Being Understood

Digital journalism a conversation? I don't think so

One of my intentions for 2008 is to stop reading the comments after stories in the online version of the Globe & Mail, our national newspaper. They showcase uninspired and uninspiring nonsense posted by people who seem, with a few exceptions, to be ill-informed, ethnocentric, regionally oriented and partisan conspiracy theorists hiding behind anonymity.  The outpouring of ignorance and intolerance is especially disturbing because these creatures are my fellow citizens. The news is bad enough; witnessing people at their least charitable makes it even worse.

You call this entertainment?

It's hard to be a Help Desk person. We customers only call when we're angry or confused or both.  If only we could just learn to enjoy:

• waiting (Kenny G is Top Of The Pops on "Hold" this week)
• listening to long multilingual messages that don't make sense in any language
• bouncing between service people (I suspect they have a [Random] button to send us to other departments where we will hear, "That's not my job," immediately before they ask the obligatory question, "Is there anything more I help you with today?")
• getting nowhere and taking forever to get there

In a bid to be the "ideal customer," I have started to use my problems as entertainment, for both myself and Help Desk employees. I had a great chat, this morning, with someone at Bell Canada. He was wonderful and had the customer service spirit so often missing in call centres.

The Deadbeat Harrassment System
I'm not a Bell customer, except for the occasional pay phone. However, I'm receiving daily "Pay up or die!" calls from an automated  system that asks me to call a phone number that turns out to be the credit department at Bell. It seems a former holder of my new phone number hasn't met  some of her financial obligations. I know this because Bell wasn't the only firm calling about monies owed. Fortunately, the others sent humans or included an account number in their recorded messages. These companies understand that communication requires some content and contact.

Not so Bell Canada, which is, ironically, Canada's largest communications network and has corporate communication departments in several cities. This was the sixth time I had called Bell on this matter - and the first time anyone seemed interested. This lovely agent dug into my case like detective Hercule Poirot. He revealed that, for this giant company whose business is phones and phoning, a phone number is insufficient information. He searched on all my particulars, diver's licence, social insurance nubmer, and such, just to rule out identity theft. Then he determined, to his and my regret, that there is absolutely nothing he or Bell can do to stop the system from hassling me.

A solution is found (maybe)
Firmly convinced that you can always get good service if you communicate, I didn't give up. There is a possible solution. Caller blocking! So the next few times Bell calls, I can note the time and caller phone number and my telco can stop the nonsense. 

How do I know this? You guessed it.  I called the Rogers Telecom Help Desk.

Cheers - Sue

Extra: Calling Out For Service - from Voice Jail

Call anytime, but it's better to send e-mail - Yesterday, while I sat on hold long enough to tidy my entire office, the recorded greeting told me that my bank has extended its call centre support service by two hours. Nevertheless, the recording went on to suggest sending them an e-mail for faster service. The irony is that the purpose of my call was to clarify something about online banking. Hmmm. 

A friend is using the time she spends on hold to write a book - I imagine there is a statistic, somewhere, revealing that the average North American spends 1.5 months of his/her life on hold.

Would you like fries with that? - Another friend revealed today that while he was waiting for service at a technology site, the system offered him the option of waiting with or without music. I guess they didn't read the 2002 study by France's Université de Rennes showing that callers listening to music while on hold underestimate the length of time they've been waiting. Next we'll have a choice of musical styles. But will we ever reach a human being?

Poison IVR - Broadcaster/podcaster Jeff Hoyt has some interesting thoughts on yesterday's subject of interactive voice response systems that seem to be keeping customers separated from customer service reps.  You'll find his entertaining "Voice Jail" recording at www.hoytus.com/?p=21

Get Real - Calling Out For Customer Service

I have a lovely telephone company.  Through the magic of mergers, it's also my mobile phone company, my Internet service provider and (if I had a TV) my cable company. Multiple services mean multiple reasons to contact its customer service line.

And there the loveliness ends. The organization that enables me to communicate with you and the rest of the universe seems intent on preventing customers from communicating with its helpful help desk.

Place a call to the customer care line and you're connected with an interactive voice response system (IVR). In other words, a fake guy, with an incessantly cheerful recorded voice tries to guess why you're calling. Our IVR Guy has advanced beyond the "Press 1 for billing enquiries" stage and saves you the digital wear and tear of button pushing. All you have to do is speak the right words.

Pray the situation fits the options offered. Unless he hears the magic words, this poor man apologizes. "I'm sorry," he says, "I must have misunderstood. Can you repeat that please?" Welcome to Canada, where even our robots are polite.

Outwitting the robot - Since there's no officially sanctioned way to bypass IVR Guy, getting to a real person requires creativity, if not cunning.

Trust me, I'm a communicator - Part 3

We are the Lens

As professional communicators, we stand between people and information and give it shape and form. We are the lens through which information is filtered. In most cases, whether we are journalists or organizational commuicators, our intention is to make things clear for our audiences.

Unfortunately, there are communicators who distort the information. So the lens is scratched - or clouded with finger prints - and the audience sees a fuzzy image.

The True Believer - Distortion by Accident
Try though we may, it's unlikely that anyone can be truly impartial. Everyone's view of the world is coloured by his or her experiences, learning and beliefs (and maybe their Meyers-Briggs Type and their astrological sign).

We imagine the truth, as we see it, is the real deal. We unintentionally distort the information we communicate  to fit our personal world view. Knowing that we all have biases that filter the way we experience, receive and transmit information, I think it makes sense to declare them up front so your audience knows the nature of the lens. But then, I'm biased. Not only am I an over-40, Honda-driving Canadian with a liberal arts education (and an ENFJ Leo), I'm a natural optimist who believes people want to be understood and believed when they communicate.

Exceptions to that cherished belief bring us to the second type of distortion. 

The True Deceiver - Distortion by Design
These are the people who deliberately set out to shape a less than truthful picture of the facts. Whether they engage in propaganda, spin doctoring, political campaign rhetoric, press agentry or "sensational" journalism, true deceivers embellish the "truth" that serves their ends and diminish what doesn't serve them. They know they're being "less than truthful" and so does most of their audience. This is the stuff that inspires public inquiries. This is the stuff that gets people fired. This is the stuff that scares the public and erodes trust.

Disintermediation and CEOs who blog
As communication professionals, we need to step up our efforts to get and share a clear picture, one that's undistorted by accident or design. If we don't, we risk redundancy.

Communicators are intermediaries in a world that is, increasingly disintermediated. We once were the "source" for current and relevant information. Today, people don't need to go to traditional news organizations for news. They can go to the Internet. Consumers don't have to rely on what companies tell them about their products. They can find rants, raves, and reviews of almost every product or service on the Net.

Online, they find everyone from lunatics to CEOs (and some who fit both categories) expressing their opinions on millions of topics.  When people can go right to a web site or blog and get the story (official or unofficial) for themselves, public relations people and journalists are cut out of the game. We lose the role of leading and shaping opinion.

Some might argue that's a good thing. But, for most people, going to the Net is a bit like a walk in the dark without your glasses. You're dazzled by the brightest and lulled into a false sense of safety by the familiar.

I'll argue that someone needs to take on the role of discerning what's true and presenting it to people so bombarded with information they no longer know what to believe.  That "someone" can and should be professional communicators. The trick is to demonstrate that our lens is as smudge-free as it gets. Or,  at least, declare the tint of the filter.

 

Trust me, I'm a communicator - Part 2

Did they ever trust us?
That's the question IABC Chair Warren Bickford asks in response to my blog post, March 20, about the Léger poll that suggests more than half the people in Canada don't trust professional communicators. 

Of the 22 professions measured, PR folk are the fourth least trusted professional group. Even lawyers fare better. Journalists, too, are trusted by less than half the population. Ouch!

The chart shows the trend, along with scores for  the most and least trusted professions. Not much variation over five years. Maybe, as Warren suggests, they never did trust us.

So what's the deal here? Should the public trust professional communicators? If so, how do we make that happen? If not, what's the point of our work? Besides paying for groceries.

So, let's say that, along with buying groceries, communicators want to gain the public's trust. Can we take our own good advice - do the things we urge our clients to do?

• Be visible.
• Listen to your audience.
• Acknowledge people's feelings.
• Answer their questions.
• Tell the truth.
• Admit when you're wrong.
• Do what you say you will.
• Remember that actions speak louder than words.

I think we know the answer. Let's look at a few of the steps.

Be visible. The first action is to step out and talk about what we do and why we do it. Let the public see that  "spin doctors" and "muckrakers" are dinosaurs. PR, done well, is not about hyperbole or avoiding the truth. Journalism, done well, is not about pointing out the bad things in society or glorifying conflict.  We know our work is to find out what people need to know or want to know and present it as clearly and accurately as we can. Let's make that obvious by talking about what we're doing. Let's also stand up for those codes of ethics our professional associations promote, and apply some pressure to practitioners who cross the line.

For example, I know of a situation where, based on the contents of a news release, a newspaper printed an account of a meeting involving locals visiting a far off land. The next day, one of the alleged (and quoted) participants called the paper to state that the event never actually took place. Enraged, the reporter wrote an article about how the event was misrepresented, in which the PR woman admitted that, perhaps, the news release wasn't exactly accurate. It was based on what was supposed to happen and sent out to meet the newspaper's early deadline. The reporter didn't verify. The PR woman didn't verify. Honest mistake? Ethical violation? Either way, they both should have been slapped! I'm guessing each one learned an important lesson.

Listen to your audience. We need to get out there and talk to real people. Not our cosy colleagues. What do they think of our professions? Where do they get their impressions of us? How do they feel about our work? What would it take to make them trust us? Is trust even possible? How will we know when we get there? These are not questions pollsters are asking - not until we pay them to ask. We need to get out of the office and talk to people - not about the content of our communication, but about the nature, context and utility of it.

Acknowledge people's feelings. Let's look at the feelings that underlie trust and mistrust. Some emotional intelligence theorists suggest that all feelings boil down to "mad, sad, glad, or scared." So what's the emotion? Do those who don't trust us fear that they're not getting the real story? That's my take on it. Do I hear a good argument for angry or sad?

Answer their questions. What do people want to know about our professions? Apart from the usual whine about journalists, "Why don't you ever write about good news?", my guess would be, "They don't really want to know much." Maybe we need to let them know how we operate, so they can work with us to bring their interests and needs to the attention of people who can make a difference for them and, in the case of corporate communicators, for our employers. Maybe some of us already are doing this.

Tell the truth. Admit when you're wrong. Do what you say you will. I'm thinking these suggestions don't need expansion.

Remember that actions speak louder than words. We communicators need to take our own medicine.  If,  on our own behalf or on behalf of our profession, we actively and visibly practise the habits we urge our clients and audiences to adopt, we'll surely gather some goodwill along the way. We might even get better at our jobs, since we'll actually be using our "products."

Will the public ever trust us as much as, say, firefighters? Maybe not. Maybe yes. Maybe it's time to think big.

Coming next:  Disintermediation - and CEOs who blog.

 

Trust me, I'm a communicator

Once again, professional communicators have scored near the bottom of the heap in Canada's "Who Do You Trust?" sweepstakes.   Produced by Léger Marketing for The Canadian Press,  the survey, done in February and released today, polled a representative sample of 1,500 Canadians to determine the degree to which they trust members of 22 professions. 

Politicians hung on to their usual spot at the bottom of that list, with just 14% of the population trusting them.  Joining them in the low trust zone are the folks in auto sales, with just 19%. 

Fourth from the bottom, barely squeaking past trade unionists in their battle  for the hearts and minds of Canadians, are PR practitioners.  Only 40% of those polled trust them.  Journalists aren't far behind, trusted by less than half the population.   

I don't pretend to be surprised by this; however, I am saddened.  It's not because I've actually practised both these professions and, despite that, want you and the rest of the world to love and trust me.  It's that both these professions are making a great deal of noise about professionalism,  integrity, honesty, ethics, and all that wonderful stuff - and it just doesn't seem to be working. 

Never before have so many Canadian universities and colleges been offering under- and post-graduate programs in journalism, communication and public relations.  It is almost impossible to get a job in any communication-related industry without such a degree or diploma. 

In addition, organizations such as International Association of Business Communicators (IABC), the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) and the Canadian Public Relations Society (CPRS) are enthusiastically pushing professional accreditation.  (I can't speak for the APR, but I know as a one-time testee and, now, a tester, that the ABC is not a cake-walk.  It outranks MBA Finance in the, "Yikes, you have to be smart for this!" department.)

These professional associations, like the Canadian Association of Journalists (CAJ), also have codes of ethical standards that guide their members. In most academic programs and the professional association certifications, the study of ethics is offered, if not mandatory.

So if we're all so smart and filled with integrity, why don't the people trust communicators?

• Is the word not getting out? 
• Is the message just not believable? 
• Are we so busy telling everyone else's story that we don't have the energy or time to tell our own?
• Are we failing to use our hard-won, well-honed skills and, therefore, failing at our own game?
• Is it time we did some advocacy for the communication profession?

I say, "Yes," to all. 

And I'll plead, "Guilty," to the sins of omission.  As a professional communicator, I've quit jobs (in both TV and PR) over sleazy practices, yet rather than take a loud and public stand, I quietly walked away.  As a member of IABC, I've been calling for the organization to do a better job of marketing the profession, yet I haven't been screaming from the rafters, "Hire a communicator!" (Frankly, I haven't even been screaming, "Hire me!")

So, the series begins. "How do communicators earn the public trust?"

Feel free to share your ideas  by posting  comments.