If you run a business and you maintain a website, you do realize the way customers determine how to contact you is a function of your PR efforts… right? Consider these three points:
• Customers learn how to contact a business when the business tells them how to do so — so ask yourself, do your PR efforts factor in this critical element of customer outreach?
• Offering just one channel of communication, say just phone or generic email, won’t cut it. Today’s customers conduct business communications via multiple platforms and on the go, so have you diversified on this front to include social media?
• If a customer connects with your business and doesn’t get the right (or sensible) answers, have you provided methods for them to contact the central office? It’s amazing that any CEO would routinely dismiss blogging, for example, given the multiple benefits such engagement provides to customers.
If you don’t have a good answer to any of these questions, that likely means you’re not considering the PR implications on two fronts — both with understanding what content you need to communicate (in this case, information regarding key business channels), and how customers may react when they don’t get the responses they deserve.
