"Where's all the positive feedback? Why don’t our customers
love us? Let’s engage more!
Let’s communicate more! Rack up the Tweets and the Facebook posts! It's a Comms problem!"
So, in response to this
familiar pressure from the Board and the CEO, the Comms department rushes about
talking at, producing things for and pumping things out to the organisation’s customers….and
initially the love does increase a little bit. But then it sinks to a new low...
Why?
Shiny Letterbox Syndrome
Because
just as the Comms department is fixing a
shiny letterbox on the outside of
the front door
and draping it with
colourful fairy lights to encourage customer feedback,
at the very same time, the various service departments
of the company are installing an
industrial-strength paper shredder on
the inside of
the front door.
Communications are promises, whether explicit or implicit, to deliver
good services. If an organisation does nothing – it has nothing to say; and if it
says it will do something - it must deliver. External communications, in any
medium, are not ends in themselves but mechanisms for the development of
relationships…relationships of trust.
Encouraging
trust with brilliant external communications only to betray that trust with tardy
or non-existent responses and poor customer service is completely
counter-productive:
