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The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of the Recession
Chances are that by now you’ve felt the recession in some way. Whether you’re just starting to feel the pinch or you’ve been dealing with it for a year now, there’s little doubt that it’s impacting your life.
Can any good come out of a recession? If you’ve been affected, you might be yelling “No!” at your computer screen—but I refuse to see it that way. Hopefully you’ve been pushed by the recession to take a hard look at goals that can improve your company. A situation like this really forces you to make changes for the good of your business or to improve the quality of your life, even if they are hard to make.
There are obviously bad things to come out of the recession—lost jobs, less money. For a business, I try (even though it’s sometimes really hard) to re-categorize these issues as “learning experiences.” The recession has brought many of these business learning experiences to the attention of companies around the U.S. and the world.
For those companies that thrive on customer service, keeping a smile on your face and serving your client base involves trying to keep the same customer satisfaction while maintaining profitability. This is a time (and rightly so) for discounts, re-negotiated terms and creative ways to solve obstacles in doing business. If your client doesn’t understand the changes that must be made in order to survive this downturn, they may think you are trying to adversely affect them. While not true, sometimes reality isn’t what they want—they want things to be like old times. (Phew, so do I!) But we must move forward and make decisions about our markets today.
One aspect of the recession that can turn ugly is negative publicity. We’ve seen plenty of companies enter bankruptcy, change policies which may affect customer service, or pay their vendors on later terms in an effort to keep afloat. Such instances can create negative publicity that, in the world of the Internet, can put a black mark on you or your company in an instant. Negative publicity is one learning experience that I’ve heard many companies say they have faced during this time. What I want to know is how companies have dealt with negative publicity. Have you or your company faced these types of challenges? How did you bounce back, even with the past lurking around the corner? I want to create a bank of examples we can all learn from—I welcome your responses!
Comments on this Entry
Have you had negative publicity yourself? Is that why you’re asking? If so, what measures have you taken?
By Adele F. on 2009 06 02
Hi Adele,
Thansk for asking.
We’re asking because we’re hearing more and more about it with these economic times. But to answer your question, yes, we have had a couple instances of negative publicity in the past, generally from adisgruntled freelancer or a former employee. We often try to speak to those people directly, particularly if they are freelancers, to clear up any issues that they might have. This usually works 90% of the time. In other cases, such as when we’ve found former employees speaking negatively to our clients, we respond by making sure those companies remember what great work we’ve done and how happy they’ve been with us. Much of this is par for the course in business. I mean how many tiems have you complaind about service in a restaurant.
We are lucky that we don’t any negative publicity from disgruntled clients because 1) we pride ourselves on doing the best job possible and 2) we have instituted a C3 ( Client Climate Control) status as a barometer of how the project is going, and we’re sure to get a final assessment at the end of a project. This allows us to keep track of our client’s satisfaction while making sure to resolve any problems the client might have. We believe the best defense is a good offense.
Mainly, we have had clients ask us this question and I thought it would be a good one to throw out here.
By Kim Kleeman on 2009 06 08
