Conversely, a difficult situation or a disappointed customer can be remarkably helped – even completely turned around - by that very same thing.

What is this magical mystery element of which we speak?

The attitude and demeanor of your front-line employees.

Companies invest hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars each year in things like product training, marketing campaigns, and customer service training. But so much of the first impression or lingering taste that people have of your brand is in the hands of the people that they’ll interact with on a daily basis. The folks at the front counter, on the phones, manning your social media channels.

They’re the ones holding the reputation of your brand in the palm of their hands.

The smart @PeterMoorhouse perhaps said it best on Twitter during a discussion on the topic:

So here are the questions at hand:

How careful are we about who we put in those roles? Do we put enough emphasis on them? Do we treat these people and positions as though they’re pivotal to the brand perception we’re trying to build?

Traditionally, front-line jobs aren’t the ones that pay the most. They’re usually lower on the corporate ladder. They might not have visibility into important discussions about company vision, culture, or innovation.

Some of these roles might be downright thankless. Or, we might have absolutely the wrong people in those positions, and we’re not doing enough to evaluate that or correct problems or issues when they arise.

So what do you think? What are the ways that businesses can embrace this critical truth (or is it a truth)? What sorts of ideas, solutions, or innovations do YOU have in mind that can help us rethink the importance of the first touchpoints our customers have with our companies?

Rather than positing my own solutions, I want to hear from you.

How should we be thinking about the front-line roles that impact our brands?

Sound off. The comments are yours.

A post from Brass Tack Thinking
The Single Thing That Can Sink or Save Your Brand Reputation

We social media nerds are fond of talking about not “controlling” the message. And companies are freaking out about the idea of “losing control” of their brands and their stuff because the rolling tide that is the social media whateveritis is going to come and take that away from them somehow.

My friend and trusted colleague, Olivier Blanchard, spoke to this sassily, but correctly this week:

Will customers suddenly crash your strategy meetings via Seesmic? Will their Facebook updates derail your media buying? Will they somehow use Twitter to intercept and rewrite your press releases? Will they hack Seesmic to replace your next ad campaigns with their own? Will they use MySpace to brainwash your empoyees into acting like jerks?

There are a few different things we need to talk about in context of the idea of control.

1. How You Present Yourself

You’ve always held the keys to how you put your business out into the world, or how you educate your employees about your purpose and values. Everything from your logo to your collateral to how your customer service department behaves is under the umbrella of your presentation as a company. You get to decide how you do this part. You make the rules about what you put out there in terms of sanctioned image, content, or message. That’s always been true, and that hasn’t changed. You have every bit the control over the presentation of your company as you always have.

2. How You Are Perceived and How People React

This is the bit where we’re talking about businesses never really having control. You can’t dictate how people think, period. You couldn’t do it before the world of social technologies, and you can’t do it now. You can present yourself and hope to influence that perception, but you cannot control it.

The difference is that today, with the prevalence and ubiquity of the internet, there are lots of places for people to share those perceptions with their friends and the world at large (including your customers, prospects, employees, and people not connected to you at all). So you haven’t lost any control. People are still reacting to your business the way they always have. Now, they’ve got more tools with which to share those viewpoints, and they’re more visible and sharable.

Worried that the danger is in your own house? That employees are going to misrepresent you if you give them tools to do so? Hint: they already have them. They’re called the phone on their desk, and the email account with your domain on it, and their own voice and personal lives. You trust them as representatives of your business in every other communication channel. If you don’t trust them here, you have a hiring problem or an education problem, but not a control problem. The tools are not the issue.

3. What You Do With What You Learn

Ultimately, you decide how you’re going to absorb and assimilate #2 into #1. As a business, if you’re listening and paying attention to how people are articulating those perceptions, you still have the choice as to what you’re going to do with that information. You can change everything. You can change nothing at all.

The reason social media advocates get up in your grill is because they’re afraid that #2 is happening, but that it’s not informing #1, and that the two may even be working at cross purposes. They (we) also believe that there’s probably some insights that your customers and community can give to you that might actually help make your business better, whether it’s reinforcement of what you’re doing well, criticism intended to point out potential weaknesses, or a way of looking at your business or describing your value in a way you may never have thought of.

The truth is that, with the rare trollish exception, people aren’t expressing their opinions about your company because they don’t care. They’re not trying to wrest your brand from you and create some brand alter-ego doppleganger thing, and they’re not using YouTube or Facebook or their blog to try and overthrow you as the masters of your brand domain. In fact, most people don’t want that kind of responsibility.

They’re trying to tell you what matters to them and what would make your business more useful and helpful to them (read: what makes them spend money on you), in whatever medium they think you’ll notice. They’re not trying to control your brand. They’re trying to get your attention.

You have all the control you want over #3. Using social media strategies and tools can help you with #2, if you’re engaging with the intent to hear and the intent to consider what those folks are telling you. That builds trust. It lets people know you’re paying attention and that you value their voice.  It’s not a promise of action, but it’s a demonstration of awareness.

But control? You have as much as you always did. Now, you’ve got more accountability and expectations surrounding your business because of social media. People are watching to see how you respond to both. Ultimately, what you do with any of it is completely up to you.

See the difference? What do you think?

image courtesy of Shutterstock

A post from Brass Tack Thinking
Social Media and The Reality of Control

The Casualty

My laptop is like an appendage for me. Given the work I do, I’m on it probably 15 hours a day, off and on. (I know that’s a bit nuts, but that’s not the topic here.) And this morning, tragedy struck.

As I was carrying my laptop from the front room to the office, my dog ran past me and sent my open computer tumbling to the floor. I made a vain attempt to catch it, but it landed sharply on the corner between the screen and the keyboard, and made a rather sickening “crunch”. Ruh roh.

The screen was shattered. Made for nice abstract art, but not so much good for actually seeing the work you were doing. Being without a laptop isn’t an option. So off I went to replace it.

The Adventure

There are three Apple stores within a decent radius of me, and I was heading down for another errand near one, so I stopped there to get the new machine. The specialists were awesome, as usual, and I knew what I wanted, so the transaction to purchase my new 15″ MacBook Pro was smooth and easy.

The trick was that I needed to migrate all the files from my broken laptop, and quickly. Their window for doing it for me was 48 hours, and that was about 45 hours too long. So I asked if I could do it myself. They explained the easy steps to do so, but regretted that they didn’t have the appropriate firewire cable to enable it. Rats. My specialist suggested Best Buy, so off I went.

Nope. Not there (not to mention the guy at the store was a bit rude and seemed inconvenienced by me). Called another Apple store. Not there either. Finally, I called the third store and they said they had one, so I drove clear across town. Once I got there, however, no dice. The specialist I’d spoken to made a mistake and looked for the wrong cable (turns out the one I need isn’t even sold anymore). Foiled again, and now I’m in a bit of a panic.

The Solution

Red, the specialist I was talking to in the last store, felt my panic once he realized they didn’t have what I needed either. I was dismayed that I had dropped nearly $2700 in less than 30 minutes, but the absence of some stupid $20 cable was preventing me from getting up and running in short order. I explained that my job requires me to be accessible, and I was growing frustrated. Red had an idea, and went to fetch Bob.

Bob came out from the back with the firewire cable I needed, and suggested that he’d set me up at the end of the Genius Bar. I could borrow their cable and migrate the files right there myself, with the added bonus of having their specialists poke their nose in on occasion to make sure everything went smoothly. He apologized for the confusion, thanked me again for being a customer, and even offered to let me use one of the iMacs in the store to do work or whatever I needed while the files did their thing.

It took about 45 minutes, and the guys kept their word. Other specialists came by, said hi, asked what happened to the old computer, talked to me about cool features on my new one. All in all, I felt like I was spending time hanging out with some tech buddies. My panic eased, and I really felt taken care of. I left with my brand new computer all spiffed up and ready to go, and a bunch of people at the Apple store who will remember me next time I’m there.

The Point

I’m already an Apple fan, but my experience this morning wasn’t exactly seamless. But these guys at the Apple store in Deer Park went out of their way to turn the negative into a positive and find a way to help me out. It wasn’t a grand gesture, it was a simple solution. But it worked, and I’ll remember them for it.

Oh, and the other thing? I’ve been contemplating the iPhone. Today’s positive customer service experience makes me want one even more because I know I’ve got a team of awesome people at the Apple store on my side.

What can you take away from this? No matter what your product or service, you’re ultimately solving a problem for someone. Doing so with a personal touch is more likely than almost any other experience to solidify your brand in the minds of your customers. (Oh and PS, for the social media angle here, building a community starts with having something worth talking about, and your customer service can be that thing.) People do business with other people, and being reminded that you’re being taken care of instead of being rung up as a transaction makes a world of difference.

Thanks, Deer Park Apple Dudes. You saved my butt, big time. I  may just see you this weekend for that iPhone thing…

A post from Brass Tack Thinking
How Apple Saved The Day (And Won a Customer for Life)