It's amazing to me how incompetent otherwise sophisticated companies are at handling public relations. It's not rocket science, and it's not about who's right.
This post comes off as smug, half-hearted, and insulting. Why are they joking and making light of the technical director's unprofessional conduct? Why are they trying to parse how the customer's twitter comeback wasn't justified? Why are they separating the latter part of the post as the "more serious note," thus implying the first half isn't serious? This is serious for the company, whether they know it or not.
After reading this post, I come away thinking the company doesn't take this situation seriously, they don't take their customers seriously, and they wouldn't handle my problems seriously if I were a customer. They should have 1) Made a direct, unmitigated apology; 2) Clarified what their company stands for regarding terminating accounts with specific policy improvements, not a promise to review the policy; 3) Left the excuses for Jules out of it; 4) Left out the legal threats to people e-mailing the company (the blog post isn't about the company's problems, it's about the customers' problems); 5) Titled it "An Apology" or "A New Direction" or basically anything besides "Moving On..." which sounds like a command being issued in conjunction with an exaggerated eye roll.
Why don't these firms just hire a pr/crisis consultant to help? If they suspect the crisis could cost the company more than a few thousand dollars if not handled correctly, it's a no-brainer. The best-case scenario is that they lose a few thousand dollars improving their public image; the alternative could be losing a chunk of their user base.
Comments
It's amazing to me how incompetent otherwise sophisticated companies are at handling public relations. It's not rocket science, and it's not about who's right.
This post comes off as smug, half-hearted, and insulting. Why are they joking and making light of the technical director's unprofessional conduct? Why are they trying to parse how the customer's twitter comeback wasn't justified? Why are they separating the latter part of the post as the "more serious note," thus implying the first half isn't serious? This is serious for the company, whether they know it or not.
After reading this post, I come away thinking the company doesn't take this situation seriously, they don't take their customers seriously, and they wouldn't handle my problems seriously if I were a customer. They should have 1) Made a direct, unmitigated apology; 2) Clarified what their company stands for regarding terminating accounts with specific policy improvements, not a promise to review the policy; 3) Left the excuses for Jules out of it; 4) Left out the legal threats to people e-mailing the company (the blog post isn't about the company's problems, it's about the customers' problems); 5) Titled it "An Apology" or "A New Direction" or basically anything besides "Moving On..." which sounds like a command being issued in conjunction with an exaggerated eye roll.
Why don't these firms just hire a pr/crisis consultant to help? If they suspect the crisis could cost the company more than a few thousand dollars if not handled correctly, it's a no-brainer. The best-case scenario is that they lose a few thousand dollars improving their public image; the alternative could be losing a chunk of their user base.