Talking Point

Why live chat when you can go social and vent? A customer service tale

By Craig Regan

From the UK comes the revelation that 93 percent of businesses aren’t using online live chat to serve their customers. According to a media release, live chat is a tool to “help avoid call centre misunderstandings that arise from unintelligible accents”.

Putting aside (a.) news is what’s happening, not what isn’t and (b.) this nugget comes from a survey by a maker of – you guessed it – live chat software, it throws a light on the role of digital media in customer complaints.

I stumbled out of a peak-hour morning Sydney train late last week with a red paint smear on the back of my shirt after a close encounter with graffiti on a seat.

My first action was to vent on Facebook.  

My next was to click a link sent by a responder to my rant.

This link takes you to the CityRail website. Is it surprising to find a dead page?

Google eventually found turned up a website complaint form and in surprisingly short time a classic “we care about you” holding response landed in the inbox, promising that someone would investigate.

Big bureaucracies operate in ponderous ways and I’m due a further reply on the Tuesday after Easter.

I do know the dry cleaning bill will be in the electronic mail that goes back.

There’s something satisfying about venting and the best service organisations know that most complaints can be defused by listening and showing empathy - even when there’s no concrete remedy in sight.

There are customer-facing organisations using digital media well and others using it appallingly.

Telstra is in the former category. Its use of Twitter to respond to customers is one of the more creative uses of the microblogging tool and it works because it’s direct and almost instantaneous. (Disclosure: Telstra is a Lighthouse client.)

Back to that UK survey and there was one useful kernel in a finding that 71 percent of people who’d emailed an organisation for service were waiting for a reply.

Talk about hanging on the telephone (apologies to Blondie – and the Nerves who were the other New York band that recorded it first.)

Why have an email address if it’s ignored? Answering the rhetorical question in the comments section is entirely voluntary but it seems like having a post office box that you never empty.    

 

The App that can be your digital tombstone

By Craig Regan

Want to leave a digital trace of yourself on the Web using social media when you kick the bucket? As they say in the advertising world: “There’s an app for that.”

If I Die  lets you to post a video message to all your Facebook friends after you shuffle off this mortal coil. Shades of Pauline Hanson’s infamous leaked message from the grave in that and more than just a little morbid.

Download the app, upload a parting message or video and nominate three Facebook friends as “trustees”. They need to confirm your demise and you’re good to go.

You have to wonder if the marketing gurus behind this thought about calling the app When I Die, just to add some inevitability to their message and promote a stronger call to action. 

That’s one app that might have come in handy for relatives of the NSW hospital patients in this story. Hospital took 765 days to write a referral letter by which time the patient had died. The family of another deceased received a $70 bill after 535 days.

If you want to say goodbye posthumously, watch the Ifidie promo videos here. There’s even a Southpark version. 

 

Curriculum vitae to go the way of snail mail and fax machines, Wall Street Journal says

By Craig Regan

Between jobs? In this digitally-connected, social media-driven world, there are lots of options before you enter the revolving door of recruitment companies.

PR Weekly is spruiking this thoughtful column piece on the value of blogs as a tool to put on your best face.

While prospective employers trawling social media to gain perspective on a candidate is becoming legitimised, an article in the Wall Street Journal today says some US firms are going one step further and telling candidates to ditch their resumes and show them their Web presence.

Nervous? If you're a serial killer, it's probably a good idea to take down your Facebook page (but you probably already knew that.)

The less colourful might fret about that embarassing MySpace photo album of us chugging a yard glass at our 21st before getting behind the wheel of the porcelain bus for a technicolour yawn.

But things change so quickly in social media. How many people with a MySpace page can remember their password let alone the defunct email address they used to register?

 

Operation Global Black-Out - a stunt or real?

By Elizabeth Coad

The internet activist group ‘Anonymous’ plan to take down Facebook at 12am eastern standard time on 28 January 2012. Or maybe not.

Alleged members of the group posted a You Tube Video overnight calling for people worldwide to join the ‘Greatest Internet Protest - the first official Cyber War’.

In the YouTube video they provide instructions on how to disable your local Facebook server. They claim that if enough people participate and simultaneously disable all 60,000 worldwide Facebook servers the system will collapse. They also claim you can’t get caught!

 

Called Operation Blackout this latest call to join their protest action or ‘hacktivism’ by members of the online community. As they profile in the You Tube clip, the group have previously hacked the CBS and Warner’s Bros websites amongst other sites.

Anonymous is a decentralised community that employs leaderless resistance which is a political resistance strategy in which independent groups and individuals, challenge an established adversary, such as a government.

In this case their protest is centered on the now-stalled US Government's Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and their desire to uphold the Internet rights for people worldwide. As their You Tube video states “An online war has begun between Anonymous, the people, and the Government of the United States”.

This latest video posting could be just a splintered subset of the community or in fact a hoax. Other members of Anonymous also tweeted from their @AnonOps Twitter feed that they would not attack Facebook. Although as their motto states: "We are Anonymous. We are Legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us."

Regardless of the outcome, the YouTube posting last night and other recent videos are some of the best entertainment on the internet – bring on the cyber war!

 

           

You've been Quick Rolled: Tonight With Julian Assange

By Craig Regan

Today's news that Julian Assange will host his own chat show reverberated around media circles today. Rove went to LA and couldn’t manage to make a fist of it so maybe this eminent Aussie expat can.

While Assange is undoubtedly high profile, there’s an old maxim in journalism that if the subject of a story is worthy of a descriptor, they shouldn’t need to tell you so. Assange’s declaration that he is “one of the world’s most recognizable revolutionary figures” probably says a lot.

Digging deeper, a search on the domain registration of Quick Roll Productions, the company licensing the chat show, opens this can of worms about the people taking care of their website.

K-Fed media express leaves the station

By Craig Regan

Excuse the cynicism. I'm sure his pain was real, but this afternoon's story about K-Fed going into an Australian hospital with chest pains while filming a celebrity weight loss program for the Nine Network is going to have a predictable media life cycle.

It’s going to run like this:

1. Headlines in every newspaper overnight - and the Twittersphere goes into meltdown;
2. Breathless updates ensue from breakfast TV celebrity commentators who have little or nothing in the way of facts;
3. Live crosses from Mount Druitt Hospital are not out of the question and probably mandatory;
4. Breakfast and morning radio hosts slam the story as a publicity stunt;
5. Kyle Sandilands declares K Fed to be a "fat shit";
6. All-day promos for a night time current affairs (term used loosely) interview from the hospital bedside – on Nine of course;
7. Spoiler story runs on Seven because they don’t have the interview;
8. TV nightly news stories run on almost every channel – especially on TEN where they have to fill an hour. ABC ignores it;
9. The story turns into fodder for next week’s Gruen Transfer;
10. Spin cycle starts again.

 

Wiggling away from trouble: Three lessons for reputation management

By Craig Regan

As odd as it might be to devote double-page spreads in daily newspapers to a changing of the guard in The Wiggles, it’s still the silly season in Australia. The Wiggles are the country’s highest-earning entertainers and stories like these do sell papers.

There are some great take-outs for guardians of brand reputation. Cutting through the PR-speak, they are:

Never do a media interview inadequately prepared.

There’s a link to the Today Show interview with three of The Wiggles here. They also did Sunrise.

Not to have an answer when asked how a freshly-unemployed Sam Moran felt when your media release stressed he was fine was a stumble that sent the wrong message.

So was Blue Wiggle Anthony Field saying he and Sam hadn’t spoken. It was at odds with the public position that this was an amicable departure.

Anthony  agreed with an on-air statement that Sam had been a hired hand. It might have been factual but it looked insensitive and if well prepared he could have easily sidestepped it.  

You can’t take it back.

If you make a mistake, fix it as soon as possible.

The Wiggles’ Facebook page has 86,000 people liking it. The announcement about Sam’s departure attracted 6000 comments in two days - many of them furious.

Anthony made an apologetic and measured clarification of the ”hired hand” issue. It has so far attracted 1800+ comments and the tone seems much more positive.

Correctly responding to social media is a judgement game. Respond too late or at all, sometimes, and you can keep an issue alive. In this instance it was the right step.

Build the story, own the narrative.

The Wiggles have great access to media. They need not to have been on the back foot.

It would have been far better to have selectively released the news that Sam Moran was leaving to pursue other opportunities and create some positive PR about the hunt to find someone to replace him.  

Manage the story. Run an online campaign and then drop the bombshell that Greg was back. He could have wished Sam well and set the agenda on the group’s future.

There needed to be some distance put between Sam’s departure and Greg’s return. A joint media conference with all five Wiggles would have been a good look.  

The turn of events that occurred led some to compare the situation to the coup that installed Julia Gillard for Kevin Rudd. Ouch!

 

While on the Wiggles, can you identify the member of the Lighthouse
Communications team who appears in this clip? 

Deaths on our roads trigger call for pollies and media to act

By John Hanrahan

There are thousands of grieving, angry people across Australia right now – family and friends of the thousands of mostly young people who have died on one or other of our roads or highways.

They, like me, are angry because of the repeated failure of current and past State and Federal individual politicians and governments to effectively direct their will-power and resources to upgrading thousands of kilometres of roads across the country.

As we move further into the second decade of the 21st century we still hear the same pathetic excuses, apologies and lies that were bleated out by politicians 40 or more years ago – “it’s on the agenda”, “we’ve got plans”, “resources are more urgently required in other areas”.

Yet more hollow promises, incompetence and dishonesty while more young, and old, lives are lost.

And we’re hearing similar empty, meaningless mutterings from our current crop of politicians aided and abetted by an army of department spin doctors who instruct the politicians how to frame their answers, how not to arouse the ire of families and friends of the dead, how to let the issue fade away as quickly as possible.

All to protect the questionable performances, let alone competency, of the politicians we pay to solve these problems and ensure the delivery of funding that can mean the difference between life and death for families.

And behind them, the obscure bureaucrats who manage these departments should not be left out of the firing line – they’re the ones who do the planning and budgeting and who advise the politicians and spin doctors.

Forty years of blame shifting, incompetence, lying and lack of commitment has got to stop now.
How many more people will die before both State and the Federal Governments redirect substantial new funds and hasten, for example, to complete the work on the Pacific Highway in Northern NSW?

Surely, as an interim measure, there are less costly, effective lifesaving things that could done in a very short time – like constructing a steel fence down the centre of the known murderous blackspots on that road.

Not enough funding? Well, perhaps the instant cancellation of the overseas rorts, outrageously referred to as “study tours”, whereby State and Federal politicians take extended holidays and have a staffer do a cut and paste report from the internet, could save several million right there.

The words honesty and competence are rarely, if ever, heard in the same sentence as a politician’s name.

Our mainstream media is quick to report and lament the latest horrific road accidents and deaths. As they should.

But it seems to be only a hot topic while they can generate headlines to sell papers, grab viewers or listeners and run occasional campaigns. Which is clearly not enough to convince our pollies and bureaucrats to snap into action on these issues.

If our media is to command the respect and credibility it craves, and has slowly lost over the decades, surely this is one issue where it can play its most significant role of all – saving the lives of our young citizens.

We, the public, must put far greater pressure on our various media, as well as our politicians, to demand governments move decisively now.

And ours and the media’s combined voices on this issue must be unceasing until we see real evidence of of improvements where they are most needed.

With the road deaths of Australians constantly in the news it’s time the people we pay to manage our country, including our safety and well being, take immediate and effective action.

Give voice to your anger – phone, email, tweet, blog, go on Facebook.

Let’s remind our elected representatives, and the media, they have been failing us for too long and they must redirect high levels of resources right now.

Most hated lists and the art of reputation management

On a list of America’s most hated companies, is it surprising to find the world’s largest social networking site?

It’s no shock to see a couple of banks (one facing fraud action), a bankrupt airline and a troubled telco in the rankings, published by equity markets news site 247wallst.com.

But is Facebook really that on the nose?

The 247wallst.com rankings are judged on financials, profits and brand perceptions, so there’s a high degree of interpretation involved. They do say a lot, however, about how big businesses impact on the public.

Facebook has 800 million users whose interactions with it, and each other, reach into the billions each week.  It would be strange if something that ubiquitous didn’t rub a significant proportion of the globe’s population the wrong way.

Constant privacy issues and relentless format changes, however, have conspired to upset users and cement Facebook’s place on the hated scale.

The real bolter on the list is Johnson & Johnson, an iconic brand best known in Australia for its trusted range of baby products. By comparison, its pharmaceutical arm, Janssen-Cilag, barely has a profile here.

In the US, J&J has taken a battering from a string of recent product recalls and quality control issues that resulted in the FDA moving in on three of its plants.

Those woes really stem as far back as the Tylenol poisoning issue of 1986, which is now viewed as a
watershed for pharma industry anti-tampering measures and a PR text book case study.    

The PR lessons are obvious: You’re never too big to take a fall and if you take your eye off your reputation and fail to invest strategically in your brand, major damage is only one crisis away.

The list (not in order) is below and the 247wallst.com commentary is here.

Facebook
American Airlines
AT&T
Nokia
Goldman Sachs
Best Buy
Bank of America
Johnson & Johnson
Sears
Netflix 

 

PM's delivery causing messages to mis-fire

There's a great analysis of Prime Minister Julia Gillard's speech patterns by the director of the University of NSW's Voice Research Laboratory online that provides insights into the way the public perceives its leaders.

The Centre's Kate Madill observes "a lack of spontaneity (and) a highly controlled delivery...are likely to induce perceptions that Julia is being unnatural, rehearsed and disingenuous – that is, we think it’s all spin".

Kate says "trying too hard to get the message across may be getting in the way of the real message...when Julia tells us she feels passionately about an issue, we don’t hear it in her speech."

It's a first-class analysis of what media trainers and commentators have been saying since Julia Gillard came into the job. The Opposition cottoned onto her ill-ease with media durign the last election campaign with taunts about "real Julia" assisted by some loose messaging.

Before you get all uppity about this sort of analysis being at the heart of an unhealthy obsession with style over substance, ask yourself this: "What's wrong with enhancing skills that make you a better communicator when you're communicating with millions of people?"

More from Kate Madill here but it's a thought worth considering whether you're the PM of Australia or the chairman of an internal meeting. If you want your message to stick, make it easier for your audience.