Metzger Associates' Blog

Ouch! (But a great forum to discuss transparancy)

One of our staff members at Metzger worked at a Fortune 500 company when that company got its first voice mail system. One day, a member of the PR staff there -- who, they all learned, was dating another staffer -- sent a steamy voice mail message to her beau. Sadly, rather than sending the message to the intended person, she sent the message to the entire PR staff. Needless to say, she got a lot of ribbing over the next several weeks.

Today's technology is making goofs even more public. In a similar (but non-sexual) story, Steve Rubel of PR firm Edelman recently found himself needing to apologize for a post he made on Twitter saying he threw his complimentary subscription to PC Magazine away. Editor Jim Louderback didn't take too kindly to this, and posted a terse response on Strumpette.

We've all read stories about students getting in hot water over an errant MySpace post, but here we have a full-blown professional faux paux from someone fully engaged in Web 2.0.

Some thoughts:

• So many of us are so comfortable with tools like email we get a false sense of privacy for electronic communications. In this case, a flip comment on a very public forum did serious damage to a relationship Edelman needs.
• Mistakes are becoming more and more public. A blow-up like this 10 years ago would have ended with a handful of people even knowing about it. Today, such an incident is posted, passed on, perma-linked and pondered by hundreds or even thousands -- like us -- who weren't involved.
• Rubel is an executive with many years of experience, so he'll probably come through this OK in the end. Such an incident could easily derail the career of an entry-level employee.
• On the other hand, Rubel is an executive with many years of experience (and pretty savvy in the blogosphere). Does that make such a slip even worse?

We're in a brave new world of communications, and new tools are emerging and gaining traction all the time. The cover of the most recent Wired Magazine call for companies to "get naked" and show complete transparency in communications. The key is to be transparent while showing restraint. It's OK to be blunt and even reveal flaws, but think it through. Perhaps Rubel was simply stating that he read PC Mag online rather than on paper, but the incomplete and casual remark on Twitter didn't say that, and he's feeling the wrath of an editor scorned.

In the end, it's OK (and advisable) to be both transparent and thoughtful.

Things We Can Do vs. Things We Should Do

Is anyone else as confused about the benefit of having customers swipe their own credit cards as we are?

We don't mean the complete self-service lines at places like grocery stores, where one employee can watch six or eight checkout stations. Those make perfect sense. The process we don't get is when you're standing in line, you have a clerk behind the counter, and you have to swipe your own credit card rather than handing it to the clerk. Since the clerk is right there, why are consumers being asked to execute more of the transaction? It's not as though the employee has something else to do while we swipe our own credit or debit cards.

Here are the advantages and disadvantages, as we see them.

Advantages:

We're still thinking about this. Actually, we'd welcome hearing about some advantages, because we're puzzled.

Disadvantages:

1. Every system is a little different, which means even customers comfortable with self-service technology often need to ask for help with a specific machine. And let's be honest -- an employee trained to check out customers is much faster than any customer ever will be.
2. The clerks never see the card, and most don't look at the signature slip. So, if our CEO John Metzger were to use a card from Margaret Nussbaum, there's a good chance no one would notice. At least when a card is handed to a store employee, there's a chance it will be looked at and the signature on the slip might compared to the card. With identity theft becoming the fasted growing crime in the country, we should be putting checks in place, not removing them.
3. Since the process is different for nearly every terminal, the process often causes checkout lines to move more slowly. That doesn't make much sense.

So... these devices slow down the lines, confuse some customers and irritate others and make it easier to use a stolen card. To top it off,  the store employee is usually simply standing there watching the customer, so our efforts are not freeing them up for other, more pressing tasks.

Just because we can make customers swipe their own cards, if there are no advantages and several disadvantages, should we? Too often, we use technology to do things because we can, not because we should.

If someone can explain this new trend, we'd love a comment.