While we emphasize the importance
of communication in the business, it’s important that we strive to develop
specific communication for each and every stakeholder that one business entity
deals with. Why am I raising this concern? While PR has been celebrated world
over for its role in brand building a big percentage of business leaders are quickly letting loose other facets of business
communication expecting PR to cushion the business.
Despite the similar roles in the
organization, Public relations (PR) and customer service should be considered
two separate areas of responsibility in the business, simply because while PR
is the company’s face that’s presented to the public and to gatekeepers, such
as media and other organizations, customer service is the company’s face that’s
presented to its customers.
One of the biggest threats to PR
practitioners in Kenya are the consumer watch columns that media houses have provided for customers to
rant about service delivery by their day to day interface with brands. Columns
like the Cutting Edge in Daily Nation
and Point Blank in the Standard are
what communication managers’ dread every week they are published.
But why do customer complaints
hit the newspaper pages? Any sane
customer will never run to the media to get his issues sorted out, they only do
it when they have exhausted all the possible avenues of getting an amicable
solution to the problem. The main reason why brands land into these columns is
poor service delivery which leads to complaints that are met with a pathetic
customer service desk.
Once, the customer compliant has
been published in the media, the PR team is called upon to perform magic and
get rid of the ‘bad story’. While, the opposite rarely, happens, in this new
media era, happy customers become your best public evangelists. A simple tweet
or Facebook update about your excellent services will go a long way in your
brand building exercise.
All in all, PR and Customer
Service Departments should be actively involved with each other simply because
the customer care desk is the first line of PR in any organization; they need
to understand the values of PR before they engage the customers. As a PR
practitioner, one should proactively look at the customer service scripts and
see where he or she can plug in the overall company messaging. Encouraging your
good customers to share their feedback via social media will also go a long way
in building a loyal online army for the brand.
Lastly, it’s important for the
whole company to know that they form the key components of the PR machinery for
the organization.
