Tips and Mea Culpas (and Other PR Blog Jots)

Tips to Avoid an Online Crisis

What’s Next Blog

By this point, companies interested in managing their reputations ought to be monitoring blogs and other social media for customer feedback, and addressing complains immediately when they crop up.  But BL Ochman argues that there are steps available to avoid complaints from even making it to the Internet, a far better position to be in.  Her advice is extremely simple, and breaks down to basically, “treat customers with respect.” The key, she argues, is to allow access to people in a company that actually have the ability to solve the customer’s problem.  “Companies that give customers the ability to reach someone at a high enough level to solve their problem are exponentially less likely to have online nightmares. Instead, they'll have happier customers. And those customers will tell other customers about their good experience. It baffles me totally that this continues to be a hard concept for companies to understand: If you want to avoid online nightmares, listen to your customers when they have a problem.”

Scoble Tips on Pitching Bloggers

Tech PR Gems

Linking to a recent Robert Scoble post advising PR practitioners to contact him only via their cell phones (that way he’ll be sure to reach them directly when he returns the call, rather than having to go through a company switchboard), Todd Van Hoosear offers a good summary of other Scoble advice to PR folks.  The main problem many PR pro’s encounter is their “fear” of bloggers, which Todd argues is unfounded—why be afraid to pitch a high profile blogger but unafraid to pitch the Wall Street Journal?  Todd also notes that Scoble, along with many other bloggers, usually responds well to direct commenting on his blog and that this approach may often be the best way to get through. “I wish more reporters/bloggers/any publishers would be so proactive in letting PR's know how to contact them, and what gets their attention. Media Map and other services help, but are not as accurate as we need them to be.”

Southwest's New Apology Master

Marketing Profs

Perhaps inspired by the recent flap surrounding Jet Blue, Southwest recently announced a new position at their airline, a “chief forgiveness officer,” whose role consists entirely of responding to customer complaints with personal apologies and efforts to right the wrongs.  Jeanne Bliss is impressed with the idea and compliments Southwest’s proactive approach to crisis-avoidance, but is only cautiously optimistic about the sincerity of the move and others like it. An apology, she argues, carries no weight unless it is actually sincere.  “The Airlines are realizing that culpability is important and they are mea-culping all over the place. Great, that's step one. But anyone who says they are sorry have got to mean it. Step two is taking action to make the pain stop.”