As I look through various publications and websites I continually see articles about the importance of companies being customer-centric, or that the customer is the center of the universe, or that your company needs to funnel activities towards customer needs. While I find these articles interesting, I’m still amazed to find that many companies simply don’t get it.  

Look at companies like Nordstrom or Amazon that focus a tremendous amount of effort on providing excellent customer service. They treat me well and I become a regular customer. As everyone knows repeat customers cost much less than having to go out and find new customers. There are many thoughts behind ways to build customer loyalty or to strengthen customer loyalty, but most of these should really be obvious—use common sense and your customer will usually be happy.

Here’s an example of two companies that just don’t get it.

Last week I had an issue between my bank and my mortgage company regarding an error with my mortgage payment. The long-and-short of it is that I was charged a $35 fee (twice!) for something that wasn’t my fault, yet neither institution would refund me the charge. In the grand scheme of things, $70 is nothing for these large financial institutions, but to me it’s a lot of money. More to the point is the principle of the issue—both companies pointed the finger at the other, neither company was willing to step up and admit error, and both companies now have an unhappy customer. It just goes to show you that many companies still don’t understand how to be customer-centric.

From a marketing or PR perspective, I guess these companies don’t care about annoying a single customer. But with the growth of social media, I can get my message out to the masses much easier than ever before. If either of these companies was smart, they’d realize that refunding me the money would go a long way to securing a happy customer.

It reinforces my thinking that customer service, marketing and PR folks need to keep a finger on the pulse of the social media comments about their company, 24×7, so they can gauge sentiment and react quickly as needed. Better yet, be preventative up front by offering amazing customer service at all times.

Do you have examples like this where you’ve taken to social media channels to let the masses know how you were treated?

There’s been a long, raging debate among business school types about whether a business should optimize for shareholders or think more broadly about all of its so-called stakeholders like employees and the local community.  The argument on the shareholder side goes something like whatever is good for boosting profit is ultimately good for the business.

While there’s no doubt truth in that statement over the long term, a short-term focus on optimizing shareholder value can have negative consequences. That’s not really shocking news, but unfortunately it’s still happening.

The most recent victim of myopic, shareholder-first thinking was – of all companies! – Apple. I’d submit that most people when they look at the cute Apple logo on their spiffy iPad or iPhone want to think of Apple as a happy company, sort of like the Disney of computing.  Sure they can cost an arm and leg, but there’s a lot of value in gadgets that look cool and work like a dream.

 What Apple is doing, of course, is perfectly legal. It might even be good business for a normal company. But this is Apple. It’s possibly the most successful and profitable company to date.  It’s also the happy company we all want to love.  It’s bad PR not to spread the wealth and fail to make the world a better place.  Especially when it could be so easy. Ironically, the shareholders might not even have noticed.

The shareholders will notice when people start thinking twice about buying Apple products, however.  After hearing a story about Apple factory workers on NPR’s This American Life, my wife was disinclined to purchase Apple products in the future, although I’m not sure workers at Samsung or Dell factories are much better off than those at Apple plants.  Most consumers probably don’t care in any case about a rotten core if the fruit is ok.

From a PR perspective – and here’s where you want to listen to outside counsel – perhaps the biggest loss for Apple was the missed opportunity.  By giving lowly store workers nice salaries and making life better for Chinese factory workers, Apple could have created a massive perception boost – one far greater than the comparatively minor incremental cost of doing the right thing. Apple isn’t completely tone deaf, and recent reports indicate that nice pay raises are due to store workers.  It’s a step in the right direction, but it never should have come to this in the first place.  We expect better Apple.

The technological advances we’ve seen in our lifetime is amazing. The Internet has changed the way the world works, cell phones have altered the communications landscape, and many life-threatening illnesses are now curable, just to name a few. While I always marvel at what my kids can do with their smartphones – they laugh at me when I tell them there was no such thing as a PC when I was their age – I sometimes wonder if we’ve gone too far. Yes, it can be a good thing to have a lot of information on a subject, other times too much information, especially when working with editors, can be a negative.

Since President Obama took office we’ve seen a dramatic change in the importance placed on transparency. Being accountable to your constituents is one of the many great things about our democracy. But how much information should we have at our fingertips? How much is too much when it comes to fighting off “Big Brother?” In many ways the act of governing is like sausage — you may like the taste, but you don’t want to see how it’s made.

Knowing how our government representatives vote is fine, but knowing all of the details about how everything is planned and developed “will inspire not reform, but disgust.” In a recent article in CNN, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey talked about the negative side of transparency with regard to government. “Too many politicians aren’t voting their conscience, they’re voting to placate blog commenters, and that’s no way to run government.”

For those of us in the communications field it’s important to ask ourselves if our company is sharing too much information, not enough, or is somewhere in the middle. More important is the question of “what is newsworthy?” Sharing information through multiple channels is fine as long as the news is important. Spamming the world with news of little interest does nothing except get others to tune your news out.

When developing an announcement plan, corporate social media strategy, or building a relationship with an influential editor or blogger, PR folks need to use their internal “garbage meter” to determine how valuable and relevant the news is. Instead of getting people to tune you out, it’s important to make the news compelling enough so that they want to follow your news regularly.

A PR plan or social media strategy needs to take into account what your overall goals are and how newsworthy your announcement is, not “how are we going to blanket the world with our news.” This kind of thinking can also get you in trouble with the media. I know one editor who said that some PR folks upload a release to this editor’s website, Tweet about the news, update Facebook, e-mail the editor directly, and then link back to the editor’s blog with the news. That’s fine as long as the news is of value.

The next time you outline an announcement strategy or PR plan, think carefully about what your goals are. Living in the age of increased transparency, in many ways, is a great thing. But beware of information overload. Or as philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville once stated, “In America the majority raises formidable barriers around the liberty of opinion; within these barriers an author may write what he pleases, but woe to him if he goes beyond them.”

By now just about everyone knows about RIM’s little mishap last week with Blackberry email. Outages like these can hurt the reputation of any company, but for a tech company I think it’s much worse, especially for a company like RIM that is all about connectivity. Just to pile on a little more, it’s even more problematic for a company like RIM that has been losing market share for a long time.

While I haven’t followed every aspect of this story nor read every blog post that is available, it’s clear that RIM made some mistakes in handling this crisis. And believe me…it is a crisis. Years ago this issue might have gone unnoticed but in today’s world, where social media rules, how come RIM wasn’t better prepared to handle the crisis?

Just like the Boy Scouts say, you need to “be prepared.” Most companies I’ve worked with have policies and procedures in place in the event of a crisis, and I’m sure RIM does at some level. Considering that RIM has experienced outages before, you’d think they would have been better prepared. And I’m not talking about being better prepared to address the technical issues but being better prepared in getting their message out to customers in a more timely way.

Why did it take three days for the CEO to post a YouTube message concerning the problems? Did RIM monitor customer reaction on Twitter or Facebook? Did the company proactively address the issue or reactively reach out to customers? I’m not sure about the answer but from an outside observer’s standpoint they didn’t seem to be prepared at all.

A few thoughts about getting your crisis management plan mapped out.

• Be prepared. Have a crisis communications plan in place and update it each quarter.
• Make sure that you now have plans in place that address social media outlets.
• Investigate the issue and get your facts straight. Guessing doesn’t make the situation any better.
• “No comment” won’t cut it. And I’ve heard that RIM takes a “we don’t want to talk to the media about anything” stand which makes the situation even worse.
• Have a chain of command of spokespeople ready. You don’t want the wrong person sharing the wrong message with the public.
• Empower your communications team to move quickly and cut through the layers of opinion and second guessing so the response doesn’t take days to materialize.

In this day and age I find it highly unusual that companies still can get caught off-guard when a crisis hits. So how should companies like RIM approach these types of very public problems? Do you think that RIM addressed the issue effectively enough to minimize the damage to their reputation?

The recent debate over net neutrality is a heated one (to say the least). Since Google and Verizon’s talks made the news a few weeks ago, the media has been peppered with headlines discussing the issue. Big questions at the heart of the debate include who should get priority on the Web, how this will impact innovation and small business, whether the government can police this effectively, if this is just a play for big business to benefit, and the overall implications for consumers.

Given the tremendous amount of ink already given to these questions, I’ll save my opinions for another day when the dust settles a bit more. Instead, let’s take a look at the impact to Google’s brand: will net neutrality be the tipping point for trust in Google, transforming them from the company with the “don’t be evil” motto into a “corporate behemoth”?

Based on discussions brewing on the Web, it appears trust could be on the line. Consumers are noting they are moving to new search engines, that the company has lost its connection with its start-up roots and that they are moving away from their entrepreneurial positions to ones that benefit them as a large business. Even comedian Jon Stewart has joined the discussion, documenting the variance in Google’s message from 2006 to present (in his unique way of course).

Jon Stewart on Net Neutrality

The change in their position alone could have huge implications for the company and Google will have to carefully navigate how they reconcile their former “free Internet for everyone” stance with what is a very complicated issue. Consumers could see this as creating a hierarchy for Internet access, with big business looking to line their pockets at their expense. This story isn’t new, and the headlines could increasingly take a turn for the worse from Google’s perspective (insert “evil empire”).

The imperatives for Google: show how net neutrality still aligns to their original position and be clear on the benefits to consumers and small business. If it doesn’t line up, it will be interesting to see how Google is discussed going forward.  One thing for certain, the Google brand is rapidly moving from warm fuzzy search company, to tech titan.

Well, despite the fact that Toyota is a case study for how not to handle a crisis situation…they’ve sure come up with a catchy new YouTube campaign for their new minivan. I’ve seen this video posted all over Facebook and sent numerous times over email. It seems to be a YouTube sensation with 3,347,969 views, you can also find the commercials featuring this same couple, the “Meet the Parents” commercial has 774,232 views!

This campaign has definitely taken on a life of its own, even in light of Toyota’s recent troubles. With safety obviously being one of the number one concerns with their cars, you can bet it’s even more of a factor in marketing their minivan. Instead of focusing on the safety, however, they’ve been able to capture a “coolness” factor which personalizes this car to their target market and perhaps is helping people to forget about the whole sticky gas pedal issue.

I guess laughter really is the best medicine…well played Toyota!

Over the past few weeks there’s been a lot of discussion about privacy policies on the Web. As reported in a recent CNETarticle, the discussion has focused on Facebook’s deployment of a “Like” button that publishers can place on their Web site. So what’s the harm in a small icon on a Web site? Privacy experts and advocacy groups aren’t happy.

Even if someone is not a Facebook user or is not logged in, Facebook’s social plug-ins collect the address of the Web page being visited and the Internet address of the visitor as soon as the page is loaded–clicking on the Like button is not required. If enough sites participate, that permits Facebook to assemble a vast amount of data about Internet users’ browsing habits.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had to do a lot of backpedaling to cover his company’s bases on this one. You can see him interviewed on the topic of privacy and the backlash of sharing people’s information by the Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg at D8. As he publicly admitted in Mashable, “we’ve made a bunch of mistakes.” In fact, he had an e-mail exchange with noted blogger Robert Scoble about the issue and came out publicly via an e-mail, which Scoble published with Zuckerberg’s permission, that said “We’re going to be ready to start talking about some of the new things we’ve built this week. I want to make sure we get this stuff right this time.”

The growth of the Web and proliferation of social media sites appears to have opened up a Pandora’s box of privacy issues. Is it fair for companies like Facebook, Google, or MySpace to capture data about your viewing habits and then sell them?

The more I read about this issue the more I thought about how privacy policies can impact your brand. Has Facebook suffered a loss in customers from this snafu? Did Google loose web traffic last summer when it caught flak for launching Google Web History, “which records the sites you visit, searches you make, images and videos you view, and even sites you haven’t been to but may like.” I doubt it.

I don’t believe that this public backlash has hurt either of these companies so far. But if important private data would have been leaked, or Facebook or Google had clearly lied to customers, I’m sure that their brands would have been tarnished.

If you look beyond concerns about privacy policy for a minute – after all policies are easily fixed and everyone moves on – a bigger problem is those having to do with old fashioned computer security. As reported here, social networking sites as well as Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo! are not exactly enterprise grade when it comes to security. People generally use weak passwords that open the door to all kinds of malfeasance. Its one thing to have your surfing habits tracked, but entirely different when your identity and credit cards get into the wrong hands.

So how much does trust enter into the equation when you’re working with companies? If you don’t trust Facebook with data about your viewing habits – or other personal information – will you stop visiting the site, or just scale back? How important is trust when it comes to brand loyalty? More important, can trust be regained after an issue like the one outlined above? What’s your opinion?

I’ve been thinking a lot about how recent world and industry news have given us more than enough examples of how important establishing trust is to an organization. We all grew up in the world of “PR Spin,” but that doesn’t feel like a good term anymore. Our jobs as PR professionals are fundamentally changing, in relation to the counsel we need to be giving to our clients. I saw the following post on the PRSA site reflecting this thinking:

Transparency has become increasingly necessary in our society. As communicators, we are tasked with sharing information from our organizations with members of the public. How can a communicator assure the public the organization he or she represents is a transparent one? How should a communicator handle information that is negative?

These are all questions we need to be asking ourselves as PR professionals with consumers and businesses prioritizing trust and transparency in an organization over products or services. How do we help create that trust for the organizations we represent? How does that effect the counsel we give regarding messages and how to communicate those messages? All questions I will be thinking (and blogging) about in the months to come.

When you hear the names Proctor & Gamble and BlueCross BlueShield what images come to mind? Conservative? Old school? Bureaucratic? I think it’s safe to say that these two companies, fairly or unfairly, aren’t exactly known for being progressive or nimble. Yet both of these well-known American brands have recently implemented programs that might surprise you.

P&G is letting several hundred of its workers use their own laptops as part of a workplace experiment.

This pilot program is based on a simple idea: many of P&G’s younger employees would rather use their own laptops than corporate-issued systems.

BlueCross BlueShield plans to introduce online care this year, a service that allows patients to connect with a physician on-demand 24 hours a day using webcams for video links, or secure text messages or telephone conversations.

I find that the word “brand” is thrown around quite loosely nowadays. Establishing brand takes careful planning, time and smart execution. Yet all the hard work in the world can be thrown by the wayside by a simple misstep – think Toyota could have handled that little gas pedal/floor mat issue any better?

If someone were to ask me what companies come to mind when I hear the words progressive, nimble, risk taking, I don’t think of P&G or BlueCross BlueShield. Yet both of these companies, albeit for different reasons, have adopted new technologies and policies which have helped to strengthen their already strong brands. By implementing these two new programs I believe that both companies are doing a good job of reinforcing their already strong brands by leveraging technology to adapt with the times.

By using new technologies and new methods of communicating with their employees and customers, both P&G and BlueCross BlueShield have shown that they have the guts (in a rough economy) to evolve their own brand strategies and take chances.

Are there other conservative, old school companies out there that are showing a willingness to adapt to the modern times?

Over the years, Apple has done a masterful job of building its brand.  From the epic 1984 commercial that launched the Mac to the cute and effective “I’m a Mac” campaign, Apple just seems to be operating at a different level from everyone else in the tech industry.

Apple fans are everywhere, willing to pony up a significant premium for spendy Apple computers and gadgets. For the perceived design and innovation they overlook considerable product flaws like crummy battery life or Apple’s proprietary, controlling policies. The Apple brand and flashy UIs mean that much for many consumers.

Given the power and advantages afforded by this brand, why on earth is Apple throwing it away because it thinks HTC – and of greater concern, Google’s Android OS – might be stepping on some of the almost laughable patents it secured on gestures?  With Google’s backing, HTC has little to worry about.  But it stands to gain a lot of brand equity.  An obscure Taiwanese maker of smartphones, HTC must be doing something right if Apple is worried. The exposure alone has been worth a mint.

Apple was, somewhat bizarrely, able to get a patent for a swipe as shown from the patent app. Is there an app for that?

Meanwhile, suing little guys doesn’t do the Apple brand much good. Nobody wants to see the hip Mac dude running around slapping lawsuits on people. Doesn’t really fit with the friendly, funny persona. Evil is more like it. Steve Jobs with horns?  I don’t think I’m alone in saying that I’m pulling for HTC and Google in this one. It’s tough to feel sorry for billionaire bullies.

What I expect from Apple is a way to buy the iPhone on a better network. How about Verzion for starters? How about some different variants of the iPhone? How about cooking up ways to deliver unlimited 4G bandwidth for $10 a month? Apple should keep thinking about the needs of customers and finding ways to help the industry to put our needs first. Lawsuits?  This is not making me happy.

As ex-Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz details in what possibly might be one of the best blog posts of all time, patent wars among tech titans have been going for a long time.  Most of the time, Company A steps on Company B’s IP, but it turns out that Company B is also stepping on Company A’s IP, so they leave each other alone. Nobody wins in a nuclear war.

In this case, Apple might have the upper hand from a patent volume perspective CNN reports. But winning the courtroom battle will be a wan victory if it leaves the Apple brand bludgeoned beyond repair.