Companies that have tested cyberspace for communications, such as delivering 10Ks or posting execs' biographies online, are using the next wave of the Web for e-commerce and global branding.
In fact, communications is becoming integral as corporations seek to cut customer-support costs. Still, troubleshooting these customer-support tasks requires PR's input, including ensuring that online information is in sync with other communications.
But success doesn't come cheap. Nationwide, companies are spending millions of dollars and devoting thousands of middlemen to make sure that Internet endeavors are coordinated with other new business ventures.
One company, Murray Hill, N.J.-based Lucent Technologies [LU], uses the Internet to augment or replace some customer-support services, but it still relies on input from PR.
Lucent was singled out, along with nine others, as one of the top corporate global Web sites in a "Best Practices in Corporate Communications" study by the Public Affairs Group, Washington, D.C. More than 90 corporate sites were reviewed and winners were selected based on five key ingredients: global icon; multiple languages; accessibility; quality of info.; and currency of info.
PR On the Playing Field
Lucent manages its messages to customers and employees by coordinating disciplines such as advertising, media relations, investor relations, philanthropy and global branding, according to Curtis Wilson, PR director.
To make sure global and other business initiatives are aligned, about 150 Lucent professionals from different disciplines report to Senior VP Kathy Fitzgerald, who oversees IR, PR and advertising.
Execs first viewed the site as an ambitious branding tool, but now it's also meant to help the $26.4 billion company carve a place in the data networking and Internet-related markets and to bolster customer relations through the distribution of corporate info. And it appears to be achieving that.
Lucent's Web site traffics more than 100,000 page views daily. That's significantly higher than when the site launched in April 1996 and was clearing about 20,000 daily page views, says Steve Aaronson, VP of global corporate PR.
Answering Customers' Calls
Texas Instruments, Dallas, has found that the Web can help them avoid customer-related costs, according to Jan Foster-Penn, Internet manager, strategic communications.
The company, which has 44,000 employees and 1997 net sales of $9.75 billion, has dodged $2.8 million in costs related to sending technical data sheets to customers.
Those sheets now can be downloaded from its site, and it's a component visitors to the site seem to want: technical data sheet downloads jumped to 465,000 in the fourth quarter from 286,000 in the first quarter of 1997, she says.
However, phone calls for this information dwindled to 26,000 in the fourth quarter from 30,000 during the first quarter of 1997 because customers are turning to its Web site for those details, adds Foster-Penn.
But the company also is striving to reach other businesses.
"The Web is considered a priority for us because we are focused on mass-marketing semi-conductor devices... Now we're pushing [information and products] to small emerging companies that will be the next 3Com...The Internet allows us to tell our own stories without any filters," Foster-Penn adds. "And we're able to tell that integrated story in one location." (Lucent, 908/582-5330; Public Affairs Group, 202/466-8209; Texas Instruments, 516/843-2800)