In case you hadn't noticed, AT&T has been receiving some flak recently for its less-than-market-leader 3G coverage. Verizon Wireless has been particularly scathing of its iPhone-carrying competitor with its "There's a Map for That" and "Island of Misfit Toys" commercials. AT&T, of course, has put up a defense with its "Postcard" and "Side-by-Side" commercials.
And now, AT&T has put forth a "make-good" effort, in the form of a free iPhone app.
Yesterday, AT&T introduced its new Mark the Spot app into the iPhone App Store. The app enables users to submit a notification to AT&T whenever and wherever they experience dropped calls, failed calls, no coverage, data failure, or poor voice quality. The app can pull the iPhone's GPS information to tell AT&T where the failure happened; alternately, users can manually select a location on the map to indicate where the coverage failure occurred. With the notification, users can also submit additional comments, as well as tell AT&T whether the problem occurs only once, seldom, often, or always.
FAQs within the app reveal what AT&T plans to do with the feedback it receives:
"AT&T will utilize this feedback to optimize and enhance the network. Problems will be clustered to highlight areas for investigation. However, multiple submissions at the same time for the same issue by the same user do not receive higher weighting."
Other commentators seem skeptical about whether AT&T will actually use the feedback submitted via the app to begin patching its coverage gaps. Assuming, though, that AT&T has the resources and infrastructure in place, the company would be unwise to not improve its 3G coverage based upon this information. Not only would such improvements benefit its customers, its reputation, and its sales, but AT&T's Mark the Spot app sets expectations that the carrier will take customers' feedback seriously and work to fix the problems.
Congratulations, AT&T, for taking a step to improve your customer service and effectively repair your reputation. Don't let us down now by doing nothing with the valuable feedback you receive through your new app.
Showing posts with label public relations. Show all posts
Showing posts with label public relations. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
What They Don't Know Can Kill You
Over lunch earlier this week, my friend Howdy and I had an interesting conversation about the hoopla surrounding President Obama's speech to America's schoolchildren on September 8.
During an interview with student reporter Damon Weaver in August, President Obama announced that on September 8 he would be making a speech to schoolchildren across America. By August 21 the press had picked up the story, reporting also that the President's address was to be accompanied with a curriculum for teachers to use with the speech. The curriculum suggested that teachers engage students with questions like, "What is the president trying to tell me?", "What does the president want me to do?", and "What new ideas and actions is the president challenging me to think about?"; and with assignments such as "writ[ing] letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president." The actual contents of the speech were not released.
By September 1, conservative parents, educators, and activists were up in arms.
For adults already concerned by more liberal shifts in our nation's politics and education, the speech could only mean one thing: an attempt by President Obama to push his left-wing agenda on the children of America. And the accompanying curriculum - typical of any critical-thinking exercise in American schools - must, of course, be a ploy to further brainwash the children. How does the president have the right to preach to our children and dictate curriculum in our schools?
CNN, among other news channels, covered the story of conservatives' outrage. Among conservative bloggers, a flurry of blog posts arose, displaying such titles as, "Obama's next effort: a Children's Crusade?", "Beloved Leader to Begin Indoctrination of Youth", "Dilemna: [sic] What's a mom to do? Creepy President to deliver speech to all public school children!", and "September 8, 2009: National Keep Your Child at Home Day". These bloggers compared President Obama to everyone from Kim Jong Il to Adolf Hitler to Fidel Castro.
Finally, on September 7, the day before the President's speech, the White House released the text for the incendiary address.
It was perfectly harmless.
The speech was a pep talk to America's students, encouraging them to be responsible, to work hard in school, to do their homework, to respect their teachers and their parents. It was a message that we all want our children to hear. And it was to be delivered by a man who, for some children, might be the only decent role model to whom they would listen.
This incident, says my friend Howdy, is a perfect illustration of a sagacious maxim: What they don't know, can kill you.
When people distrust an organization (as they generally distrust the government), and they don't know the full story on what that organization is doing, they will make it up. And usually, what they make up is wrong, and is the worst-case scenario, and is quite damaging to the organization's reputation.
Had the White House released the text of President Obama's speech from the beginning, concerned conservatives would have had no room for alarm. No room to assume the worst. No room to let their imaginations run wild with the horrible propaganda the president might be pushing. The administration could have avoided the entire public relations mess.
Howdy asked me whether I think the same principle holds true in the private sector. I think it does. Obviously, the public does not need to know all the inner workings of a company, just as we do not need to know all of our nation's military secrets and other classified information. But when a company unveils a new initiative, or recalls a product, or releases a similar big announcement, they should be prepared for full disclosure of the situation. Especially in situations of PR crises, companies should be wary of sending cryptic messages.
Remember, people will make up what they don't know. Don't leave the public to make up the parts that are important. Give them the facts, so that they can't give you their wild speculations.
Don't leave room for people to make important stuff up. What they don't know can kill you.
During an interview with student reporter Damon Weaver in August, President Obama announced that on September 8 he would be making a speech to schoolchildren across America. By August 21 the press had picked up the story, reporting also that the President's address was to be accompanied with a curriculum for teachers to use with the speech. The curriculum suggested that teachers engage students with questions like, "What is the president trying to tell me?", "What does the president want me to do?", and "What new ideas and actions is the president challenging me to think about?"; and with assignments such as "writ[ing] letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president." The actual contents of the speech were not released.
By September 1, conservative parents, educators, and activists were up in arms.
For adults already concerned by more liberal shifts in our nation's politics and education, the speech could only mean one thing: an attempt by President Obama to push his left-wing agenda on the children of America. And the accompanying curriculum - typical of any critical-thinking exercise in American schools - must, of course, be a ploy to further brainwash the children. How does the president have the right to preach to our children and dictate curriculum in our schools?
CNN, among other news channels, covered the story of conservatives' outrage. Among conservative bloggers, a flurry of blog posts arose, displaying such titles as, "Obama's next effort: a Children's Crusade?", "Beloved Leader to Begin Indoctrination of Youth", "Dilemna: [sic] What's a mom to do? Creepy President to deliver speech to all public school children!", and "September 8, 2009: National Keep Your Child at Home Day". These bloggers compared President Obama to everyone from Kim Jong Il to Adolf Hitler to Fidel Castro.
Finally, on September 7, the day before the President's speech, the White House released the text for the incendiary address.
It was perfectly harmless.
The speech was a pep talk to America's students, encouraging them to be responsible, to work hard in school, to do their homework, to respect their teachers and their parents. It was a message that we all want our children to hear. And it was to be delivered by a man who, for some children, might be the only decent role model to whom they would listen.
This incident, says my friend Howdy, is a perfect illustration of a sagacious maxim: What they don't know, can kill you.
When people distrust an organization (as they generally distrust the government), and they don't know the full story on what that organization is doing, they will make it up. And usually, what they make up is wrong, and is the worst-case scenario, and is quite damaging to the organization's reputation.
Had the White House released the text of President Obama's speech from the beginning, concerned conservatives would have had no room for alarm. No room to assume the worst. No room to let their imaginations run wild with the horrible propaganda the president might be pushing. The administration could have avoided the entire public relations mess.
Howdy asked me whether I think the same principle holds true in the private sector. I think it does. Obviously, the public does not need to know all the inner workings of a company, just as we do not need to know all of our nation's military secrets and other classified information. But when a company unveils a new initiative, or recalls a product, or releases a similar big announcement, they should be prepared for full disclosure of the situation. Especially in situations of PR crises, companies should be wary of sending cryptic messages.
Remember, people will make up what they don't know. Don't leave the public to make up the parts that are important. Give them the facts, so that they can't give you their wild speculations.
Don't leave room for people to make important stuff up. What they don't know can kill you.
Monday, August 24, 2009
Transparency Done Properly
Had you passed through Terminal 5 of London's Heathrow Airport any time last week, you might have happened upon author Alain de Botton, who was occupying a desk there as the airport's first Writer-In-Residence.
BAA, owner of Heathrow Airport, hired de Botton to spend one week in Terminal 5, observing the passengers and staff of Britain's largest airport. de Botton, the Swiss-British author and philosopher whose How Proust Can Change Your Life brought him acclaim in the U.S. as well as in his home across the pond, will collect his observations into his next book, A Week at the Airport: A Heathrow Diary, to be released in late September. BAA reportedly gave de Botton full physical access to all areas of the airport, as well as full literary access to cover any topic about the airport, down to any cockroaches that he may have seen.
According to Creativity-Online, 10,000 free copies of the book will be given to random Heathrow passengers; the book will also be available for sale at major retailers.
While de Botton says that this book will be more journalist-style than philosopher-style, it is still a bold marketing move for BAA to allow him full creative reign in his disclosure of the workings of the airport, as Heathrow COO Mike Brown points out.
Well done, Heathrow.
If an organization means to promote and publicize itself through an open outsider's perspective, the only way to do so is to allow the outsider to reveal everything - good, bad, and ugly. Transparency can't be done halfway; it can't show only the good, while hiding the unpleasant. Such translucency simply doesn't fly.
If your organization wants to venture into the realm of customer reviews, customer-created-content, customer blogs, etc., it must resign itself to allowing full "creative reign" to those customers. Sure, you might set and enforce some ground rules (no profanity, no obscenity, etc.), but you absolutely cannot restrict content simply because it casts your organization in a bad light. Such censorship will inevitably be found out, and will only sabotage (possibly forever) the much-needed trust of your customers and the public.
Again, I extend my congratulations to BAA for getting it right. I hope that their transparency efforts will result in better air travel and more air travel at Heathrow.
BAA, owner of Heathrow Airport, hired de Botton to spend one week in Terminal 5, observing the passengers and staff of Britain's largest airport. de Botton, the Swiss-British author and philosopher whose How Proust Can Change Your Life brought him acclaim in the U.S. as well as in his home across the pond, will collect his observations into his next book, A Week at the Airport: A Heathrow Diary, to be released in late September. BAA reportedly gave de Botton full physical access to all areas of the airport, as well as full literary access to cover any topic about the airport, down to any cockroaches that he may have seen.
According to Creativity-Online, 10,000 free copies of the book will be given to random Heathrow passengers; the book will also be available for sale at major retailers.
While de Botton says that this book will be more journalist-style than philosopher-style, it is still a bold marketing move for BAA to allow him full creative reign in his disclosure of the workings of the airport, as Heathrow COO Mike Brown points out.
Well done, Heathrow.
If an organization means to promote and publicize itself through an open outsider's perspective, the only way to do so is to allow the outsider to reveal everything - good, bad, and ugly. Transparency can't be done halfway; it can't show only the good, while hiding the unpleasant. Such translucency simply doesn't fly.
If your organization wants to venture into the realm of customer reviews, customer-created-content, customer blogs, etc., it must resign itself to allowing full "creative reign" to those customers. Sure, you might set and enforce some ground rules (no profanity, no obscenity, etc.), but you absolutely cannot restrict content simply because it casts your organization in a bad light. Such censorship will inevitably be found out, and will only sabotage (possibly forever) the much-needed trust of your customers and the public.
Again, I extend my congratulations to BAA for getting it right. I hope that their transparency efforts will result in better air travel and more air travel at Heathrow.
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