The Importance of Earnest Service

A recent American Express Global Customer Service Barometer inspired me to cover instances of great service again-it’s been a while. The Barometer reported that Americans will pay an average of nine percent more to receive quality customer service and that 61 percent noted that in this economic environment, service is more important to them.

The latter surprises me because I expect top quality service regardless of the economy, but I digress.

Happy Surprise

I was having guests on the roof of our NYC apartment and lined up some volunteers to help me install the chair cushions, stored elsewhere both to preserve them as well as to keep them from flying off and injuring someone. When I got home that day the super-and he is-told me that the cushions were already on the chairs and the tables all cleaned–a blessing on a sweltering day.

Four Star Credit Card Bill Resolution

My heart sank when I saw my credit card bill this month because it showed a finance charge and an unexpectedly large total. My habit is to pay the full amount so as to avoid both instances. I no longer get back my checks or even facsimiles, and I didn’t make a copy of the check mailed, so I figured I was up the creek. The issuer-USAA-which has never let me down, came through again. I asked the customer service rep to look at my payment history. He put me on hold and on his return didn’t question me and told me to delete the finance charge. It wasn’t  so much money, yet I was so relieved that I didn’t have to argue or speak with a thousand people.

Immaculate Delivery Follow-Up

The Wall Street Journal is delivered to the office. In the last month or so, it’s gone missing on three occasions when nobody in the building received a paper, according to the responsible man at reception. The third time it happened, I called the Journal and a copy came by messenger within an hour. I subsequently received emails from the paper and the newspaper delivery business as well as a phone call from the newspaper delivery concern’s customer service department. I was impressed at how much they wanted to keep the Journal’s and my business.

Exemplary Honesty

We totaled the car earlier this year and our trusty warhorse, with close to 135,000 miles on it, was sent to car heaven. Before it left, we visited it one last time at a garage a few towns away where someone representing the insurance company had seen it and determined that it wasn’t worth repairing. We were there to retrieve the stuff in it, though we could only open one door and the trunk. A week or so later, my husband got a letter with a $20 bill in it from what he thought was an employee of the car cemetery. The letter explained that the writer had found the bill in the car. So my husband wrote the chairman of the insurance company-USAA again-to let him know what a great supplier he had.  In return, he got two telephone calls from USAA until the rep found him in. He thanked my husband for the letter, and told him that the man who had returned his money actually worked for USAA and that he would be commended for what he’d done.

Friends Who Help

My last example is the service of friends. I was one train stop from where I get off on Friday night when my husband called to tell me he was stuck with a flat tire in a torrential storm. I reached the only car service in the vicinity and the woman explained that she couldn’t pick me up because of a fair going on in town so she couldn’t get near the station.

For years, I’d patted the cat of a couple who traveled on the same train and who got off a few stops north of mine. Their cat purred so loudly you’d hear him even if you were seated four or five rows away. People don’t generally speak with strangers on this train, but we began to chat. On hearing of my situation they immediately told me they’d drive me home. They live in the opposite direction, it was late, and their kitty gets carsick but they didn’t hesitate. I know it’s not service when friends do you a huge favor, but the feeling of gratitude is similar.

Do you have examples of great service to share?

In his column, The Ethicist, Randy Cohen wrote recently in The New York Times, “Your wife should err on the side of caution and not take anything of value from a supplier.” The woman supervised travel for a company and she’d won the grand raffle prize of two roundtrip tickets to Japan at an event sponsored by several airlines. There were some 1,000 guests.

In my first job out of college I worked at Dun & Bradstreet writing credit reports. We were told that if a company we visited manufactured matchbooks not to take a single match, even to light a cigarette. That has been my guideline ever since.

Yet I think that Cohen is being harsh in this instance. He softens at the end of the column, noting to the husband who sent in the query, “At the least, she must disclose her winnings to her supervisors and get their green light before she packs her bags.” I’m comfortable with that.

Some in the media won’t let a PR person buy them so much as a cup of coffee. Others gather enough loot over years to fill a strip mall. Reporters and editors don’t have a lot of time to schmooze over lunch these days, nevertheless, just as business is done by some on a golf course, I can’t imagine how, for the price of a lunch or a coffee, anyone would sell their soul and run photos of horrible looking, poorly made or faulty goods in a new product column or run positive coverage of a lackluster ad campaign or sleazy business.

What about a book or movie reviewer who is sent/given a galley or invited to preview the flick? I don’t recall reading in their reviews that they didn’t pay for the book or seat at the theatre and it doesn’t bother me. What about a beauty editor sent samples that aren’t samples but entire bottles and jars? No problem in my mind. Making up samples would cost a fortune and wouldn’t provide the same experience. Packaging–how the beauty product looks and how the dispenser works–is part of the evaluation.

Full disclosure: I send promo codes to reviewers who ask for them so they can try a client’s smartphone application and have given hundreds of yards of fabric and countless rolls of wallpaper and dinnerware and flooring to be used for newspaper or magazine new product pages or to decorate a home that a magazine photographs.

Obviously, if a company pays any of the reviewers for their assessments, they must disclose this relevant piece of information, whether they write for a blog, web site, an online or print newspaper or magazine. Special sections or advertorials are paid for by the participants and are clearly identified by publishers, usually at the top of the page.

Because attitude and service are more than half of the experience, I think that a restaurant, hotel or travel reviewer should be anonymous and pay for all his/her expenses, no exceptions. 

What about stock brokers? Should they tell you that they’ve been told to push an investment by the boss?

Where do you stand on full disclosure? Do you care?

BP’s Tony Hayward spoke about the “little people” and how he looked forward to getting “back his life,” two quotes that will no doubt appear in his obituary if not on his tombstone. And he was recently seen yachting while his oil is polluting the Gulf water affecting millions.

Helen Thomas said that the Jews should “get the hell out of Palestine” and go where? To Poland and Germany. Then she resigned-or was forced to.

These are facts. Hayward and Thomas said/did these things and before and long after them hundreds of others will be caught saying/doing whatever the press-or competitors-dig up from a college paper, a speech or Facebook entry early in a career, hear at a cocktail party–captured on a smartphone–or over a live mic that the speaker thought was turned off.

Gotcha journalism garners headlines, but often steers us off the track. Reminds me of the final days of my Dad’s battle with cancer when friends and family called to see how things were. We railed against the hospital because housekeeping consistently ran out of clean towels and washcloths. Tossing energy and voice at this extreme inconvenience allowed us not to face what really was wrong: We were losing Dad. Grousing about towels served a psychological purpose, helping us ease into the inevitable.

So Hayward misspeaks and headlines blare which puts in the background the fact that millions of gallons of oil continue to contaminate our shores and thousands of people are put out of work. But aren’t we missing something? Where are the headlines that address the progress toward stopping the leak?

The front page headline in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal while more to the point–”BP Relied on Cheaper Wells“–is significant for regulations regarding future drilling, if there is ever to be offshore drilling in this country again. But isn’t the bigger issue what we will do, and soon, to reduce the demand for oil so we no longer need to jeopardize our shores, livelihood and health?

Speaking of health, New York State is considering a tax on sweet drinks, both to generate revenue and to make people aware of the empty calories and negative health ramifications of these drinks [that I love]. A hefty tax on gas and increased government subsidies for public transportation might have the same affect on our use of oil.

As for Helen Thomas, her outburst illustrates how close to the top violent feelings remain even for a journalist whose lifetime goal has been to be objective. She is not alone on either side of the war in the Middle East. Her resignation also brings up the question of what issues break a camel’s back in our country and which a camel can continue to carry without breaking stride. We may never know whether Thomas’s employer had been praying for an excuse to fire her for years. No doubt, if anyone cares by then, the truth will eventually leak out.

What service do you see that gotcha journalism plays in our lives? Do you think it has always been in play or that technology catches more of it today and spreads it farther and faster than ever before?

Straws have broken this very tough and loyal camel’s back four times, leaving me no choice but to resign and move on, twice from clients and twice from jobs.

Or maybe the straws didn’t break; they directed needed light on impossible situations.

I wonder what the editorial staff of the Dallas Morning News will do–will reporters stay at their jobs because there are so few jobs left in the industry, or will they walk? I’m getting ahead of myself, if you didn’t read Richard Pérez-Peña’s article, “Some Dallas Editors Will Report to Ad Sales,”  in Friday’s New York Times.

I first heard about this situation from Carolyn Gatto on Thursday night. Carol’s always ahead of the curve. The co-founder and publisher of WeJustGotBack.com, an award-winning family travel resource, wrote the November 9 post “Service of Magazine Subscriptions” for this blog.

She sent me the link to the post in the Dallas News Blog, Dallas Observer, “At The Dallas News, a New ‘Bold Strategy’: Section Editors Reporting to Sales Managers,”  by Robert Wilonsky.

Carol, who for some 25 years edited consumer magazines, summarized the situation: “The reporting structure has changed so that editors will be reporting to glorified sales managers. The latter will, no doubt, dictate what the former can and–more importantly–cannot write.”

She continued, “I have nothing against advertorials [material that simulates editorial and is paid for by an advertiser], as long as they’re properly labeled as such, but that Dallas newspaper is going to be nothing but advertorials. I’m shuddering at the thought. Times may be tough in the newspaper industry, but don’t they still have an obligation to be honest with readers? Or am I a Pollyanna?”

As a former magazine editor and longtime PR person who holds the media in high regard, this turn of events breaks my heart. It makes a mockery of what publicists do for a living when they take a client’s product or concept and point out its newsworthiness or give relevance and validity to a new and/or mature product with the objective of catching a reporter’s or editor’s attention to inspire editorial coverage and the third party endorsement it implies.

Why does this desperate measure remind me of what happened to retail when bean counters were put in charge of talented merchandisers?  By tamping down creativity–God forbid anyone should spend a cent more than required–traffic and sales suffered,  sounding the death Nell for department stores.

What good are restaurant, movie, theatre or travel reviews in which criticism is forbidden for fear of offending an advertiser? What if a reporter in the real estate section wants to write about a crooked mortgage scam, but the bank in question is an advertiser–does the public remain in the dark? If newspapers are having trouble attracting readers now, just you wait!

I have always honored the separation between advertising and editorial. If a publisher has suggested a quid pro quo, offering my client editorial space in return for advertising support, OK, but I would never suggest it.  

What do you think of newspaper reporters whose bosses are in sales, not in editorial? Does collaboration between editorial and advertising bother you?

I was a teen when I first became aware of what Jason Zweig covered in The Wall Street Journal on November 19– “How to Ignore the Yes-Man in Your Head.”  He wrote: “…your own mind acts like a compulsive yes-man who echoes whatever you want to believe. Psychologists call the mental gremlin the ‘confirmation bias.’”

As I recall, I’d notice that if I wanted to buy a pair of, say, red shoes, I’d begin to see them  all over town–on the street, subway and in busses. I’d be blown away at how many red shoes there were, even though I’d never before been aware of any.

Zweig’s lead– “A mind is a terrible thing to change,” says it all. He goes on, “You decide gold is a good bet to hedge against inflation, and suddenly the news seems to be teeming with signs of a falling dollar and rising prices down the road.” He quotes Scott Lilienfeld, a psychologist, “We’re all mentally lazy. It’s simply easier to focus our attention on data that supports our hypothesis, rather than to seek out evidence that might disprove it.”

His article leads to a huge discussion as to how best to plan an investment strategy. Never my specialty, these days it challenges me even more.

But don’t newspaper reporters, magazine editors and PR people play the same mind games?

One article from a major newspaper stands out in my mind. As the economy slid last fall, three or four luxury French restaurants opened in New York City and the reporter wrote something such as “Maybe there is no word for ‘recession’ in French.” The slant of the article was that the timing of these restaurants couldn’t be worse and what was with the restaurateurs? But midway through the article the writer noted that it can take a while to find the perfect property in New York City, negotiate the rent and a few years to identify the architect and interior design team to create and build the perfect space. Facts, schmacts, he didn’t change the slant of his story.

I worked for a magazine editor who came in one day saying, “Last night, I went to a wonderful dinner party at a magnificent apartment. The walls were citron. Yellow is obviously in. Let’s do a story on yellow living rooms.”  She launched a feature with this focus group of one. I wish I could remember how hard it was for us to find a yellow living room to photograph that would resonate with our readers. We were so frantic putting out a weekly with skeleton staff and no stories in the bank–the magazine was new–it’s amazing I remember any details.

I’ve also been guilty of thinking I knew where a story would go before researching the facts and making the story work anyway. For a wallpaper client, I planned a feature about what color gurus** select for their office walls, expecting to dot the piece with all sorts of examples to promote the latest colors in my client’s products. [**Some make a living by forecasting colors in different industries.] Turns out, all three experts surrounded themselves in white. They handled so many colors and patterns that they required a neutral background that didn’t distract them. Those were great interviews so I used them anyway and chose white wallpapers as examples.

And how many people quote the Bible to prove their point, even if they take words out of context?

Have you let your preconceived ideas affect decisions in any part of your life to good or ill effect?

Daily we read about and observe smart cost-cutting measures by people and businesses to help ride out the worst economic downturn in recent memory.

Some survival tactics like The New York Times selling one of its jewels–classic music radio station WQXR–are necessary. And the survival part is nerve-wracking. If cutting below the quick can happen to the newspaper of record, is anyone immune? What’s next? Scary.

I get the QXR move, but wonder what to think about the Times not paying to subscribe to other papers and magazines for its Metro desk-telling the staff to buy its own subscriptions. The memo, that appeared in The New York Observer,  offers the option to read the competition on line through the paper’s research department. Is wasting staff time a false economy?

Shopping in the back of your closet, creative gift-giving ideas and learning to cook and eating wonderful, imaginative meals at home all make sense.

In this context, closing down Gourmet Magazine doesn’t jibe, except the savings to Conde Nast are obvious. I read in the New York Post on Friday, October 9, that the editor-in-chief was paid $1 million a year and will get $5 million in severance–a chunk of change in any economy. I have talented, dedicated, brilliant editor friends who’d be happy to work for half that amount–perhaps less! I wonder if the staff was given the option of accepting lower salaries to save the magazine, but who can compete with $5 million?

For brands staying in business some cost cuts backfire. A favorite radio station is selling hour blocks of time, formerly devoted to creative programming, to alternative medicine or real estate sponsors who conduct humdrum, self-serving advertorials. In the short run, they generate income for the station as the sponsors pay for the time. My bet is that most of the audience turns the dial to another station or off. I do. I also worry about the talent: Will they be able to make ends meet on salaries based on shortened schedules?

A business that thinks it can get away with using inexpensive, insufficiently trained foreign labor in its customer service department or a maze of numbers to punch on the phone with a range of options, none of which fit your reason for calling, is making a mistake. You may be stuck with that brand for now, but you will never again buy it nor will your friends who will tire of your drawn-out horror story and never forget the brand’s name.

Have you come across business cutbacks that you predict will flop in the long run or intelligent ones that you admire?

I’ve been thinking about the things that we may soon all be living without. Some include:

Wrist watches, because people increasingly tell time by looking at their computers, phones or other handheld devices. Youngsters don’t seem to want or wear them anymore. Another sign that watches are going out of favor is that prices at discount stores are rock bottom. The same thing happened to calculators.

Books printed on paper, because more and more bookworms will be using wireless readers. With small print-runs, the price of the printed word will be exorbitant. Printed college texts will be an exception, for a while at least. This seems to be a profitable business if the groans of parents and college students I know are any indication of sales volume.

We all know what is happening to the print version of newspapers.

Physical therapy. A good friend needed PT after an operation. When his insurance company doubled his co-pay, he stopped going well before he’d completed the work. Multiply his situation by thousands of others and the result can’t be rosie for the PT industry.

Standard mail hardly exists at our office right now and as the cost increases and service decreases, the prognosis is bleak. A subset of this turn of events will affect birthday, Valentine and holiday cards and this makes me sad. I understand clearly that an e-card saves a tree, postage and handling, time etc. but I love receiving and selecting cards. I enjoy feeling wonderful paper, seeing a funny or stunning image and I will miss cards when they go.

Classical music on the radio–we’ve already covered this topic in posts on May 8^th and July 16^th.

Landline phones as cell phone service is less expensive and cell phones increasingly become entertainment and business centers. I prefer cradling a phone between my ear and shoulder when I interview someone so I can type answers as they speak. I’m not fond of wireless or any ear appliances, but that’s too bad.

Will you miss any of these things? What others do you predict will join garter belts and black and white TV?

A clever headline is memorable and if it doesn’t lead you into a story, it will make you smile or think twice. What fun it would be to write headlines for a living!

The New York Post is the winner in this list of my favorites and those of friends/followers of this blog.

Editor and writer Jim Roper’s choice is “Headless Body in Topless Bar,” which, I learned, is the title of a book of headlines by New York Post staff. Other juicy ones in the book:

           Lady is a Trump

           Axis of Weasel

           Holy Shiite

Recently this paper reported on yet another NJ political scandal that also involved some rabbis. The headline: “Kosher Nostra.” “Tiger Tamed,” a front pager, announced Y E Yang’s winning the PGA in August in an upset over Tiger Woods. And “Ex-con-stitutional” was how the paper drew you into news of a research center run by ex convicts.

PR colleague Sharon Clancy Lienau shared “Ears Pierced While You Wait.” [This reminded me not of a headline, but of a greasy spoon on the upper west side of Manhattan called "Eat and Run."]

Beautyblitz.com founder and editor, Polly Blitzer, wrote an article for Family Circle which she called, “Take 2 and call me in the morgue.” She covered the TV ads that claim to cure you of an ailment and simultaneously warn you of astronomical potential side effects.

Bambe Levine, Bambe Levine public relations remembers “Ford to City Drop Dead.” The New York Daily News  ran it in 1974 when the President refused to bail out the city.  

If you know some poignant or memorable headlines, please share!

How many days ahead do you start listening to weather forecasts when you’ve planned a beach day, picnic or pool party?

Are you involved with product introductions? Does your company belong to a color forecasting organization so that its bathroom fixtures or towels coordinate with what’s cool in ceramic tile?

Much like people who hope for positive signs or good news from a doctor as they sit by the bedside of a sick friend or relative, I read as many forecasts and prognostications about this economy as I have time for and check out every article that seems to have an answer, looking for inklings of a solid turnaround.

These days, coming to your own conclusions and becoming a forecaster is complicated! Just yesterday, a “Marketplace” headline in The Wall Street Journal screamed, “Maguire Properties Warns of Loan Defaults.” {The article says that Maguire is “one of the largest office building owners in Southern California.”}

 The same paper, on the same page, but with a smaller sized, less prominent headline, announced: “Networks Hold Back Selling Ads In Advance.” The reason? They are betting that the economy will improve and are hoping to be able to charge more than now. Before I got too optimistic, I saw in the “Money & Investing” section another bold headline: “Debt Burden to Weigh on Stocks: Consumers’ Inability to Drive Economic Growth Likely to End Big Gains.” 

My heart skipped a happy beat when, also yesterday, The New York Times declared: “Seattle Paper is Resurgent as a Solo Act,” and reported that the word “profit” is one that now falls from executive lips at the paper in the Emerald City.

And didn’t we–and President Obama–rejoice just a few days ago over the less-than-expected job loss figures? {Is this equivalent to “the patient’s fever is down to 104°?”}

When Paul Krugman agrees with a bailout, do you sleep better? Or when Alan Greenspan furrows his brow, do you follow suit?

What’s your take on forecasters? Has your faith changed? And what about your antenna for predictions–is it picking up strong signals these days?

The reaction was brisk to our June 17 post, “Service of Communications Experts,” so we gave a shout out for more typos, grammatical and spoken errors. Thanks to our virtual typo squad!

It’s a relief to see that people care about what they hear, read and write which leads to the question: Why have those we’ve depended on to maintain top standards given up?

We’ll start with a few of the mistakes we saw. On June 25, in the lead of an article on the Madoff scandal, in the print version of a major paper, there was one incorrect and one missing word–imagine, in the first sentence! “A majority of more than 100 foundations that lost 30 percent to all of their assets in the Madoff scandal had four or fewer board members, according ____ an analysis by the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy…..”

Thomas M, a writer, found a typo in a headline on the front page of this paper’s national edition: “Couple’s Capital Ties Said to Veil Spying for Cuba.”  Thomas writes from Philadelphia: “I believe when referring to the US Capitol –it’s CapitOl. No?”

Manhattan-based special events guru BEK found a Craigslist classified listing, “writter needed.” I’ll say!

We resorted to the yellow pages to search for a correct phone number after calling a wrong one for a movie theatre. One number was off in the newspaper ad.

From the mid-west comes Judy Schuster, a writer and PR executive who keeps her eyes and ears to the ground. She recounts she saw and heard:

***An ad in which the groom tells his bride that he is her clone. JS writes, “Last I checked, a clone had to be the same sex.”  

***Her local sports reporter who repeatedly says: “The Twins were beat by the Yankees (or any other team).”   She adds, “He never uses ‘beaten.’ Today I heard the female anchor say, ‘Five [name of station] anchors and me helped build a Habitat for Humanity House today.’” She adds, “Last I checked, it should have been I.”

Back to me for a sec: An on-line magazine article that covered the subject of taste let a missing key word get away: “The real trick is to resist navigating consumer taste and understand the emotional sources for taste so that you can _____to them instead.”

Yellow pages to the rescue when we realized a digit was off in a movie theatre’s add in a local newspaper.

Retired New York editor AA writes about instances where an extra word and a missing word irritate her. “My pet peeve is ‘big of a,’  e.g. ‘It is too big of a deal to pass on it’ or ‘A Cadillac is too big of a car,’ or ‘He is too big of a jerk.’ I hear it on television and radio and from the lips of educated friends. Why of?” Adds AA, “The other thing I hate is ‘She graduated high school.’  What happened to the word from?”

Thomas M also sent the following, which might serve as an antidote to what appears to be a trend if not a tsunami of sloppy speech and writing. He told us that he’d ordered these birthday gifts for a child, noting that although he’s only seven and the books are recommended for children who are nine, the recipient is “quite a reader.” He noted further, “Each of these books shows, in cartoon form, the consequence of using the wrong punctuation marks: The Girl’s Like Spaghetti: Why, You Can’t Manage without Apostrophes!; Eats, Shoots & Leaves: Why, Commas Really Do Make a Difference! and Twenty-Odd Ducks: Why, every punctuation mark counts!

I fear we don’t have to look far to find more written or spoken mistakes. We’d love to add your new finds to those of our typo squad, so please share! Think of the service we’ll be doing by letting people know we care.