Corporate Eye

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Lucy Nixon

Lucy Nixon

Employees know URLs better than their CEOs name?

phone question44% of receptionists on the main switchboard of the FTSE 100 companies don’t know the name of their CEO?

I find the results of a recent survey of FTSE 100 companies carried out by MoneyPenny really quite astonishing (via Brand Strategy Guru).

Researchers went mystery shopping across the biggest companies in the country, calling the main UK switchboards of the FTSE 100 to ask each company 10 questions over 4 weeks. They evaluated time to answer, friendliness of answer, clarity of information, welcome received, whether it was a human or automated response, how knowledgeable the respondent was, and overall satisfaction with the call.

Now some of these criteria are quite subjective, but over the course of many calls, you’d soon be able to compare companies. And for the most part, the responses were fine; most companies came out as pretty average (the full results are available and an opportunity to compare your own business performance with the FTSE100). But some of the detail is very curious; the poor performance of the retail sector overall, for example – though a few individual companies put in an excellent performance.

I think it is particularly interesting that more people could provide the web address of the corporate site (87%) than could name the CEO (56%) or provide the postal address (86%).

It was peak holiday season, but surely it can’t be that the switchboards were all staffed by temps (and even if they were, the temps could have been given a crib sheet), or that there had been a mass upheaval in the personnel at the top of the organisation? Chief Executives don’t come and go that fast…

We’ve discussed employees as spokespeople before; these front-line staff really are brand ambassadors, and deserve to be given training and resources to provide the answers to some of the most likely questions that they’ll have to field.

We’ve also pointed out that the most common reason to visit the corporate website is to check contact details. Having a visitor-friendly, welcoming website with easy-to-find phone numbers is great, but if the welcome received when the visitor does make contact doesn’t match, then the difference will be starkly apparent.

And it is exactly this kind of mismatch that makes people see the corporate website as spin and marketing.

Interbrand Announces 100 Best Global Brands 2009

interbrand_2009_top_global_brands_reportFor the ninth year in a row, Coca-Cola tops Interbrand’s annual ranking of the top 100 best global brands in 2009.

The biggest shifts in the 2009 Interbrand list of the best global brands came in areas that one would expect — financial and car brands fell (some dropping off the list entirely) while food brands rose (Interbrand cites the rising trend in people eating at home as a catalyst to this shift).

Overall, the total brand value of the 100 brands on Interbrand’s list lost 4.6% of their value in 2009, another sign of prevailing economic problems.

In fact, while there was a bit of position switching among the top 10 brands on Interbrand’s list, the same ten brands still appeared at the top in 2009 as in 2008.  Here’s the top 20 for 2009:


Interbrand_top_20_brands


Interestingly, as stock markets struggle and buying habits change in response to economic troubles around the world, the top brands remain quite strong supporting the theory that strong brands, while not a tangible asset appearing on a company’s balance sheet, can actually be a company’s greatest asset.  Of course, that’s a fact that brand managers have known for a very long time, but convincing executives of the importance of investing money into long-term brand-building strategies remains a challenge.

The 2009 Interbrand list of the 100 Best Global Brands report includes a list of four lessons to be learned from the leading brands (follow the link to read the full Interbrand report):

  1. Emerging from the smoke requires a strong focus: I couldn’t agree more, and I frequently write about the importance of brand focus and contraction in strengthening a brand, particularly in today’s struggling economy.
  2. Invest more, not less: This is absolutely true, but remains very difficult to achieve as I mentioned above.
  3. Be consistently committed to renewal: Riding on the status quo won’t do anymore.  The good times do come to an end.
  4. Strong brands grow from the core: So true!  Without a strong foundation, a brand is doomed.

What do you think?

You can follow the link to read about the 2008 Interbrand 100 Best Global Brands report.

One free ticket available…

conferenceI wrote a post a while ago announcing that we’d arranged for Corporate Eye readers to receive a 20% discount on the price of a ticket to the Rebuilding Reputation conference that Communicate Magazine are running on 22 September, in London.

That’s still true… but there’s more. We’ve been given one ticket to give away for free to one of our newsletter subscribers. So if you’ve been thinking that you’d really like to go, but that the budget wouldn’t allow it, here’s your chance.

Not yet a subscriber but would really like a chance for a free ticket? See that box in the top right? Sign up for the newsletter there, and you’ll be on the list to receive the next one. As a new subscriber, you should get a copy of the last newsletter fairly quickly – but that’s not the one.

The next newsletter, which should come out early next week is out now, available to new subscribers until next edition is out [edited by Lucy to update], is the one with instructions on how to enter this competition. It won’t be difficult, but you will need to be quick – only one ticket available.

So go ahead – sign-up! You might win a ticket, but if you don’t, you’ll still be able to get 20% off the ticket price, and I hope you’d find our newsletter interesting too.

Of course, if you’re already signed up for our newsletter, just keep your eye on your inbox – and thank you!

Are you going to this? Rebuilding Reputation

Anyone working within the financial services sector – or, indeed, anyone who reads a paper or watches the news – will be aware of the difficulties that this sector has faced over the last year or so.

How can companies within that sector rebuild their reputation and rebuild the trust that was once placed in them? What can companies from outside that sector learn from those companies who have gone through this experience?

Communicate Magazine have another very interesting conference scheduled for later this month on just this topic. They’re bringing together an intriguing slate of speakers from across the sector: from the International Centre for Financial Regulation; from Barclays, Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, Santander, ING, HSBC and Man Group; and from The Observer, BroadView and FinancialMarketing.

rebuilding reputation conference

You can see the agenda and download a PDF here, but I can tell you that they’ll be covering topics such as:

  • Is the relationship between the fourth estate and the banking community irretrievably broken?
  • Were journalists just reporting a financial meltdown or were they exacerbating it?
  • How to communicate change to an internal audience
  • How to reposition your brand when people just want to talk about the past
  • Getting the best out of your corporate messaging

As you can see, it’s not just relevant to the financial sector, though that will be the main focus; it looks as though corporate communicators from across the patch will find something to learn from the day.

I went to a recent Communicate Magazine conference (on Social Media in a Corporate Context) and found it fascinating – though exhausting. There’s a lot to be gained from being in the same room as people dealing with the same issues as you are, thinking about the same things…

Interested? You can learn more here.

And a discount for Corporate Eye readers

I’m delighted to announce that we’ve agreed with Communicate Magazine that Corporate Eye readers will receive a total of 20% discount. The early bird discount of 10% runs out at the end of this week, but as one of our readers, you get 20% – even after that date. Book now!

Questions: Individual Influencers and Customer Service

How should companies deal with the growing power of individuals who use social media?

Specifically, I mean powerful individuals with a complaint about customer service.

handle with care

Leaving aside the cases where the accumulation of many complaints over time leads to significant corporate change, such as the Dell social media success, and the cases of complaints that go viral because they are entertaining, such as the United Airlines guitar videos, there are an elite group of people with an extraordinary reach. These few have access to potentially millions of other people.

How should companies deal with this?

I became aware of another one of these stories when I followed a link in a blog I regularly read, to another (which I don’t). I didn’t realise who writes the second blog until halfway through the post – and that in itself is interesting, because it shows that the story reached way past the blogger’s usual readers and followers, revealing just how quickly and widely these customer service stories travel.

Essentially, the story is that an expensive washing machine broke a week after delivery. Now, we’ve all been in the repair-loop, haven’t we? Repairman comes, doesn’t have the part, has to order the part and wait for delivery, comes back, still doesn’t have all the right parts, has to reorder and come back, fixes the machine, fix doesn’t work…

Except in this case, there’s a customer service failure.


Failure 1 (at retailer service department): policy says there must be three attempts at a fix before they replace. Not three visits, three fixes.

Failure 2 (at manufacturer): schedule says 3-5 days before someone can come to look. Not fix, come to look at the problem.

Failure 3 (at manufacturer): And when customer says ‘I have a lot of followers on Twitter – if I say something on there, will someone help me’, customer service says that doesn’t matter.

So: customer tweets. Customer, it turns out, is @dooce, with over 1,168,000 followers on Twitter. She now has over 2900 comments on her blog about this issue. That’s a lot of reach.

A Twitter storm erupts; customer is eventually contacted by someone senior from Whirlpool (for that is where the MayTag machine came from: @WhirlpoolCorp) who gets a repairman out within the hour, and a fix done within 24.

At the same time, customer is contacted by a competitor (Bosch – @boschappliances) and offered a free machine. Customer isn’t comfortable with this, and negotiates with Bosch that the machine should be donated to a local shelter. Bosch go further and donate a dryer as well.

Hurrah! Customer wins: working machine. Shelter wins: working washing machine and dryer. Bosch wins: lots of great publicity.

What about Whirlpool and the (unnamed) retailer?

Here are my thoughts – or, mostly, questions:

On customer service

This kind of public customer service failure is a clear message to both retailer and manufacturer to re-examine their customer service policies. The common-sense view is that a week-old machine should have been fit for purpose; it clearly wasn’t. So what should the policy have been?

Some companies have a clear focus on providing the best possible customer service; John Lewis and Marriott, for example. Others don’t, and that decision is down to company strategy and positioning. But social media is pushing companies for better customer service all the time. In ‘the old days’ it used to be said that an unhappy customer tells 10 people; now they can tell millions within minutes.

So how should the companies concerned deal with this, and with the impact on customer service? The questions I’d ask include:

  • How much flexibility and power do the people at the front line really have to rectify problems? (Could they have behaved any differently within the company constraints?)
  • In this case, could the retailer and the manufacturer have communicated direct, cutting down the wait time?
  • Could you implement a triage system, either by people paying to be a priority customer, or by having a policy of responding to certain types of calls more urgently (roadside recovery companies going out to women alone with children first, or the utilities companies getting to people with medical needs first)?
  • Do you need to reconsider the priority given to customer service, given the potential impact on corporate reputation? Do staff understand the corporate priorities?

Whatever the policy is, it should be clearly explained in advance to customers and to staff. Mismanaging expectations is at the root of the problem.

On social media monitoring and priorities

@WhirlpoolCorp were monitoring what was being said about them and their products; @Boschappliances were monitoring what was being said about their competitors. And it looks as though both reacted fairly quickly to the social media complaints. That’s great, and is exactly what social media experts recommend when facing a Twitter crisis. Companies do need to be alert to the potential of a social media PR crisis.

But would it be possible to escalate complaints made to customer services in the same way? Do social media users get a better response than those in the standard service queue? And what if the customer didn’t have 1m followers, but only 10, or 100? Should they be treated in the same way as the customer with 1m followers, because anyone can be the trigger for a Twitter storm?

Was the Whirlpool customer service agent right to say that Twitter didn’t matter – if she’d been told that all customers should be treated alike? Or wrong, because of the potential impact on the corporate reputation?

What is your policy on this?

And is it wrong for a customer to publicise a problem via social media? Personally, I think it’s OK, as long as they’ve tried going through the company’s own problem solving procedures first. As has been said before, this bad publicity is the symptom of a problem, not the cause of it. It’s going to happen; this time it was Whirlpool; but next time it could be you.

On powerful influencers

queue-jumpingHow should a company react to ‘don’t you know who I am’? In theory, everyone should receive the same, excellent service; in reality, this is very difficult to achieve.

You may be monitoring what is being said about you, but is it worth identifying who are the powerful influencers in your core market?

“Yes, yes, we do that”, you say, “in order to communicate with their audience in turn, and to fine-tune our marketing messages”

… but have you considered flagging these people up to customer services? Handle with care; VIP.

Is that ethical?

Would it even make a difference? After all, anyone can use social media to publicise their complaints, not just your key influencers. Twitter complaints are high profile, and the crisis can escalate very quickly. It can’t be denied that some people can shout louder; but is it possible to identify those people in advance of the crisis?

Do you provide a better service to those who can shout the loudest (or pay the most), or provide a less good service equally to all? What are your customers’ expectations? What is your brand promise?

On public relations and workload management

While I felt a certain unease at the propriety of Bosch’s interpolation of themselves into the story, others here at Corporate Eye saw this as a PR triumph – with a double gold medal for then donating the equipment to a local charity at the request of the influential blogger.

Bosch have clearly done well out of this, and Whirlpool made a nice recovery once senior management got involved. But is there a PR issue looming? Will there be a backlash against companies providing unbalanced customer service? Will there be a rush to Twitter, as people perceive that those who do get a better deal?

And how will you balance the customer service workload and priorities? Should the priorities for customer service really be based on reputation management?

Social media policies need to include customer service and crisis management

Lots of questions here, but only you can decide the answers. Ultimately, each company will need to decide for themselves how they handle influential individuals, and on the priority they give to problem escalation via social media; and they will need to do this before the crisis hits.

Does your social media policy cover this? How about your corporate ethics?

A Cautionary Note


whoa

While doing research for the series on social media platforms (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn), I came across this must-read article by attorney Lester Rosen, president of Employment Screening Resources.  The title alone makes it worth a stop:  The Rush to Source Candidates from Internet and Social Networking Sites – Let’s Slow Down and Think About This for a Minute. Rosen writes about some potential legal issues that may be associated with social media recruiting–and though there’s not a lot of detail, he points out some topics worth considering.

Beyond the legalities, however, there are several practical aspects of social media recruiting that may deserve more time for thought.

  • First . . . a social media strategy only communicates and amplifies what you have to offer. If the corporate site is lame, luring people there will not net positive results. If job descriptions are uninformative and application processes are overcomplicated, promoting jobs and attracting applicants will not pay off (or at least not well enough). So if social media is not part of a comprehensive strategy, it probably won’t be worth its investment.
  • Second, if a broad-spectrum approach to social media recruiting doesn’t fit your company’s needs, there’s no reason to pursue it. Looking mainly for highly experienced specialists? Forget about Facebook. Seeking highly creative, innovative personnel? They’ve moved on to more exotic arenas (boutique boards, niche sites, affinity groups, etc.) Most companies have a mix of needs, but the key consideration here is to identify targets and objectives before jumping into an aggressive social media strategy.
  • Third–it’s been said often, and by experts, that social media presence is more than just putting Follow Me and Find Us badges on the website. It doesn’t work without a well-tuned approach and knowledgeable management. And it doesn’t work fast! So a half-hearted effort will likely cost money without producing results.
  • A fourth thing to consider: Executive branding expert Meg Guiseppi says baby boomer executives are afraid of LinkedIn and social media. If one of those scaredy-cats is just the man or woman your company needs, they may not be visible online at LinkedIn or anywhere else. Takeaway?  It will take old-fashioned, offline fundamentals to track them down.

And finally–just in time for this post–Recruiting Trends is offering a free webcast titled Sourcing Backlash: Integrating Traditional Approaches with Leading Edge Technologies.  The agenda includes pros and cons of emerging technologies; phone techniques that complement social media; low-tech/low-cost tactics for increasing passive candidate flow; and much more!


(Thanks to hansol for sharing the original “Whoa” sign.)