Life was fairly easy for PR people prior to the internet and the web. They put out releases, placed articles, scheduled interviews and press conferences, set up product reviews, made a big deal about trade shows and measured success by the amount of black ink or time and number of audio and video clips.

Then companies put up websites. The PR people responded with the online pressroom and suddenly they had a new way to spread their literary pearls. They not only posted announcements, but also sent instant emails to people around the globe, with their name, phone number and email address posted for everyone to see.

Life was good. The trouble began when they suddenly started getting emails they hadn’t anticipated and didn’t want, and the PR people became the lightning rod for customers who were having problems with the company and its products and services. Some PR people take the position that the customer has contacted the wrong people and simply pass the inquiries along to customer service or customer support. If you do, you’ve missed the point, and you’re doing the customer and your company a disservice. Public relations are a lot more than simply working with the media. It’s about the public, and your most important public should be customers.

The financial success of any company relies on happy customers. For the uninitiated, finding the company’s media contact on a website takes work, so that means the customer already has tried to get assistance through normal channels. They’ve used the company’s toll-free number and been put on hold for a long time. They’ve emailed customer support and received no response. By the time they contact you, they, most likely, are more than a little aggravated. Rather than becoming a lightning rod for complaints, use these contacts as an early warning system. If public relations receive a large number of customer contacts, then there’s a problem that needs to be fixed quickly.

A friend of mine who is the CEO of a company recently complained to his PR agency that he didn’t want the agency responding to such customer queries. The volume of emails and phone calls wasn’t overbearing — five or so a week — but he felt the PR agency would not be able to do a good job and also it would be a waste of resources when he could get them to focus more on their expertise.

The agency thought otherwise and fought back with statistics: according to analysts, an average of only 60 per cent of websites reviewed responded to customer queries within 48 hours, while Juniper Communications says 46 per cent of the websites contacted with a simple email request took five or more days to respond or never responded. Finally, according to Forrester Research, less than 30 per cent of the online orders initiated over the holidays were completed, and the majority of the aborted orders were attributed to bad first impressions. In other words, the five to 10 people who searched the website and contacted the agency weren’t simply isolated situations; they were indicative of a much larger business problem. The company was running the risk of not just losing a few customers, but losing customers in droves.

By refocusing the customer support request issue from a PR budget discussion to the company’s bottom line got the CEO’s attention. At the next staff meeting, the agency asked every senior manager to write down five product installation, application and support questions. Next, they were asked to list 10 people they thought would be willing to assist the agency in a customer service survey. Four days later, when the research analysis came out 50 per cent of them mirrored the frustrated calls and emails the agency had received.

While CRM technology and tools are readily available, the CEO recognised that this was a people’s issue, not a hardware-software issue. Instead, people had to have additional training and development so they understood what the customer expects of them and what customers really mean to the company.

First, there will be a prompt response to any inquiry, with none going unanswered more than three hours after receipt, even if that response is, “We don’t know, but we’ll get back to you with an answer in three hours.” If the solution isn’t available in that time period, the support person gives the customer a status report. Furthermore, every senior manager is expected to call and email customer support on a weekly basis using aliases to ensure customers receive prompt, complete and accurate replies. They use the company’s website just as a customer would to monitor how easy it is for an individual to do business with the company. As a result, morale within the customer support organisation has risen sharply because management recognises its value to the company’s success; feedback from customer satisfaction surveys has improved dramatically; and everyone in the organisation is more customer service-driven. But best of all, fiery customer emails have nearly disappeared.

By helping everyone in the company put themselves in customers’ shoes, the PR agency has helped the organisation understand that it isn’t good business to sell more and better technology but to serve customers, one person at a time. It also has allowed the agency to focus more of its attention, time and budget on corporate and product branding issues and activities.

The writer is CEO and MD of CustomerLab Solutions