JUST TALK ISN’T ENOUGH
About twelve years ago I stepped into my local London suburban supermarket and made a big mistake.
I was drawn into a very friendly conversation with a highly engaging sales team.
They told me that their new telecoms company would provide a better and cheaper telephone service than I was getting at the time.
I wasn’t impressed by my existing provider, and the team persuaded me fairly easily to switch to their company.
Alas there were all sorts of problems with the telephone service their colleagues subsequently provided.
But the poor telephone service itself wasn’t actually the biggest problem.
What became an even bigger problem than the dodgy technical service itself was the company’s call centre which was the place you had to contact to try to get the poor telephone service fixed.
The call centre staff were ill-equipped or unwilling to solve the technical service problems.
The call handlers’ performances were less than impressive.
Call centres: Some are better-equipped than others to communicate and help customers
As someone who now runs master classes for call centre staff to enable them to communicate more effectively and help keep customers as happy as possible when things go wrong, I can spot the ones who haven’t been well-prepared for the task.
These call handlers took ages to answer (probably not their fault personally).
And when they did answer they didn’t seem to care much.
Infuriatingly, after waiting for ages to get through you would routinely get cut off when you actually got onto someone who was supposed to help.
The company’s name was TalkTalk.
It was and is aptly named. It is good at empty “talk talk”. It is not so good at “action action”.
It gets berated regularly in cyberspace for arrogant and unhelpful service.
I ditched the company as soon as I could.
You may have spotted TalkTalk being in the news this past week because of a massive cyber attack on their website.
The attack that has involved the theft of the credit card and bank details of up to four-million customers.
This is atrocious news for the customers and the company itself.
But in dealing with the crisis the company has made some extraordinary admissions about how it has effectively not done the right thing by its customers in the lead-up to the attack.
My experience shows there’s every reason to believe their admissions are valid!
GETTING YOUR COMPANY READY
FOR A MEDIA CRISIS
To her partial credit, the TalkTalk chief executive, Baroness Dido Harding, has been doing one thing right thing in the crisis – making herself very available for media interviews to keep her customers informed at a worrying time.
I have worked with many company leaders on how to respond in media interviews in a crisis, but I haven’t trained her.
She is to be commended for her honesty – but not for much else.
A couple of her honest admissions have been extraordinarily damning about how slack her company has been in looking after the best interests of its customers.
For example, when asked by the BBC whether customers’ bank details had been given additional protection from hackers by being encrypted, she said: “The awful truth is, I don’t know”.
This is clearly something that a chief executive looking after the interests of her customers should know.
And this was Baroness Harding’s response when asked about whether TalkTalk had done enough to protect its customers from cyber attack: “With the benefit of hindsight, were we doing enough? Well, you’ve got to say that we weren’t and obviously we will be looking back and reviewing that extremely seriously.”
Again she gets top marks for honesty, but pathetically low marks for not taking steps earlier to protect it’s customers – or even knowing what the company had and hadn’t done to protect its customers.
You can check out Dido Harding’s performance on the BBC’s Newsnight programme here:
DO YOUR LEGWORK BEFORE AND DURING A MEDIA STORM
The message for organisations – large and small – is twofold.
The first thing is to constantly check that you are doing the right thing by your customers and if you aren’t then seek to fix it before a crisis hits.
The second thing is to make sure you are fully prepared to do great media interviews ahead of any possible crisis.
The two have to go together. A great media performance in a crisis doesn’t work if you haven’t done the behind the scenes legwork to be able to say what you have done and are doing everything you could to help your customers.
Michael Dodd Communications can help you give crisis interviews that are as bombproof as possible.
MOSCOW, RUSSIA – NOVEMBER 11: Interview of Olga Sviridova (director of MHP) on Exhibiton of Sergey Bermeniev in Moscow House of Photography November 11th, 2008 Moscow, Russia.
Our approach simultaneously helps you identify what you need to be doing to be credible if the worst happens and you have to be out there explaining things to the media when something’s gone terribly wrong.
We work with your company to come up with an unfolding scenario focusing on your worst nightmare situation/s – be that a cyber-attack or something else.
Our technical associates then produce simulated but realistic-looking TV news bulletins for training purposes which show your team how the media could portray this kind of crisis if it struck for real.
Your team then reacts to the unfolding crisis, as portrayed in the mock bulletins.
Team members do simulated media interviews after each mock bulletin which are critiqued so future performances are enhanced.
There is a massive secondary benefit apart from having your team media-ready for a crisis.
By going through the process your team gets to focus on all the things it can and should be doing to seek to prevent that kind of crisis occurring in the first place.
All sorts of lessons are learned – before it’s too late.
If TalkTalk had been through the process they and their reputation, share price and team communication and customer-service skills would be in better shape than they are today.
To receive more details of how “Dealing With The Media In A Crisis” works, email enquiries@michaeldoddcommunications.com
WHEN IT’S TIME TO COME OUT
I have noticed that there tends to be a lot of sympathy for people who “come out” as they say.
Sports people in particular get praised for honesty and courage for it – especially when they become one of the first people in their sport to do it.
Look at the accolades that young British Olympic medal-winning diver, Tom Daly, got when he came out!
So I’m going to learn from such sporting heroes and come out myself.
In the wake of the World Cup Rugby Final over the weekend, I’m coming out…
as a kind of partial Kiwi.
Yes, having been born in Sydney where I started playing rugby union – but not kicking quite as well as Dan Carter and or stepping quite as cleverly as Ma’a Nonu – I was going for the green and gold team throughout the epic match.
During the heroic Aussie comeback phase in the second half I thought the Wallabies were really going to do it. I still harboured hopes that they were in with a chance until painfully close to the end.
And I have to admit that before the kick-off I was far more moved by Kylie Minogue helping the Australian team sing Advance Australia Fair than I was by the All Blacks doing their traditional haka. This is admittedly a great spectacle, though it can look a touch silly for a bunch of grown men!
But notwithstanding this bizarre pre-match ritual, the All Blacks did go on to show they are the best rugby union team of their generation.
So on the basis of that I’m happy to come out and be associated with them.
I’m sure they’ll be ecstatic.
Underpinning this association is the discovery that back in the mists of time, my great-great-great-grandfather was a convict who managed to escape the harsh conditions in Australia and make it to the South Island of New Zealand.
It was here he ended up having children with a Maori woman – my great-great-great-grandmother.
This makes me a one-thirty-second part Maori.
This is apparently enough for me to claim fishing rights in New Zealand – which I’m yet to get around to doing.
So as far as I’m concerned it’s enough for me to claim my share of the Webb Ellis Cup which the Kiwis have now won more often than anyone else.
When you see it on screen remember that I have a one-thirty-second stake in it!
My Welsh-Australian rugby coach, Mr Edwards – who was in charge of the Dee Why Lions Under Sevens Team when I started playing the game in Sydney – would probably not be impressed by association with the All Blacks.
But I’m coming out anyway… at least for the next four years.
Then, when Australia has another chance to win the trophy back at the next Rugby World Cup, I will climb back in the closet.
Keep smiling,
Michael
You can check out the enlightening thoughts of some of my inspiring colleagues at the Professional Speaking Association on these uplifting blogposts:
Are problems bad? – Eilidh Milnes, Captain Positive
http://www.captain-positive.com/confidence-blog/are-problems-bad
Step Into Your Incredible Power – Sylvia Baldock, Unlocking Your Hidden Potential
http://www.sylviabaldock.com/2015/06/step-into-your-incredible-power/
Focusing On Your Success – Nicci Roscoe, Fabulous Impact Speaker