What Customers Are Begging For (and Taco Bell Gets It)

In this episode of IT’S A PR THING, we’re circling back to customer experience — not the buzzword version, but the kind that actually builds relationship capital. Today, we’ll cover a recent customer experience that demonstrates how much it matters when organizations make things easy, give people a way out of technology when they need it, and create moments that become memories.

We’ll walk through what happened, why it stood out, and what it says about how we treat the people we work so hard – and invest so much -- to attract.

We’ll also touch on what some of the pros — including the C-suite at Taco Bell — are saying about customer experience in a high‑tech world. Spoiler: even the most automated companies know that human touch is still the biggest differentiator.

This episode is well worth a listen and a share!

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Struggle no more to tell your leadership what your value is to the organization. Join the movement to help change the conversation inside our organizations about public relations (a.k.a - communications, corporate comm, marcom, public-information office, etc.). We've heard you, seen your frustration on LinkedIn -- being disregarded, left out, treated like an after thought. But we sometimes are creating our own headaches by how we talk about our profession. So we've designed some items we think you'll like -- and these "tools" will start the conversation for you. Check them out here!

Bonus Resources Also, check out these bonus free resources to help you manage the PR function inside your organization, and deliver the value that earns you that seat at the table.

10 STRATEGIES TO TRANSFORM YOUR PR FUNCTION

FREE GUIDE - 8 STEPS TO MEASURE CUSTOMER EFFORT

GOT TOPIC IDEAS? WE WANT TO HEAR THEM!

Send topic ideas and mailbag questions for a future episode to podcast@prthing.com We would love to hear from you!

HOST BIO https://www.audible.com/author/Stephanie-McFarland/B00YNFH16E

Stewarding our PR Time -- What Is Your ROTI

PR pros are always being pulled in different directions. We are expected, as the nature of the job, to be on-call, to be available to respond to breaking news, to crisis, to bend and flex with urgent deadlines, and to spend much of our day in meetings gathering info and intel – and then finding time to get the work done. That’s all on top of responding to media inquiries and sundry minor fires that happen across a week. And that leaves little time for strategic reflection, planning and the crucial relationship building needed to build business. How in the world can we steward our time, when we often don’t have claim to it?

Meet Lissa Figgins, a time-stewardship coach who counsels CEOs, Christian businesses and solopreneurs. (Notice I did not say “time management”.) Lissa is also the host of REDEEM HER TIME podcast.

I heard Lissa as a guest on a different podcast months ago, and I thought about how as PR pros our time is rarely our own – because so many things can change the trajectory of our day. And the concept of time stewardship just seems to fit much better for us. So I reached out and asked Lissa to talk to us about this approach – and I’m delighted she said yes.

Join me today as Lissa walks us through the difference between time management and time stewardship, how to measure our ROTI (she'll explain the acronym), and why it's so important to both our profession, our home life and our personal character. LEARN MORE, DOWNLOAD THE FREE "IMPACTFUL DAY GUIDE" Listen to Lissa on her podcast: https://redeemhertime.com/tune-in-redeem-her-time-podcast/ Download the free IMPACTFUL DAY GUIDE: https://redeemhertime.com/day

LISSA'S BACKGROUND https://redeemhertime.com/about-me/

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IT'S A PR THING PODCAST RESOURCES & INFORMATION

DOWNLOAD: FREE GUIDE - 8 STEPS TO MEASURE CUSTOMER EFFORT

BONUS RESOURCE:

If you’re new to IT’S A PR THING or if you’re looking for a proven path to make your PR team more effective, check out the free resource: 10 Strategies to Transform Your PR Function. It’s a collection of deeper-dive episodes organized to help you rethink how you implement PR in your job everyday. Click the link above and download the free resource.

GOT TOPIC IDEAS? WE WANT TO HEAR THEM!

Send topic ideas and mailbag questions for a future episode to podcast@prthing.com We would love to hear from you!

HOST BIO https://www.audible.com/author/Stephanie-McFarland/B00YNFH16E

Measuring Customer Effort In this episode, we take the next step in the conversation we started last week about boiling customer frustration and what it means in reading the organization’s relationship radar.

Today we focus on Customer Effort Scoring — a practical way to see where people are running into friction and operational hurdles long before they turn into a reputational issue.

CES helps teams see the incremental operational hurdles that show up in aggregate as overall poor customer satisfaction. When organizations use CES well, they can help reduce customer effort and create a smooth and positive customer experience. And that generates return business, referrals and revenue generation.

Listen in today and learn how CES is an excellent tool to add to your relationship radar system.

DOWNLOAD: FREE GUIDE - 8 STEPS TO MEASURE CUSTOMER EFFORT

BONUS RESOURCE:

If you’re new to IT’S A PR THING or if you’re looking for a proven path to make your PR team more effective, check out the free resource: 10 Strategies to Transform Your PR Function. It’s a collection of deeper-dive episodes organized to help you rethink how you implement PR in your job everyday. Click the link above and download the free resource.

GOT TOPIC IDEAS? WE WANT TO HEAR THEM!

Send topic ideas and mailbag questions for a future episode to podcast@prthing.com We would love to hear from you!

HOST BIO https://www.audible.com/author/Stephanie-McFarland/B00YNFH16E