Thou Shalt Learn the Parable of eBay’s Sloppy Customer Service

I’ve said it before and I will say it again: PR stretches far beyond the issuance of press releases or the coordination of news conferences. The PR function is carried by every person within a company or organization who deals directly with the public – from the CEO to the receptionist and all points in-between, the role of PR brand ambassador is carried by many people. This is especially the case with customer service reps, since they have to deal with the public on a daily basis (often without executive supervision).

Now here is a case study of customer service reps who give their employer bad PR. The company in question in eBay, the reps go by the names of Yuri and Jenkins, and the beleaguered customer is (of all people) me.

Earlier this week, I posted an auction on eBay to sell a used DVD documentary on the 1960 folk singer Tim Buckley. The day after the auction went up, I received an e-mail from eBay stating the auction was removed. No specific reason was given, but there was the insinuation that the DVD in question was in violation of copyright laws (translated: it was a bootleg).

Of course, it wasn’t a bootleg. The DVD is actually in the eBay database (it’s been in stores for over a month) and another dozen people are selling the same product on eBay. So I sent an e-mail to the eBay customer service department requesting an explanation of what happened.

To shorten a long story: I had an exchange of e-mails with Yuri and Jenkins (they are apparently a tag team in the customer service department). Neither of them seemed impressed that the DVD was in the eBay database or that it is being sold by other people on eBay. But when I requested evidence to back up the accusation that I was selling a bootleg, they refused. The reason: security issues.

So I then stated that I was being accused of engaging in criminal activity (the sale of bootleg DVDs). I demanded that they present evidence supporting that claim or apologize for making an unsubstantiated and defamatory accusation. All I got was a form letter telling me to read eBay’s policy on copyright protected materials.

Not being satisfied, I sent a complaint to a number of executives within the eBay upper echelon: Beth Axelrod, Senior Vice President of Human Resources (I specifically demanded a complaint be placed in Yuri and Jenkins’ personnel files), William C. Cobb, President of eBay North America, Michael Jacobson, Senior Vice President and General Counsel, Bob Swan, Senior Vice President, Finance and Chief Financial Officer, and Meg Whitman, President and CEO. None of these individuals responded to me.

I did get a response from someone named Suza, who stated she worked “in the office of the president” (doing what, I have no clue). Suza called me, but I don’t see why since she didn’t bother to listen to anything I said. She literally read from the same text that Yuri and Jenkins were e-mailing to me, and she only displayed an organic reaction when I repeated my demand about putting complaints in the reps’ personnel files (she was not happy with that idea). I later got an e-mail from her which basically tread over the same stupid non-answers I received earlier.

So what’s the point of all of this? Well, what kind of PR do you think eBay is getting today? After all, it only takes one person with above-average communications skills and access to the media to put a dark spot on a company’s PR image (think of Rev. Al Sharpton’s targeting of MSNBC in the wake of the Don Imus brouhaha). In the scheme of things, my complaint about eBay’s shitty customer service and the dum-dums they have on staff is minor. But what if I really had an axe to grind and the time and money to make mischief (again, Rev. Al and MSNBC).

But...this story will always be on the Net as long as Strumpette is around. It will be linked via Technorati and spread about other web sites. It will be in the Google news search when someone is researching eBay and/or “customer service.” From eBay’s perspective, you can’t spin this as good news.

And what about eBay’s PR people? Oh, I never contacted them and they’ll probably be the last to know about this incident. When they’re doing their search for eBay’s media coverage, this should pop up and amuse them.

Most PR people don’t think of the customer service function as part of the PR bailiwick, but it is. Any department that deals directly with the outside world falls into the realm of PR, and shabby customer service will reflect terribly on a corporate image. If you’re a PR person working for a company or organization with customer service reps, think twice about where your next point of damage is going to emerge. Chances are, it won’t come from the C-Suite or the sales channels, but rather it could bubble up from a couple of idiots in customer service who piss off the wrong person.

As a nice post-script: I put the DVD in question back up for sale and someone in France bought it for $5.00. Neither Yuri nor Jenkins seemed aware of the resale. Go figure.

(Phil Hall is the former president of Open City Communications, a New York PR agency, and former editor of PR News. His latest book "The New PR" will be released later this year from Larstan Publishing.)

Thou Shalt Heed the Need for a CEO’s Communications Skills

I received a press release from the HR consulting group Robert Half Management Resources which posed the following question to 1,400 CFOs at companies across America: what is the most desired leadership quality in today’s business leaders?

The leading answer, at 31%, was integrity. There was a tie for the second leading answer: both experience and communication skills came in at 27%.

Integrity, of course, goes without saying – particularly in the way Corporate America conducts itself. Experience seems like a no-brainer to me – few inexperienced people ever gain executive leadership positions unless they have a very powerful daddy (shout out to the Murdoch family – g’day, mates!).

The fact that communication skills came in second as a key quality for business leadership actually surprised me. Paul McDonald, executive director at Robert Half Management Resources, commented in the press release: “Financial executives must be able to translate complex concepts into terms other audiences, from investors and board members to employees and the general public, can understand. The ability to motivate and inspire also is crucial for fostering loyal and productive employees.”

McDonald’s comment is fascinating to me because it puts the onus on corporate communications directly in the lap of the CEO or company president – that individual is the ultimate PR spokesperson, not the communications director (or whatever title the PR person is given).

But then this raises new questions: does the PR person have adequate access to the CEO to determine the depth and scope of the CEO’s communication skills, and to make sure these skills are being used properly? Not every person is a natural talker or is comfortable addressing large groups of people, and I’ve been in plenty of meetings where a CEO’s speech could easily be bottled and sold as sleeping pills.

But if the PR person cannot emphasize the importance of communications skills to the CEO, or cannot even get an appointment with the CEO to get that point across, then there’s going to be a problem in the near-future.

In researching my book “The New PR,” I received repeated confirmations of what I feared the most: PR people within the corporate world lack the status and influence to stress the importance of communications (both external and internal). Part of this is not their fault, as external communications usually has to run the gamut of legal and risk management approval before it gets aired while internal communications is often shucked to HR people.

Yet it is also partly the fault of the PR people that they have the C-Suite door slammed in their faces. Until such time that PR people think like business leaders, rather than wordsmiths, they cannot and should not be taken seriously. Anyone who doesn’t see PR as a vital tool in strengthening a company’s bottom line fails to understand the power of PR.

FYI, the third quality cited in the aforementioned survey on desirable business leadership qualities was technical or functional expertise, which came in at 11%. Now that’s a quality many corporate PR people need to brush up on!

(Phil Hall is the former president of Open City Communications, a New York PR agency, and former editor of PR News. His latest book "The New PR" will be released later this year from Larstan Publishing.)

Thou Shalt Not Lose Faith in the PR Practitioners

I was signing copies of my latest book, “The New PR,” at last week’s National Book Expo in New York, and I must say that I came away from that experience with a wonderful new enthusiasm for the public relations profession. A great many people turned up to receive autographed copies and many of these good folks work in PR.

The clincher, for me, was the enthusiasm expressed by these PR people to seek out new ideas and different strategies to the profession. Many people took their copies of “The New PR” expressing satisfaction that they might come away with game plans they could incorporate into their daily public relations efforts.

I am mentioning this because such statements obliterated one of my greatest fears for PR: the unwillingness of professionals to change and adapt with the times. Too many PR people are either confused or angry at how the industry is evolving, and they constantly harrumph whenever the notion that the lines allegedly separating PR and marketing are “blurring.”

PR is, in many ways, its own worst enemy. Too many practitioners are so stuck in the concept of traditional media relations that they shortchange their organizations and/or clients with outdated tools. Concepts such as web design, guerrilla marketing, in-house video production or experiential promotions are alien to them, and they don’t wish to pursue it because it’s not what PR is supposed to be about.

Even worse, too many PR people don’t want to see the bigger picture – of how PR can strengthen the bottom line. The inability to properly channel PR to build sales and ensure brand recognition will ultimately doom too many PR practitioners to irrelevance. In “The New PR,” Terry Hemeyer, a senior counsel at Pierpont Communications in Houston and a senior lecturer on the faculty of the University of Texas at Austin, said it best: “(PR people) are too tactical – they are too worried about using the AP style in press releases and not about the company, its goals and its objectives.”

Not helping this matter are the entities that should be driving the industry forward into new and bolder directions: the do-nothing trade associations, who are so stuck in the past that they literally can’t see the forests for the trees, and the PR trade journals, who have become so incompetent in their non-coverage of the changing industry that they’ve passed over from an advance state of hopeless mediocrity into the point-of-no-return realm of utter irrelevance (and people are paying hundreds of dollars annually for that muck?). Thank goodness for independent PR practitioners who are blogging and podcasting their opinions – the future of the industry is online and (best of all) free to access!

I have no clue whether any of the potential readers I met at the National Book Expo will actually follow the new ideas and strategies into their daily routines. But even if they don’t, I am still satisfied with the notion that they are open to considering something different. That, in itself, is a step in the right direction!

(Phil Hall is the former president of Open City Communications, a New York PR agency, and former editor of PR News. His latest book "The New PR" will be released later this year from Larstan Publishing.)

Thou Shalt Be Nice to the Media... Or Suffer the Consequences

I was at a trade show last week in my capacity as a magazine editor. In the midst of the show, a woman waddled up to me, introduced herself, and proclaimed in blunt terms: “I was supposed to have a meeting with you, but you blew me off.” She said this in a voice that was two sizes too loud, with my publisher and advertising manager standing next to me.

I looked at this woman and stated, with no degree of warmth: “I did not blow you off. Your publicist was supposed to set up a time to meet with me and he never did. I’ve had wall-to-wall meetings to this show, set up by publicists who had no trouble working within my schedule.”

The woman (a self-styled expert on a niche subject within the financial services world) was actually hoping to get coverage in my magazine. Do you think that is going to happen?

I’ve said this endlessly and I will keep saying this until someone listen: you never profit by pissing off the members of the media. Really, what is the point? Can’t a problem be solved with humor or sincerity, rather than by creating an adversarial relationship? Or if humor and sincerity can’t solve the problem, why not tap the auric power of silence and just let the problem shrivel up and die on its own?

In this particular case, it is compounded by the possibility that the woman’s publicist lied to her by claiming I had no interest in a meeting – hence her insistence “you blew me off.” After all, that accusation had to come from somewhere.

She also did not apologize when I informed her she was not on my schedule. So now I have two people on my low priority list: the big-mouthed woman and her bumbling publicist.

Am I acting in a petulant, silly and otherwise asinine manner? Of course I am – don’t confuse the religious icons on the column with little ol’ me. And guess what: I’m not the only media person who would respond that way. (But if I really wanted to be mean I could identify the guilty parties in this little story – and that would offer a mess of bad PR, no?)

The point of this little tale is simple: people remember kindness and nastiness with equal depth. Kindness works better. At my trade show, there were plenty of PR people who were respectful, courteous and professional to me and their clients are pretty much assured of quality coverage in upcoming editions of my magazine.

And then there was that woman with the big mouth. If you see her in an upcoming edition of my magazine, it means I had an acute shortage of news and needed something to plug the hole. But as for quality coverage, forget it – she shot herself in the foot when she shot off her mouth. That’s bad PR to the infinite power.

(Phil Hall is the former president of Open City Communications, a New York PR agency, and former editor of PR News. His latest book "The New PR" will be released later this year from Larstan Publishing.)