Yes, the author of Ocean Marketing's email exchange turned meme is an idiot -- at best. But is this a public relations mistake or is this a customer service mistake?
I'm dead serious. Paul has zero credibility and I'm not trying to give him any. But I also refuse to become a part of the pile on. It's too easy and Paul's already being fossilized by the weight of the online pile on alone.
At the same time, I also refuse to let our industry accept this failure as one of our own.
Just Do It (Your Job)
According to Know Your Meme, Ocean Marketing "was contracted to handle customer relations for the Avenger Controller." So the question becomes: is Customer Service and PR the same thing?
Customer service, according to Wikipedia, "is the provision of service to customers before, during and after a purchase." Customer service personnel interface directly with customers and handle their questions, compliments and complaints. PR people certainly have more access to customers than any other marketing discipline. But have they ever been expected to duplicate or somehow replace the customer service function?
A client outsourcing customer service to a public relations agency is a misstep. But for the agency to over reach and take the job? That's the real fail as far as I'm concerned.
Reality PR or Just Poorly Scripted Reality?
Serena Ehrlich, PR smarty pants and Bad Pitch Blog bestie, inspired this
Maybe I'm splitting hairs. But I really don't think this is on us. The light from what Paul did takes years to reach public relations gravitational pull.
Discredit Where It's Due
Richard and I started this blog to call out the few giving the greater industry a bad name. I cringe when I see reality PR play out, from the year end lists to the individual media pile ons through the year. But I accept them as PR fails -- when they are PR fails.
Ocean Marketing has fail sauce all over it on this one, but PR does not.
-- Kevin Dugan is also known as @prblog. He's been known to write for some other blogs, but will always be dedicated to stopping bad pitches.
Although pictures make websites more attractive, in a marketing email they should be used occasionally.
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Our job in PR is to help our organizations build relationships. So, if you look at this debacle in that context, yes, this customer service fail is a PR disaster. Reading through the emails from this guy, it appears his claim to be a PR professional is about as legitimate as my claim to be a firefighter. After all I know how to operate a fire extinguisher, so I can douse a 12-acre wildfire, right? Um, no.
ReplyDeleteLike you and Serena, reading through this disaster makes me sad. But it also presents an opportunity for the PR community to step and say that this guy is not a PR professional and to offer him the professional development and education he needs to prevent this from happening ever again.
Thoughts:
ReplyDelete1) Seems like "customer service" is more precisely defined than "public relations." Even PRSA's current campaign to define the term is all over the map.
2) Actually, come to think of it, the Wikipedia definition of customer service sounds a lot like what the definition of public relations SHOULD be.
3) Unless you don't think customers count as a "public."
4) Okay, so maybe PR interacts with a broader range of audiences -- non-customer audiences. And there are specializations in PR you won't find in customer service (e.g., media relations)
5) Isn't a customer service disaster, by extension, a public relations disaster? I mean, at the very least it's a customer service disaster that BECAME a public relations disaster.
6) Why are we (i.e., PR professionals) so loathe to take responsibility for this? More to the point, why are we so loathe to be involved in the customer service function of business? Is it that customer service is somehow beneath us?
Haven't we been talking for the last five years about "breaking down silos?" Why are we trying to stick this problem back in someone else's silo?
This isn't a PR fail. It's not a customer service fail. It's a BUSINESS fail. And EVERY representative of this company should want to live up to a higher standard.
I agree with Scott on this one. I think it is a business fail - marketing, PR, customer service and sales are now and forevermore tied together. (I recently saw a great post that addressed this, I think it was on @Hubspot.) When it gets to this level, everyone has to work together, create and activate a company-wide plan to deal with it, and then have company leadership get out in front, apologize and then fix it. To their credit, the CEO did post an apology and took action by dismissing Ocean Marketing. They now have an opportunity to move forward and take remarkable care of their customers.
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