Says Chances of Yahoo Takeover Negligible (Reuters)
Shocker: Yahoo Shoots Carl Icahn as Microsoft Messenger (Kara Swisher)
For a mega-corporation, Microsoft is acting like a teenage boy at a …read more

The interconnectedness of public relations and marketing is evident when you see a company effectively differentiating itself from its competitors. But even the most coordinated efforts have to amplify something true about your company.
Revolutionary advertising teamed up with bland media relations won’t get you where you want to be.
Setting yourself apart in the public’s mind will fail miserably if the customer experience doesn’t live up to the billing.
If employees and business partners don’t buy into the idea that you really are a different company, they’ll pass on their skepticism  to customers.
Southwest Airlines and Canada’s WestJet have been very effective …read more

The Canadian Autoworkers’ Union is appalled that GM is closing factories that produce trucks and performance cars.
Their showdown with management fizzled recently when the courts ruled they couldn’t blockade GM offices and plants just because they don’t like decisions made by management.
How utterly lame.
CAW head Buzz Hargrove was patting himself on the back a couple of years ago, when GM announced they would be producing Camaros in Canada.
Was the company’s increasing reliance on the high profit margins of SUVs, power cars and pick-up trucks a good long-term direction for the company?
Let’s see, gas prices steadily rising. Concern for …read more

The average person in business receives too many memos, e-mails and news alerts in a given day to pay close attention to all of them.
Unless you can communicate quickly  what value will come from reading your information, they may not even get past the heading.

Assuming you are distributing something that has value to people, it’s your responsibility to signal that value in the first few words.
And if you can’t think of a reason people would find the information valuable, maybe you shouldn’t be wasting their time with it.
Technorati Tags: influence,business,communications,values,teasers,stickiness,answers,information,words

Everyone appreciates praise from a client, a supervisor or a co-worker.But vague compliments leave the (often correct) impression that you don’t really understand what that person does.
When you spot someone doing something right, provide immediate positive feedback that’s specific to the task.  If you aren’t sure about someone’s role, spend a few minutes finding out more before lavishing praise on them.

“You saved me from embarrassment this morning when you spotted that typo before I sent that document out,” communicates not just your appreciation, but also your understanding of what was done and how it helped.
“You do a great job! …read more

There’s a temptation to include custom measurement in every communication activity, rather than doing some global measurement.

It’s great to canvas your customers, employees, suppliers and others from time to time about their expectations and how well you’re meeting them.
If you communicate in three different ways with a person, you don’t need to send them three different surveys.
But if you your measurement tools are more noticeable than the information you’re trying to communicate, they can cause survey fatigue among the people you most want to hear from.
Create feedback loops that aren’t intrusive. And when you do send out a survey …read more

There are many instances when you can’t provide advance notice to business partners about an announcement.

But when collaboration is possible, take advantage of the chance to give organizations that you’re partnering with a chance to get their communications planned.
If there are restrictions on the distribution of information, be clear about those restrictions. If you need feedback on the facts and statements, ask explicitly for that help.
It’s much easier to fix problematic wording ahead of time. After you’ve made the information public, it’s harder to track down everyone who’s using the information and getting it corrected.
Other Quick Tips from Common …read more

What a schmozzle.
The recent uproar after the firing of an employee over her decision to give a free bite-sized snack to the young child of a customer lead the Tim Horton’s chain to unfire her.
The optics of firing a single mother for an act of kindness put the fast food chain in a bind.
Is this likely to set off a chain reaction of protests when some high school student has their hours cut to almost none for not agreeing to take on more shifts while studying for their mid-terms? Will others in McJobs lead a lobbying  campaign to raise …read more

There is no magic solution to all business issues, so stop looking for the online discussion tool to solve every last thing.
On the other hand, there remain a committed group of corporate communicators and their bosses who are determined to resist the lure of wikis, blogs, podcasts and other conversational tools for business.
Shel Holtz does his usual good job of countering the various arguments against organizations adopting social media tools.
His main points:

Even usually-cautious lawyers are signing onto the Cluetrain;
You can show the ROI;
The time-sink factor can be managed.

Technorati Tags: blogging, business, communications, public relations, corporate, companies, podcasts, wikis, organizations, resistance, …read more