Discussions, doodles, diatribes

After the recent announcement that United Airlines will be closing overseas call centers that dealt with immediate customer compaints, I began thinking about the fine lines (yet often overlooked lines) between customer (guest) service and public relations. Some insist they should be completely separate entities, some believe they have no real similarities, some believe they are all the same. I believe, in most situations, effective customer (guest) service is a well-delivered public relations strategy – in ANY organization.

For clarification purposes, I tend to use the term “guest” when speaking of clients or customers or the like. This originates from my almost five years in Guest Relations with the Walt Disney Company. I hope this post doesn’t jump around too much but there are many cross-points I want to convey.

Guest service influences public relations practices

Like many consumers, I am much more likely to speak negatively about an organization when I am provided poor customer service. I had a recent experience with RCN that epitomizes poor customer service and I will never recommend their Internet service to anyone. When I have good/customary service, I am less likely to have a strong opinion about a company. However, when I am provided extraordinary service naturally, I am definitely one to sing the praises of a company. This idea is one of the tenets of effective word of mouth marketing: great experiences lead to conversations about a company, which leads to increased interest, which leads to stronger sales, clicks, whatever.

This is where public relations is an important piece of this puzzle. Every company should strive to be seen positively by those interacting with the company (its publics). When one piece fails in its communication, that trickle down of negativity changes the attitude at every level and will influence press coverage, investor feelings, customer commitment and loyalty and general consumer understanding of the entity in question. Isn’t this what public relation’s role is? Yes, the role is to ensure that the communication with every public is positively portrayed and, if necessary, proactively and reactively adjusted depending on the situation.

Why is customer satisfaction important?

From the unfortunately now-defunct White House Office of Consumer Affairs and reprinted in a military powerpoint presentation, the following research shows why customer satisfaction is important and how it directly relates to the job of public relations professionals:

• A typical business only hears from 4 percent of the dissatisfied customers. The remaining 96 percent just go away with 91 percent never coming back.
• It costs five to six times more to get a new customer than to keep an old one.
• Customer loyalty can be up to ten times greater than the cost of a single purchase that customer might make.
• Customers with immediately resolved complaints will tell four to six people about it, but dissatisfied customers will tell around 15 people with many telling more than 20.
• For every one complaint, there are 26 more not heard and four of those are serious complaints.
• It takes 12 new positive interactions with a dissatisfied customer to rebuild trust and loyalty to an organization.

United Airlines doesn’t seem to get it.

In the United Airlines story, United executives mentioned that customers that wrote letters were more satisfied with the responses than those on the phone. I would like to see the whole picture. I wish I had the research handy because I’ve read it before but don’t know the specifics. In general, people are more likely to take the perceivably quickest, most effective outlet for a resolution of a complaint. Most likely with the airlines, this would be the counter agent at the airline. From my understanding, this agent would request the consumer call a “complaint line” based in an overseas call center. This should have many red flags for any public relations professional  (published negativity about overseas call centers, naming the call center a complaint line, etc). I am assuming this line had preset responses to the most common airline complaints. When a challenge wasn’t in the “playbook” the customer was probably asked to write or send an e-mail. At that point, the situation is already escalated. Those consumers choosing to take the time to write are only a small percentage of the total number of the complaints that United deserves to be aware of and resolve. At Disney there were different levels of determining compensation, like in many organizations. We tried our best to evaluate a situation completely, without pointing fingers or placing blame, and provide the guest with the best possible resolve. If we couldn’t, and sometimes we couldn’t, a guest was given information to write a letter to guest communications. The number of guests receiving those cards were minimal compared to the number of guests with resolved situations. United is probably being very transparent by saying those that wrote were more satisfied. Yes, of course they are. More time is dedicated to resolving an escalated complaint than one of immediate necessity. One of Disney’s key service guidelines is to provide immediate guest service recovery.

The consumers with problems not resolved will let United know, even without a phone line or letter

What will happen to the countless number of consumers that are unable to immediately resolve their issues and are unwilling to write or e-mail? What about when the e-mail or letter takes weeks to resolve? That answer seems pretty easy: word of mouth will take over. Through blogs, tweets, help forums, Facebook and just general conversations, problems stemming from an unresolved (could be very minor) situation will be expanded, forwarded, told over and over and, in turn, negatively influence public perceptions and attitudes about United Airlines.

Public relations professionals are clamoring to learn social media skills, word of mouth marketing, search engine marketing and optimization skills. This is why. Consumers are doing it. Unfortunately some consumers are unaware of the differences between a credible news site, a blog or a company information site. Because of this, information is flying through consumers heads — some of which is factual, some of which is completely erroneous. Therefore, companies are working hard to focus how their information gets out and who puts it out and what it says. I’m sure United Airlines and RCN won’t be terribly happy if they read this blog.

This post will have to be continued, this is already more than 1,000 words.

Next: How PR can work more with this idea.