Incompetence is Running Rampant in Business Today

            There is one major experience I learned through my two decades of military service that just seems to be missing from life in the civilian world. Every single individual military member, leader, and/or military unit operates on a very strict discipline level. This is especially important for the military because one must be able to count on the efficiency of others in order to effectively accomplish their own missions. In the civilian world, I am finding some serious flaws in the way businesses conduct themselves with customers, and how they perform their professional services.

A Modern Public Relations Agency, Committed to Making Business Better.

            Most people require the services of others in our everyday lives. From home repairs, automobile repairs, landscaping and lawn services, tree services, or just any other basic business services. You name the service, at some point in our lives we may not have the technical experience or understanding to accomplish the things we need to take care of on our own. We count on the businesses around us to be competent, trustworthy and affordable in our times of need. But, I am experiencing some serious flaws in the way businesses conduct themselves, and I would like to share those experiences with you.

            In 2011, I decided that driving a 3000-pound vehicle to move my 175-pound body weight around, just wasn’t very efficient. I purchased a brand new 2011 Kawasaki KLR-650 motorcycle and have been riding it every day in rain or shine ever since. In July 2015 I needed to replace the clutch. I contacted a local Kawasaki dealer to schedule the repair. I have the technical ability to do the work myself, but I wanted to have a warranty for the repair as a back-up, so I decided to let someone else do it.

            The experience from the start was horrible. The communication seemed like something out of kindergarten class. I typed up everything I wanted to be performed on my motorcycle and stapled it to my handlebar, in plain sight. I asked that the service department perform checks and adjustments on my brakes, throttle, and clutch cables. I asked for them to replace my water pump, and clutch. That’s it, and it was all typed out in a readable font and stapled to the handlebar. The dealership was asked to come to my house and pick up my motorcycle rather than driving it with a bad clutch. A day late, and three phone calls later, they finally showed up. I explained to the service department exactly what work I wanted to be done, and also repeatedly reminded them that the list was stapled to the handlebar.

            After two weeks of continuous miscommunication with this Kawasaki dealer, they called me to tell me my motorcycle was complete. I drove an hour to pick it up. What I found was either total incompetence on their part or sabotage. Both of my tires were inflated to 45 psi. The front tire is recommended by the manufacturer to be no more than 21 psi, and the back tire 28 psi. My throttle cable tolerance was over an inch out of adjustment. When I sent it to the dealer it was within the recommended specifications. The water pump and clutch both failed within 1-month. I had to reorder all of the parts and repair them myself. This dealer did not want to admit fault. They did offer to put it back into the shop, but who in their right mind would allow an incompetent business to try again after they failed the very first time. That warranty I paid for and wanted, ended up being useless, I would never take my ride back there again. Even with that work list, I typed up, something they never took the time to read, they still couldn’t get it right. Just shameful.

            Another business flounder moment came just recently. Last week I noticed that my petcock valve on top of my water well pump had a leak. With further investigation, I found that the internal parts of the petcock valve were worn from continuous use. This petcock valve is nothing more than the same valve you use to turn the water on for your garden hose. I have one of mine attached to my well so that I can use water for my lawn without running it through my home water filtration system. As busy as I am I decided to call someone to come out and fix it for me. What a mistake.

            The company I called was a local company with supposedly good reviews. My phone call was quickly answered and a scheduled date and time was given for the repair to take place. That day came and gone, no one showed up. The company representative called me and apologized, and she set up a date and time for the next day. I agreed, I am not unreasonable to others workload. Unfortunately, I was not around when the so-called professional showed up to fix my water valve leak. But, when I got home my wife gave me all of the details. The repair person told my wife that the entire well needed to be replaced because of corrosion. I asked her if the repairman fixed the leak that they said they would fix. She said no, and she also said that the repairman said that he wanted to give us some time to think about the new problem we now face.

            From a minor valve leak to the removal and reinstallation of an entire well head seemed a little suspicious to me. I asked my wife if this business left any proposals or business brochures with her, she said no. My wife did add something else to the twist though. She said that the repair person had charged us a $100 service call fee for coming out to our house. I immediately called the company. My first words to this business were to find out if it was common practice for that business to charge a service call fee for an appointment. Then I wanted to know why I was never informed about the service call fee. I reminded this business that I was never advised of a service call fee, and there is nothing to be found about it on their website. They dropped the fee but were very intent on selling me a new well.

            My next question pertained to the diagnosis that they gave me to completely remove my wellhead and replace it with a new one. They said that it had corrosion on it and it looked to be over 30 years old. My well and components are as old as my house, and my house is about 10-years old, so that made no sense and was very suspicious. The only corrosion to be found is on the steel bolts that hold the wellhead unit to the concrete slab in the ground, of course, they would be rusty. Steel rusts, that’s a fact, but that little bit of corrosion was in no way deemed to fail anytime in the near future. They never fixed my leaky valve, I had to purchase one for $7 at Lowes and install it myself. It literally took about 10-minutes. But, there I was thinking I could count on others to relieve some of my time and to take care of something I did not want to do myself. I wonder where the common sense was in telling a person that their 10-year old wellhead was poised for failure. Especially to a former U.S. Marine Engineer.

            Events like this are happening, and they happen everywhere and all of the time in business today. Whether it is strictly an influential profit scheme or just incompetence, the fact that people are losing trust in business is a significant problem.

            I retired from the armed forces in December of 2014, since then, my phone has received calls I had never received before. It seems that when a person retires, their name gets added to all of the scheming call centers that demand you purchase solar panels, vote for so-and-so, and all of the other nonsense things.

            Last week while driving home to Mooresville, NC from Salisbury, I found myself behind a Mooresville Oil Company propane delivery truck doing 35 mph in a 45 mph zone. I waited for a legal passing zone and then started to pass this driver. The driver while shaking his fists, steered his vehicle from his lane into the other lane in a blatant attempt to drive me off of the road. I was on my motorcycle and it was no fair match. I was able to maneuver smartly and get out in front of him, there he tried to speed up and run me down. I pulled off the road and called 911. I also called the company to speak with a manager or supervisor. I was greeted with hostility and incompetence in handling this situation. Here was a road raged driver trying to physically harm me, and the company, the managers, the supervisors did nothing. This guy is still driving today. The Highway patrol, Sheriffs Department, and the Mooresville Police Department could not do anything about it, so they say. I told the company manager that my motorcycle had incurred damage from the incident. My rear tire had a gash of rubber stripped off of it, and now laying on the roadway. My front and rear brake pads had suffered from the instant demand, they now squeal. My chain adjustment came out of specifications, and my nerves were severely shaken. The company will not answer my repeated phone calls, nor will they return them. Is that how businesses should be handling their problems? Simply Ridiculous.

            My point of all of this is simple, consumers, and people in general count on businesses to conduct themselves professionally. In fact, businesses count on consumers and the people that may potentially become customers for their survival. One bad review or word of mouth tale destroys credibility. Do you think that I would recommend any of the businesses I have had bad dealings with to any of my friends or family members? Not a chance.

            What can businesses do to make sure that they stay successful and give each and every customer the best experience they can? That is the real question here. For a start, stop being incompetent, and own up to responsibility. Fix the things that need to be fixed, don’t add extra charges when they are unjustified. Stop giving customer’s hard times when they call you out on incompetence. Own up to your mistakes and make them right. Don’t just take a person’s money and then provide inadequate work. Make the customer experience the best you can give them every time. Nothing can hurt the reputation of a business faster than blatant incompetence and ignorance when dealing with customer concerns. Fix those areas and do so with the most impressive of care, and your business should never be at fault for incompetence.

For more information or to get your business-consumer relationships on the right track

Contact:

Outstory Public Relations Group

A Modern Public Relations Agency

Solving Problems, Changing Attitudes, Creating Understanding, and Influencing Behaviors

Outstory PR Group solves business and public relations problems. We serve organizations of for-profit, non-profit, governmental authority, and well-known persons. We develop and manage creative problem-solving campaigns for businesses small and large, both nationally and globally.

Call Outstory PR Group Today: 704-904-0682

Website: http://outstoryprgorup.com

Shawn Stoffel

Shawn@outstoryprgroup.com

Over 50% of Online Business Success, will come from the Words you use

            It is no secret that in order for a business to succeed in today’s market, it must successfully converge their enterprise onto the internet. The one major factor that all online businesses must understand, and accept, is the power of online public relations. A company’s online activity of posting messages, comments, advertisements, and marketing, along with their every action or inaction have the power to exponentially affect their public relations much faster and with greater impact than any other time in history. The information and the communication that a company presents online must be planned, managed and monitored with great care.

If you don't Outstory, the Outstory will be you.

            Users of the internet have a much greater advantage over the older public relations marketing methods. In the past company’s had to use media intermediaries, and media gatekeepers, known as journalists, in order to get their messages to the public. Today, the internet allows every user to perform the role of public relations practitioner, no journalist or publicist required. However, the downside of this; is that everything you do online must be performed in a manner that considers every activity you engage in as a public relations activity. Once your message is entered onto the world-wide-web, there it will stay for all eternity, and everyone will have the opportunity to develop their own opinions about you, your company, and products/service. To ensure that your every message, and your every online communication activity is ideal for all eternity to come, requires just a little pre-planning.

            In the public relations business, pre-planning for everything is a vital function for successful outcomes. I have developed a few daily routines to continually keep my mind sharp in my practice of public relations. One of those routines involves only 1-hour per day, 7-days a week searching social media sites for messages. I’m looking for many things, but especially for messages that offer creativity, uniqueness, and positive impact. In just 1-hour time’ I can successfully investigate over 200 messages, that’s over 1400 messages per week. It is an absolutely illuminating process; I find new trends, plagiarisms, bad spelling, bad grammar, the strange and the unusual, and most importantly learn what works and doesn’t.

            When I find a message that has the potential to be creative and may present a positive impact, I run it through a series of impressive message testing parameters exclusive to Outstory PR Group. If they pass the test, the message structure gets added to a list of messages that have the potential to sell. Any message that presents a single word misspelled, or is grammatically wrong, gets tossed out immediately. Here’s the big shocker folks, over 85% of the messages I investigate daily, get tossed in the trash. Most messages are found to have misspelled words, have no interaction or human interest appeal, and are grammatically wrong. Why is it so difficult for people to spell-check or edit for grammar? I have found that over 93% of social media messages were created spontaneously, and without pre-planning. Why would a potential customer ever consider a business seriously when that business can’t even spell-check their message?

            Creating a business message that the whole world can see and who form opinions on, requires first having the right perspective. With the increasing amount of business taking place online today, it is important to understand that over half of the success that a business achieves, will directly come from the power of their words. Misspelled words and bad grammar within your messages are a sure fire way to eliminate yourself from achieving online success.

            Another important aspect to understand about the internet and with an online business is that internet users have all of the control. The internet is an information “Pull in” medium. Meaning that unless a user decides your information is relevant to them (within 3-seconds or so,) then your message will be irrelevant and bypassed. The word “information,” is one of the important elements required to successfully create a message for successful impact. If your message doesn’t contain the information users expect or if it neglects any relevancy of information that would interest them, then it will be lost.

            What is it exactly that you are trying to sell, inform about, or say, this is another huge mystery within so many messages? I find a lot of opening sentences saying how wonderful something is, and that they had even used the product or service personally, but yet, the product/service was never mentioned in their beginning (hook) sentence. You have to read below or click on a link to find out what was so amazing. How does that make any sense? You lost me in the first sentence. This is sometimes used as a strategy, where some marketing agencies believe will generate a better customer. The idea behind this method is designed to attract people who are generally already curious in finding out more about that product/service, so they continue down that pre-planned marketing path. However, with so much information overload on the internet today, it is risky, and I personally believe messages like that are missing out on creating new customers who potentially would be interested if they were simply informed earlier on.

            Credibility and trustworthiness can be realized immediately from messages. The internet is full of scams, con artists, and untrustworthy people. If your message presents any doubt, it will be realized immediately and dismissed. People are not uneducated when it comes to understanding false statements. When you make a statement, back it up with some credible proof. Make it undeniable and alleviate any doubt. Men are the perfect example of this; it is in their nature to say no before learning the truth.

            Message images can present some serious public relations concerns if not pre-planned. I find a lot of home photography inserted into business messages. That’s fine, and I positively agree that keeping things simple and more down to earth creates better relationships, but some images are simply just bad ideas. The spontaneous images of selfies for a business image is probably not a good idea. I see a lot of this happening in the small business cosmetic and beauty industry. The images look unprofessional at best. It doesn’t take much effort to plan for a good business image. Another industry that seems to be suffering from bad images is the construction and home cleaning businesses. A before and after photo image of a carpet that has been shampooed is not that appealing to most people. I would suggest not doing that. There exist many other image ideas that can present a clean floor and would be more effective for appeal. Images can help, but they can also devalue a message very quickly. Choose wisely.

            Thank you for spending your time reading about this subject. The internet as great as it is; is chock full of people not professionally trained in all aspects of business. This is a huge learning curve for most start-ups. Time and trial by error will definitely sort out the successful and the unsuccessful. I do highly encourage everyone engaged in online business today to have a public relations consultant on speed-dial. It is just a phone number and it usually only takes just a few minutes to explain the important aspects of a subject, before making a commitment on the internet. Yes, every word you enter is a commitment lasting an eternity. Public relations counselors are business masters and can guide you and your business towards success. Remember, it is through people that businesses exist at all. Establishing ideal public relations practices is a how businesses realize success.

For more information or to have your product/service message crafted and/or tested

Contact:

Outstory Public Relations Group

A Modern Public Relations Agency

Solving Problems, Changing Attitudes, Creating Understanding, and Influencing Behaviors

Outstory PR Group solves business and public relations problems. We serve organizations of for-profit, non-profit, governmental authority, and well-known persons. We develop and manage creative problem-solving campaigns for businesses small and large, both nationally and globally.

Call Outstory PR Group Today: 704-904-0682

Website: http://outstoryprgorup.com

Shawn Stoffel

Shawn@outstoryprgroup.com

The Internet “Marketing or Bust,” Flaws.

            Businesses are dangerously transforming their marketing priorities into a “do it or go bust” mentality. It is true that most people in the world of business today; have accepted the reality that consumers have merged their buying habits into the internet's virtual world. But yet, their new virtual reality marketing and advertising plans; have a few serious flaws. When it comes to quality awareness and engagement with their desired audiences, they just aren’t hitting the marks. The flaws are obvious, yet, the “do it, or bust” mentality, continues to strengthen. 

            When was the last time you clicked on a marketing advertisement on the internet? You see, there lays one of the many major marketing problems of the internet. The internet was originally developed as a communication tool for the dissemination of information. By design, the internet was never created to be used as a commercial tool. Yet today, you can find businesses struggling to bend around the barriers, in their attempts to commercialize it.

            Businesses who are successfully achieving their goals on the internet understand the internet. They understand what the internet was intended to do, and they utilize that knowledge in creating their own success. To fight against the internet’s original design and its pure nature is a losing battle.

            One very important aspect that must be understood about the internet is that it is an information highway. People naturally “pull in” the information they want to view. They certainly do not surf the internet seeking out marketing advertisements. 

            Because of the internet’s information highway characteristics, it is essential to understand that people go online to search out solutions to their problems. Information on the internet is free for the most part, and there is plenty of it to positively inform a person concerning their search subject. 

            Marketing and advertisement companies are feeling the pain. They are literally scrambling to get a foothold in the virtual world. They are in a struggle for survival, and they are attempting to reorganize themselves to support commercialization of the internet. 

            Every day you can find mass marketing ads on the internet, not of the businesses they claim to represent, but mostly of their own marketing ads. They are pushing their own products of robo-advertising, message crafting, analytics, SEO, ad placements on social media sites, increased email traffic, you name it, they're trying very hard to survive. 

            But yet, the number one problem still exists, people “pull in” information towards them, and people just do not want to “pull in” advertisements. Most social media network group sites are even fighting against marketing efforts. They are blocking all advertisements on their group pages. Facebook, along with other social media sites are even taking things a bit further. They are changing their internal algorithms to block out external marketing and advertisement campaigns. They do this because they realize the potential income in marketing on their own sites. They are transforming their internal marketing departments in an effort to force people to market through them. Very soon, you will find that you must utilize their internal marketing departments if you want to advertise anything on their social media sites.   

            But, this is all old news. You must understand first what the internet was designed to do. Especially how people search and view information on the internet. Not all is lost, though. There exist many realistic approaches to creating online business awareness, branding, and product/service marketing campaigns that hit the desired marks. 

            The key to business success on the internet is to develop and maintain a working public relations perspective. The information is there, anyone can find it to effectively listen to consumer demands. It is vital on the internet to maintain a steady flow of the information desired by your audience. While it is also vital to maintain an impactful public relations perspective between company and consumer relationships. Nothing has changed in the public relations world. Yet, every business wants to engage in a “marketing or bust” mentality. 

            You get what you pay for, that’s for sure. Has your online marketing and advertisement campaigns really shown an improvement? No, I should suspect not. Marketing companies are failing themselves with their own marketing plans. How can they do any better for you while working against the grain? The internet is a vast ocean of information, and people just aren’t interested in plucking out a random floating marketing message bottle from it.

            One sure fire way to become well known, to create your desired awareness, and to publicize your unique products and services still lays in the power of the media. The absolute best way to disseminate your information is through the multitude of media channels. Nothing has changed in this department, it has only improved. Now and today, not only does the media exist on radio, television, magazines, and newspapers, but they are very well established with all of those elements on the internet. How could you possibly compare spending money, or getting your desired results, by selecting the use of a new social media marketing company, over that of the media? Internet users are hungry for information. Put that information into a platform that they choose to click on, and you will get the picture. 

            You really have to be asking yourself “why” you would choose marketing over public relations, especially on the internet. Public relations have a much bigger role to play than marketing and advertising does, within the virtual world.

            Public relations have the capability of disseminating your information through the information needs of the people who use it. Whether it is through the use of articles, blogs, newsletters, or emails, public relations has what it takes to build positive awareness of your company in today’s market. 

            You must choose but choose wisely because most Public relations agencies today have sold out to the idea that marketing is the future of the internet. One sure way to determine that is by viewing the public relations agency website. If you find that they advertise their clients all over their website, then they are operating very heavily in the marketing role. First of all, real public relation agencies do not work that way. Their campaigns are successful enough to not warrant broadcasting to the world that their clients engaged in public relations. 

            Real public relation agencies solve problems. To air to the world that a company engaged in public relations, say’s they had a problem. Public relation websites are the first place I choose to look when researching for my next potential stock market investment. When I find a company listed, the first thing I ask myself is; are they unable to manage their own public relations, marketing, and advertising? That say’s a lot to the public. So choose, but choose wisely.

For more information or to develop your personal public relations campaign plans:

Contact:

Outstory Public Relations Group

A Modern Public Relations Agency

Solving Problems, Changing Attitudes, Creating Understanding, and Influencing Behaviors

Outstory PR Group solves business and public relations problems. We serve organizations of for-profit, non-profit, governmental authority, and well-known persons. We develop and manage creative problem-solving campaigns for businesses small and large, both nationally and globally.

Call Outstory PR Group Today: 704-904-0682

Website: http://outstoryprgorup.com

Shawn Stoffel

Shawn@outstoryprgroup.com