Pragmatism for the win

It should be obvious, but one simple fact is often glossed over in discussions of corporate social media policies: Not all businesses are alike. A policy that works for a 20 person creative agency probably won’t work for a 40,000 person pharmaceutical firm.

Sure, look at what the social media leaders are doing. Watch companies of a similar size as well as other companies within your industry. You can learn a lot from observing what other companies are doing and learning from their successes and failures, but at a certain point you have to consider what’s going to work for your organization.

Your corporate culture and risk tolerance will inform your thinking as you develop a social media policy. The regulatory environment in which you operate will have a significant impact on your policy as well. Address the realities of your situation and work toward a policy that will fit your corporate culture. If your policy doesn’t match your culture, you won’t get the executive buy-in you need to make the program a success.

Policy is an imperative

Often, social media policy discussions begin with the question, “How should our company be participating in social media?” That’s a great question to ask, but if you’re in an extremely conservative environment and likely to encounter resistance, remember that your policy needs to address social media from several angles.

If you have a blog or online community, who in your organization is allowed to participate? Who is authorized to create a presence for your company on Facebook, YouTube or Twitter? What guidance should you offer for employees who use social media on their own time? What will you do if a crisis breaks that forces you to respond in social media?

Even if your organization is extremely conservative and you decide that you’re not ready to proactively engage with your customers using social media, you still need a policy. Social media isn’t a passing fad. If you don’t provide guidance, someone will eventually do something you and your executives don’t like. Consider yourself lucky if it hasn’t already happened.

You may be excited about the prospect engaging in social media on behalf of your company or it may fill you with dread, but either way, you’re going to have to develop a policy. Indifference is not an option.

I saw this on Business Guys On Business Trips. I don’t know if I should laugh or cry, because it looks like several real messages in my inbox.

I’m sure that the people who post lawyer jokes on the Internet would be amused that Google finds 666 thousand results. There are plenty of people who think lawyers are evil, but in the world of corporate communications, lawyers are a fact of life. And you know what? I don’t have a problem with that.*

But apparently a lot of my peers do. I often hear complaints about having to send documents through legal review. They take forever! There are always so many changes! They don’t understand what we’re trying to do!

In my experience, corporate lawyers and communicators have very similar goals. The corporate general counsel wants to protect the company from legal risk and corporate communications wants to protect the company’s reputation. Bottom line, you both want what’s best for the company.

When you put yourself into an adversarial relationship with your legal advisers, you shouldn’t be surprised when they’re… adversarial. And if you find yourself dealing with the same legal issues time after time, take the hint. Talk to your attorneys and get an idea of their concerns.

If you find yourself in petty squabbles over AP stlye, explain your point of view, listen to theirs, and come to a working compromise. Present your case well and there’s a good chance they’ll come around to seeing things your way.

On the other hand, if the issues are more substantive, stop and think about better ways that you can achieve your goals without making the layers uncomfortable. They’re usually uncomfortable for a reason.

Once you understand each other’s point of view, you may actually find that they’re your allies in the board room. With Corporate Communications and the General Counsel working together, who can stop you?

P.S. Shout out to some of the corporate lawyers I’ve enjoyed working with: Alan, John, Liza, Susan, Tanya, Tim. Thank you.

1. * Gasp!

Brand trust is unique. It’s the only brand experience that both companies and customers can take to the bank.

Well said.

Back in January, I pointed to a Siegel & Gale survey of 1,214 American homeowners and investors that looked at consumer perceptions of complex language in marketing communications and contracts.

To recap briefly, many consumers believe corporations use complex language and industry jargon to intentionally deceive and hide risks from them. People don’t trust large corporations, and 84% of all consumers say they are more likely to trust a company that uses jargon-free, plain English in communications.

Jargon isn’t credible

If you work in the corporate world, you know that business-speak and industry jargon runs rampant in day-to-day business communications. It creeps into marketing materials, sales presentations and press releases, often looking something like this:

We’re thrilled to partner with XYZ company. We’ll leverage their leading-edge technology, thus adding value to and enhancing the synergies between the best-in-class solutions we offer our customers. This same out-of-the-box thinking will help us utilize our resources and ultimately shift the industry paradigm.*

I’m wondering… does anybody believe this crap? Does anyone seriously expect a reader to be able to extract meaningful information from those words? And if you don’t believe it when other people spew it, why do you inflict it on others?

Plain English is good for business

Simple, clear language is powerful. It promotes trust in your organization, and people buy from companies they trust. More than 75% of consumers refuse to buy from a company they don’t trust. Plain language helps people find and understand information more quickly. People who understand more make fewer support calls, so your company saves money.

To quote Strunk & White, vigorous writing is concise. Be positive. Be active. Be personal. Plain English is the best way to help your readers understand your content and act on it appropriately. It sells.

Simple language is compelling. Use it wisely.

Photo credit: Joe Nangle

1. * Thanks for the sample gibberish, @xagoeson!

Note: I’ve doctored the screen shots slightly to remove anything that might identify the offending party. In the text, I’ve also eliminated anything that might give away the organization in question. I’m more interested in highlighting a problem than casting aspersions on that organization. The issue is still valid with the sanitized images and text.

It all started with an e-mail….

The e-mail

The e-mail came at 9:00 on a Friday night from an address at a trusted domain. The messages I normally receive from this organization tend to be utilitarian and this one looked like so many others I’ve received from them in the past.

From: system_name@trusteddomain.com
To: Turpin, Glen
Subject: ID Update has been assigned to GLEN TURPIN

Please take a moment to update your ID in the Information Update Portal. This will only take a few minutes so please complete ASAP. Click on the link to access the document with instructions.

http://trusteddomain.otherfamiliardomain.com/big_nasty_url&with_params=lots

Update my ID? Why on earth would I need to update my ID? There’s an information update portal? This message screams identity theft. At best, it looked like a ham-fisted phishing attempt. Where’s the threat that my account my account with Big Bank or Credit Union might be closed? Where’s the offer of millions of dollars in Nigerian diamonds?

More seriously, why would this organization ask me to update my user ID?

I was curious. Better still, I was on a relatively secure system while curious. I copied the link and pasted it into my browser.

The first web site

The link brought me more or less where I thought it would, which was to a site branded by an outsourced service provider. I was surprised at the complete lack of branding from the trusted organization, as well as the cluttered interface. The relevant part of the page was buried in lots of other noise.

Note: This image has been altered slightly to obscure its origin.

That’s it? A Word document? Do I still have to worry about Word macro viruses, or is that passé? I was sure that my anti-virus and malware protection suite would take care of that. Should I be sure? Probably not. But I was living dangerously, so I opened the document.*

The Word document

The Word document was a three page, poorly written file with awful screen shots and inconsistent company branding that explained that I need to visit yet another site, log in with my ID and password, and confirm some of my identity information. Looking at the document properties, I found enough clues to confirm that the document did come from the trusted source. And yet again… everything about it made it seem like an inept phishing attempt.

Important note: At no point did this document explain why or how my ID needed updating. I still had no idea what it means to update a user ID.

The second web site

I wish I could have included a screen shot of the header of the second web site, but there was no way for me to do that without revealing its source. The top of the page provided more unhelpful instructions, displayed as an image, complete with red error squiggles under one word.

The lower section of the screen consisted of this login screen.

Why would I want to change my password on a mysterious, phishy site?

I stopped there. I’d love to know what happens next, but I could go no further on this journey without potentially compromising my password.

Observations

1. It took an e-mail, two web sites and a Word doc to send me to the final screen, and I still had no idea why I was being sent there. A single e-mail would have sufficed, with a paragraph or two to explain the required update, plus a link to the final login screen.
2. If your communications look like phishing attempts, you have a problem. You’ll either erode trust in your organization, or you’ll train your users to blindly succumb to phishing attempts. Neither outcome is positive.

My respect for this organization has diminished, and my trust in their ability to treat my personal information responsibly has been dramatically eroded. I have to wonder if they’ve already been compromised and that identities are being stolen by insiders.

Who lets something like this happen?

Photo credit: 50mm

1. * Try to guess where to click to open the document. The underlined ID Update? No! The downward-facing double chevron? No! The green arrow box that was ripped off from Windows XP? Bingo.

Paul Sherman tells CIOs and directors of IT:

Your technology selection processes are incomplete. You’re not assessing the usability of the technology you buy. You’re not only incurring huge hidden costs because of this failure to assess usability, you’re letting enterprise technology vendors get away with building products with poor usability.

The first post highlights the importance of user experience in the success of enterprise software implementations, and provides case studies to back up the claim. Part two offers a framework that can help enterprises better assess the usability and appropriateness of enterprise applications.

Read them here:

• The User Experience of Enterprise Software Matters
• The User Experience of Enterprise Software Matters, Part 2: Strategic User Experience

P.S. Bonus points to Paul for the statement “Featuritis is a pernicious malady.”

People end up reaching out to whoever they can find on a company’s web site because phone trees are designed to address (I hesitate to use the word “resolve”) as many situations as possible without costly human intervention. When the situation doesn’t fit neatly into the available options, people get desperate. They want to be heard.

I had to deal with another angry customer this week (through e-mail this time) who, like so many others, threatened to call the media and sue the company. I was able to turn around the situation with two simple e-mails.

• In the first, I responded saying that I’d received the message. 
• In the second, which I sent a few hours later, I confessed that I still hadn’t managed reach anyone who could help (they’re in another city and state) but that I hadn’t forgotten them.

The reply to the second message was, “I know it will get handled now you’re a GODSEND!!!”

That struck me as a being very telling response. I hadn’t actually done anything to help yet. I hadn’t solved the problem. I hadn’t even managed to speak to anyone who could solve the problem. I’d forwarded e-mails and tried to draw attention to the customer’s problem, but I hadn’t succeeded yet. However, I did acknowledge them and let them know that someone cares enough to respond.

Sometimes that’s all it takes.

I was even more pleased when I was able to reach a senior member of the customer service team about an hour later, and the customer’s problem was quickly resolved.

I like writing about happy endings.

Um… wait. That’s not exactly right. (But it would be deliciously ironic.)

The call, in several intertwined variants

There is a very specific category of public interactions that rakes my soul with its fiery talons: dealing with customers who have had bad experiences with customer service.

Maybe you’ve had the pleasure of dealing with this situation. If not, feel free to imagine.

Your cell phone rings — it’s Sunday morning, it’s the middle of the night, it’s the middle of a family event, it’s some form of personal time, you’re in the middle of the road in heavy 75 mph traffic or in a snow storm — but you have to answer the phone. It could be a reporter from the Wall Street Journal. It could be the babysitter. It could be urgent.

Unknown number. As soon as you answer, a stream of invective pours through the phone and fills your ear, gushing bilious accusations and threats. Someone seems to have had a bad experience with your  company and is threatening to call the media, his attorney, the Better Business Bureau, all his friends and his mom. Or your mom. That part’s not clear. There’s always one part of the story that’s not clear.

The only consistent part of the story is that the customer service agents were rude and hung up on him. (And yes, it’s almost always him, and they always hang up on him. Twice. Three times!)

So you take down his name, contact information and details of the problem, which takes about two and a half minutes, including phonetic spelling (Sierra. Mike. India. Tango… um… Hockey? Hotel? Just one H. Underscore. One. Niner. At…) then spend the next twenty minutes apologizing over and over again and trying to get him off the phone so you can actually try to find someone who can do something about the situation. He claims he wants speedy resolution, but more than anything, he wants to vent his spleen.

Venting complete, he demands that you resolve his issue on some ridiculously tight deadline that you can’t commit to because the call center (hundreds of miles away in another state) is closed until sometime after the deadline and the escalations supervisor probably won’t respond to calls and e-mails until the office opens. Then he keeps calling back to harangue you for not solving his problem in a timely manner. More time spent apologizing….

I’ll stop there. If you’ve been through it, you know how it goes.

Why do I get these calls? I have nothing to do with customer service, but my name is on the corporate web site. Sometimes, I’m the only human being listed on the web site, and that is perhaps one of the root causes of the problem. These people just want to be acknowledged and treated with respect.

The dread, in its several incarnations

I dread getting these calls because I empathize. I know what it’s like to be treated poorly by some faceless corporation. We’ve all been there. I’ll do what I can to address the situation.

I also dread consumer complaints because I’m powerless to make any real change. I can make a few calls, send a few e-mails and nag the customer service team to resolve the issue in a timely manner, but ultimately I have no ability to fix the problem. I’m just the PR guy. But I’ll do everything I can to get someone to help you.

Finally, I dread consumer complaint calls when I’m aware of the problem but we haven’t fixed it yet. I know that we’ll do the right thing and I’m sorry we haven’t done it yet.

So, sir, whoever you are… I’m sorry. Now let me get off the phone so I can help you. Please.