No easy answers to either question. Sometimes we pick the wrong people - it could be skills, attitude or even just the wrong personality but it’s never a pleasant process.

I suspect we could spend hours trying to tell you how we do it but it would come back to  our gut instinct, the way they carry themselves, their past experience and a couple of other points.

Not very helpful to someone reading this … so here’s a few pointers as to the more ‘physical’ aspect of what we’re looking for.

The Right Stuff

I’d be looking for someone who is excellent at public relations in a truer more holistic sense of things.

Someone who revels in exploring the interaction between a company, an industry, a government, an individual or even a cause and it’s public. Not just a media relations specialist - important as I think that role and skill is.

However, media relations, strategy, creative work, social media, B2B marketing … they’re all pieces of the same puzzle. I think - I believe - that the best PR people are the ones who can stand at the intersection of these different tools, make sense of them and then wield them like finely tuned instruments to make a compelling story emerge.

Some of the skills* they would need would include:

• The skin of an elephant. PR people are often abused, seldom appreciated and almost never welcomed with open arms;
• Honesty - with your clients, yourself, your partners and your work;
• The ability to get in touch with people. To communicate. This goes beyond just email or face-to-face meetings and extends into the written word, instant messaging, twitter, social media and networking platforms … you get the picture;
• Being able to look for the answer to the old question - will this help me sell my product/ service?;
• Integrity. If it sounds like a bad idea  it probably is;
• A head that is full of big ideas and dreams - big is never big enough when it comes to ideas;
• A sense of the audacious - and the willingness to do whatever it takes to get our job done … within reason of course;) ;
• A keen commitment to understanding what it is we’re talking about. Research, learning, finding and understanding … and starting all over again when needed to;
• The willingness to customise your message to the person or audience your looking to speak to - we aren’t running a spam operation here!;
• Being willing to do the work and measure it’s results. ROI matters here - regardless of what you may have heard about some of the other disciplines out there;
• Being able to see multiple sides of the same story - emotional intelligence, actual intelligence, common sense;
• An eye for detail;
• Have I mentioned common sense yet?;
• Being able to play well with others;
• Knowing when you need help and being able to check your ego at the door long enough to get it.

We maintain very few rules but most of them have to do with respect - for yourself and for the team. For what we do. We call it a whole bunch of things but mostly we refer to it as the ‘no asshole rule.’ Not mine but that phrase stuck when I first read it - can’t remember where though.

Now this is just some of the things I look for. I don’t expect to find all of these qualities in all of the people we work with but some of them would be a good start. The rest we tend to learn from each other.

So what do you think a good Public Relations person should have as skills and qualities? Or do you know someone (or are you someone) who you think could learn from us and teach us some new tricks as well?

*the inspiration for the description of a couple of these qualities courtesy of Kyle Flaherty as his thoughts resonated my own

If maintaining a brand - the essence of it, what it stands for, the culture and the quality - are not something that the brand manager gets and is willing to stand for … then why do it? Worse, anything you do try will either be (i) vetoed or (ii) mangled.

If a brand is to be built, maintained and survive/ thrive then you have to have passion both inside it (the people who work for the brand) and outside it (the agencies, consultants, consumers, communities)

Save the effort for brands that care about themselves. Thankfully there are enough companies, individuals and organisations out there that are literally waiting for someone to help them.

Go work with / for them instead - you’re happy, they’re happy and most importantly, the consumer’s who support the brand get some additional value for their money.

Consider for a moment the huge amounts of money we’re pouring into handling consumer’s complaints. Malaysia as a country is particularly well placed in the area of unhappy-customer-management.

Malaysia was ranked the 3rd most attractive investment destination by AT Kearney and McKinsey in 2005, and five Malaysian outsourcing companies made it onto the Global Services 100 list, a capabilities-driven assessment of IT and IT enabled service providers globally. The global worldwide SSO market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 15 per cent over the next few years, reaching USD 1.43 trillion by 2009 as compared to USD 930 billion in 2006. ICT services such as SSO contributed RM2.8 billion to the nation’s Gross Domestic Product of RM495.6 billion. That’s a lot of money that’s really being spent to answer questions and handle complaints.

What this means is that we’re a great place to place a call center. And yes, there are numerous other support functions performed by these excellent world class firms - but there is a fair amount of their work that goes towards taking, recording and responding to complaints as well. But are there hotlines to record how great the service was for a company?

That’s the bit we’re interested in.

The reason I was thinking about this was that over the past fortnight I’ve had the pleasure of being looked after by some amazing people.

Now, I normally have at least one halfway decent encounter with service staff every week or so - and by this I mean that they make a dreary day better, or make a rough day feel a little lighter through their smiles or just being plain friendly. But once in a while, you come across some amazing service levels - and this has been happening fairly frequently recently. First at the hotel where we were working on a project, and then in the carpark after the project, local vendors and over the past couple of weeks at some of the local eateries that we were trying.

Challenge is - how do I make sure that the people actually responsible for that great experience receive my thanks?

For instance - when you tell your waiter that you thought the food was excellent, how do you know if they did or did not tell the cooks? Or you’re organising a hugely sensitive event and the hotel’s staff go above and beyond both their job scope as well as their duties to make sure you have absolutely everything you could possibly need?

Sure, I could write a letter to the hotel and thank them for the great service - which I did. I could name the people in question … chances are the hotel’s PR person may get back with a response - but did the people who did the work really know how appreciated they were? And what about the times when you can’t thank the people directly?

Reading Fast Company recently, I was inspired by an article there to think about this again and what do you know - it IS hard to say thank you!

And it’s just sad. People crave appreciation. Look around you and you’ll be amazed just how obvious it is when you’re looking for it.

People will come for the money, but they stay for the recognition and relationship

Consider the joy on someone’s face when you simply thank them for doing something well. Or how you feel when your boss or colleagues acknowledge the work and the time you’re putting into your job. How you have that extra special spring in your step when someone compliments you on a doing something well or looking especially good.

They’re all part and parcel of the same human desire for appreciation, recognition and affection in some cases. Globally, the direct selling or multi level marketing industry, is a booming one. Amway. Mary Kay. Shaklee. GoldQuest. I bet you could name a hundred if not a thousand more like them. Different products. Different audiences. Different geographies.

But they all thrive on a business model built around rewarding an individual for work put in through (i) money and (ii) praise/ recognition. And based on years of looking at the direct selling industry from both sides of the fence, I have to say that the praise and recognition is often what people stay for - not just the money.

Imagine if you will what would happen if you made amazing products, or delivered great services that were recognised for being great -  now what if you could make sure the people who were responsible for that great product or service were able to hear that point of view from real customers?

Wouldn’t it be easier to attract and retain the best talent there was? And wouldn’t this inspire an ever greater level of customer service and satisfaction?

I know for a fact that whenever we get a thank you from our clients it helps raise the team’s spirit by just that much more. Now imagine if you could help happy customers easily tell you they were happy.

So what is your company doing to help customers say thank you to your people? Surveys, hotlines and email sent to a marketing or complaints department doesn’t count by the way.

Think about the possibilities - sure you’ll still hear complaints.

But instead of being constant streams of negativity, these support centres, help lines, emails and survey points might actually (i) let you know what you’re doing right; (ii) help your employees know that they matter and; (iii) help customers feel better about themselves for having done something nice for someone else.

Do you have an example of companies who make it easy for you to give them great feedback - as easily as they make it for you to complain?

Because they were in town, we literally spent days on end planning, delivering on and keeping on track a host of activities in the heart of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Now if you have been in Malaysia recently you’d know that we’re seeing torrential downpours hitting the city almost every evening. A nightmare for traffic and timing.

An even greater problem when it comes to keeping a car shiny and clean. My car went through a couple of days like that and ended up looking like something that had been off road - covered in mud and grime - rather then just through the city. Pulling into the basement car park of the J.W Marriott Hotel in the heart of the city I faced and enjoyed a great day. The next day wasn’t looking too hot though as I had an early morning meeting, it was 3 a.m. and there was no way I was going to get the car cleaned in time.

Walking towards the car I had to stop and double check that it was mine though as the car had been cleaned. No mud. No grime. It was sitting there all clean and shiny just waiting for me - at 3 a.m.

On the windshield I found a little printed card from the housekeeping department that informed me that the hotel had noticed that my car had been in the hotel all day and that it needed a clean. As I had been there late they had taken the liberty of cleaning it for me.

Now this is public relations at its best. I left with a tremendously improved impression of the hotel - one that had already been strengthened over the previous couple of days. And as you can guess - this story is going to be repeated to a whole bunch of people.

All for the price of a little cue card and a car wash.

Do you have examples of other brands/ organisations that have surprised you with these kinds of little deeds that were as thoughtful, appropriate or just plain psychic inreading and delivering on your needs?

So how does a company make or break its brand? This was the thought that preoccupied me following a recent encounter with my company’s primary bank.

Public relations and branding are often (or at least it seems) seen as silver bullets in the quest for the perfect customer experience.

I’ve heard various forms of these arguments - from the ‘If you make it something that they aspire to they’ll want it;’ to ‘Association is key and then you get the media to write about it;’ and of course the other extreme of ‘Advertise enough about the brand and we’ll get those customers flocking to us!‘

Of course I’m exaggerating a little in the examples above, but the bottom-line is that many of my clients and indeed many businesses and brands out there today, imagine that a great brand takes nothing more then making sure the fundamentals of brand-building and public relations are executed well.

What we sometimes forget is that fundamentals of a brand include each and every member of the team.

That’s right - everyone in the company from the janitor to the CEO is a brand ambassador. And there are few things that can dismantle if not totally undo a radical, well executed and effective public relations or branding campaign quite so fast as a bad employee, or one with a bad attitude.

So, back to the story.

This bank - which prides itself on being global and thinking local - had a great reputation. Nice offices. Friendly folk … but absolutely crashed and burned on customer service when it came time to deliver.

I had at that point been looking for a bank to do business with for Arcis Communications, and having been recommended by an adviser of mine approached this bank - lets call it H.

So here I am, sitting at H’s office and wading my way through a ream of forms. A friendly customer care consultant was of course on hand to help me - problem was that I knew more about their systems then she did! This included what forms were required, what forms were not required and what could and could not be done for a business like mine by H.

Now the part that stung me the most was that this bank in particular charged more for their service fees then many of their competitors - a point they insisted was due to the premium services, peace of mind and ease of doing business that they offered.

So I get past the submission process.

Which wasn’t the end of the nightmare. What was supposed to be a simple 7 day process of getting an account and having my new cheque books couriered to me dragged on for weeks.

No concrete answers. The customer care consultant started dodging calls and was flippant to the point of being rude when queried on the delay. Constant requests for the wrong documents - which added to my costs and wasted even more of both mine and my team’s time. Delays in getting the cheque book - which H subsequently lost in transit - which resulted in my own suppliers experiencing delays in their payment.

You can understand the frustration that finally saw me approaching the bank with letters of termination for the new account as well as my personal accounts with the bank in question.

In addition to that, I had spoken to the person who recommended the bank to me and several of my associates and they were considering pulling their business out of the bank as well - both personally and professionally. The potential of an account error of this magnitude happening to them was too real.

It was at this point - where I had abandoned all pretenses of believing their explanations, suggestions and requests - that the customer services manager from the front office of the bank and the bank’s branch manager stepped in.

Working with us, the manager personally assured me that the issues would be resolved within 48 hours. In the meantime she had worked with the customer relations manager to allow for all my suppliers to be paid without the need for a cheque.

Now this point was significant as H was known for its security and adherence to policy - which made such a transaction virtually impossible.

Less then 12 hours later I received a call from the manager, the issues were resolved and our cheque books arrived the next day. What’s more, I was asked to write down what had happened so that they could ensure that it did not happen to anyone else (to the best of their abilities) and also provided with access to the manager to ensure that I had no more challenges from them.

To make a long story shorter, I’m still a customer of the bank.

The fact that they took the time to address what to them was a very small account - they had no idea of the other associates that I had or the other businesses housed there - made an impression on me.

What really worked was that among other things:

1. They admitted their mistakes
2. They made no further excuses
3. Senior members of their team - in this case the bank’s branch manager and then its front office customer relations manager - took the time to quickly and effectively solve my problems
4. They followed up for several weeks after that to make sure everything was alright

I’m recommending them to other businesses today. They’re not perfect but at least they’re doing more than just advertising how good they are.

They’re walking the talk … at least one of them. And that’s all it took.

So, what examples do you have of how just one person made an impact on how you viewed a brand or company - for the better or worse?