Your Career and You: “I Broke a Teacup…or Perceptions and PR"

As the saying goes, “Perception is reality.” 

What you believe you have experienced is, to you, fact or truth.

Well…I dropped a teacup today while setting the table for lunch.

In the realm of teacups (in this case, a Chinese teacup…basic, inexpensive), this one was way down on the list. It has been with us for a bazillion years, travelled to the Philippines with us and all over the U.S. as we moved around in my career. But (at least in my fuzzy brain) it was just a teacup.

Not according to the other side of the household, who immediately set out on an hour-long dissertation on the meaning behind the dropping of the teacup.

As she perceived the incident…this was yet one more sign of encroaching “old age.” Motor skills are going to hell in a handbasket.

Doesn’t matter that I’ve been dropping stuff since the beginning of time…a 50-pound roll of paper on my right foot (broke a toe in that exercise) and a computer hard drive (old-style, heavy hard drive) on my left foot (ditto on the result)…just for starters.

Nope…it’s “old age.”

And that started me thinking about perceptions…how others process events or actions that we, ourselves, also experience, but in a different way.

This, as I tell my undergraduate Communication students at Curry College, where I head the Public Relations Concentration and teach most of the PR courses, is what makes the public relations profession so interesting, challenging…and frustrating.

Things happen. Products break. Blood donors get hematomas. An employee has a really bad day and snaps at a customer.

If you’ve been around for a few (or more) years, you know that these events are inevitable. As a salesman once astutely told my wife as she was zeroing in on some minuscule defects in a relatively inexpensive lamp, “Nothing’s perfect, little girl.”

Your challenge as the public relations leader is to ensure that mechanisms are in place to respond quickly and efficiently…and to ensure that everyone involved, both internally and externally, understands what has been done.

Customers don’t leave you because your product was faulty…we all know products break on occasion.

They leave because their perception is…if you’ve done nothing to address the situation…that you don’t care. Your company doesn’t care, so why should they care? They can just go somewhere else.

Your job as the public relations leader is to help everyone in your organization understand that it doesn’t matter that products will break once in a while.

What matters is that the customer doesn’t see it that way. He perceives it as a sign of encroaching product inferiority…“old age.”

You have to take action to change that perception and to help the customer understand the reality…that you and you company are proud of your products or services and that you stand proudly behind each and every one.

That’s your reality.
 (Oh...and to close the story...she finally agreed that I'm basically clumsy!)

“O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us!
It wad frae monie a blunder free us,
An’ foolish notion…”
Robert Burns, “To A Louse, On Seeing One on a Lady's Bonnet at Church” [1786]

Your Career and You: "We're out of mayo"

I posted some thoughts a while back about “passion and recognition” and sat back feeling pretty good about life in general.

Then I went to my local supermarket to do some shopping.

Since it was a little after noon and I was feeling a smidge hungry, I swung by the deli counter to get a sandwich…pre-made…just needed the “fixins.”

The young fellow behind the counter wasn’t, as my late Uncle Sam liked to say, “bothered by too much business.”

He was standing there, either contemplating the future of the world…or his navel. Hard to say which.

Then he saw me rummaging through the basket of condiments looking for a packet of mayonnaise.

“Ah,” I thought. “He’s going to help me.”

Now I have to insert here that I was also fresh back from three weeks in Taipei, Taiwan, where the concept of “customer service” has risen to a remarkable high.

Ø  In the neighborhood coffee shop where I regularly have breakfast, the staff bring your coffee to your table instead of making you wait for it to be brewed (Starbuck’s, are you listening??).

Ø  The amazing woman who manages the local dry cleaner calls customers

to let them know their clothes are back and ready to be picked up.

Foolishly, I thought something akin to that experience was going to happen

at the supermarket.

Then came these words, spoken in a monotone: “We’re out of mayo.”

Not a peep about “Gee, let me look below in our fridge…right in front of

me…to get some more.”

Definitely not a “sorry, we’re out.”

Nope.

“We’re out of mayo.”

This is a great…and sad…example of someone who has a job. He punches in, puts on his worker’s duds, and goes through the paces until his time’s up. Day after boring day.

Sad…and not uncommon.

You have to ask yourself, though, should it be this way? Should people incarcerate themselves in “jobs” when they could be doing something that really calls on their strengths and inspires them to excel?

And, maybe more important, what defines a “job” versus one’s “life’s passion”?

This is where you, as an individual, come in.

Looking back on your college and/or work life, take a mental personal inventory.

What was it that you did that you really, really, really liked doing?

Why?

Now look at what you’re doing now…do you feel the same way? (Or, if you’re searching for an opportunity, does what you read about it make you feel that way?)

My students, both at Curry College, where I manage the undergraduate Public Relations Concentration and teach most of the PR courses, and at Regis College, where I teach in the graduate Organizational and Professional Communication area, hear this from me all the time.

And…if you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’ve heard it…and will continue to hear it…a bazillion times.

Don’t sell yourself short, and don’t write off what you’re doing right now as a “waste of time and talent.”

Some of the coolest “PR” people I’ve run into were team members at a restaurant or business that I’ve frequented.

Why do I say this?

Because of their attitude and the fact that they “get” the concept of relationship building.

I just dropped off some clothes at a drycleaner (Sun-Rite Cleaners) in downtown Belmont. As soon as I walked in the door, I was greeted with a cheery smile by the manager.

I handed over the clothing and, without asking, she typed my name into the computer and printed out the receipt…she knows who I am.

She also remembers that I’m a teacher, so we chatted briefly about my summer “downtime.” I walked out smiling.

Wow!

Now there used to be a drycleaning establishment right up the street from where I live. I went to them for a very brief while. Rarely got a smile. Seldom got a “howdy-do.” Just a simple “name?” and a brief “thanks” as I left.

They’re gone now…and not missed.

So, to get to the end of this monologue, it doesn’t have to be just a “job.” It should be about satisfaction from both sides…the satisfaction that you get from making someone feel good about interacting with you, and the satisfaction that that person gets from the same thing.

Public relations is about creating and maintaining relationships. The mark of a good PR person is the ability to use that talent to develop and grow a business.

It’s not about greeting a potential customer with “We’re out of mayo.”

“I have often thought that the best way to define a man’s character would be to seek out the particular mental or moral attitude in which, when it came upon him, he felt himself most deeply and intensely active and alive. At such moments there is a voice inside which speaks and says: ‘This is the real me!’” – William James, “The Letters of William James.” [1920]…To his wife, Alice Gibbons James, 1878”

Your Career and You: "The 'Experience of Being Served'"

My wife and I met for our New Year's Eve lunch at a rather posh hotel restaurant in Boston. Won't mention names, but the hotel's headquarters is in Hong Kong!

Bottom line...worst dining experience in ages. We left, after having a long conversation with the manager on duty, vowing never to return.

A learning point came out of this, though, that I want to share.

My public relations undergrad students at Curry College, as well as my graduate communications students at Regis College, hear this from me constantly by the way.

That point is about "service"...what your client or boss or customer experiences as a result of your activities on his or her behalf.

After noticing that no one was paying any attention to our table... we hadn't eaten yet, so I couldn't possibly have had a piece of spinach stuck in my teeth!...I decided to time how long it would take for someone to notice that my water glass was empty.

Thirty minutes later, our waitperson wandered by and, as kind of an afterthought, asked if we needed anything. I had to point out the fact that spiderwebs were forming in my glass! (Prior to her arrival, by the way, various hosts and hostesses had passed by our table a total of 15 times...not one single person even acknowledging that we existed!)

"So what," you ask? "They probably were busy doing their jobs."

Sadly, you are absolutely correct. They were busy just doing their jobs!

And that's the whole point here. Service, as I define it, is doing what it takes to ensure that your client, boss, guest, friend...whoever...feels that he or she is the most important person in your life at a particular moment.

Note that I haven't said one word about your "job description.

Job descriptions tell you what is expected of you as an average employee...one who gets his or her job done in the required number of hours with a minimum of mistakes.

"Service" is what you add to the equation.

Now I'm not talking about sticking your hand in a meat grinder or throwing yourself in front of an oncoming car. I'm talking, purely and simply, about anticipating what it takes to create "the experience of being served."

What am I talking about? A "Kirk story," of course.

Part of the "routine" each year when we're on vacation in Taipei is that I get one of my (noticeably, according to some) infrequent haircuts.

I've been going to one particular stylist for five or six years, mostly because I've gotten used to the place, and she, for whatever reason, remembers how I like my hair cut even though she only sees me once a year!

This year, we got settled in earlier than usual, and I decided to go that afternoon for the ritual.

Settled into the chair; looked like hell (14-hour flight, maybe?!?). She took one look and asked, "When did you arrive?"

"This morning," I mumbled.

What followed was the most amazing half-hour neck and shoulder massage I have ever had. Hurt so bad and felt so good I wanted to cry!

Then on to the regular spruce-up.

The point of this story?

She didn't have to provide that extra bit of service. I would have been satisfied with the usual great job she does with my rapidly-vanishing hair. But she recognized how bone-tired I was and knew there was one thing she could do that would help a little.

In return, she has now converted me from a satisfied customer to a raving, deliriously loyal client who tells anyone he runs into about the experience.

Another point? It doesn't matter what your job is. What matters is the pride you take in the performance of your job. And customer service is part and parcel of every job that exists on this earth.

But this is the difference between doing your job and providing quality customer service. You take yourself out of your job description box and put yourself in the shoes of the person you are working with or for.

Don't get wrapped up so tightly in your job description that you forget the people with whom you interact.

Success, in my book, comes from delivering, as often as you possibly can, "the experience of being served."

"Small service is true service while it lasts;
Of humblest friends, bright creature! scorn not one:
The daisy, by the shadow that it casts,
Protects the lingering dewdrop from the sun."
William Wordsworth, "To a Child, Written in Her Album" [1835]