In the first half of 2002, SBC Communications was reeling in the face of competition in the newly deregulated market for local phone service. By the time SBC approached PR firm
Fleishman-Hillard for help, the former monopoly had lost nearly 1 million customers, or 18% of its business in the five Midwestern states it serves.
Fleishman executives convinced SBC that Job One was to get its own house in order. "Many of the employees did not understand how increased competition was impacting the company
and what they needed to do as employees to help with that," says Account Supervisor Christine Drab, who led a campaign to bolster the level of customer service while at the same
time reassuring employees that SBC was taking steps to adapt to the changing environment.
The New Marketplace
Even before launching the "Take A Stand" campaign, Drab's PR team knew it faced a communications challenge. Among SBC's 60,000 employees, "we have some people sitting at their
desks at a computer, but a large group of employees are technicians who are out on the road installing phone service," Drab says. "So one of the first things we did was to make
sure that all employees received the same information."
A mailing went out to all employees that included a brochure explaining how deregulation had changed the marketplace. The mailing included a Q&A with the CEO along with
market-specific product cards describing SBC's resident and small-business offerings.
Meanwhile, for the desk-bound, the PR team set up an Intranet addressing the same issues. For those employees working in the field a special outreach effort was organized in
which supervisors were given the materials they would need to teach field techs how to answer customer's questions. Supervisors also got an online tool kit including a PowerPoint
presentation, Q&A pieces and other support materials that they could incorporate into their regular meetings with employees.
New service expectations
Once employees had a handle on the challenges of the new marketplace, the PR effort moved into its next phase: boosting the level of customer service in a firm perceived as not
being especially customer-friendly. Rather than spin the need for better service as merely a corporate priority, the PR team positioned the issue as a matter of personal
importance for the employees themselves. "We wanted to show that a higher level of service would increase customer loyalty, which as a result would make people more willing to
stay with the company," Drab says.
In two weeks, 28 employee meetings were held in five states, headed by the regional CEO, the business unit, state presidents and union officials. "They made the business case
that service really does impact the bottom line," Drab says. The PR team produced a meeting-in-a-box kit for managers, complete with videos of leaders' talks and, for those who
could not attend, diverse other support materials.
Workers appeared willing to accept the logic that better service ultimately was in their own interests. "Employees really did want to help, but they did not always know what to
do," Drab says. To help with the follow-through, Drab and her colleagues set up a toll-free number that employees could call in order to pass along reports of service problems.
Likewise, employees were encouraged to talk with friends and neighbors about their phone service as a way both of boosting customer loyalty and putting a human face on the
corporation.
Charting 'Service'
In retrospect, Drab might have done a few things differently. With just a month and a half to plan the campaign, she had little contact with business unit managers before the
launch, "and it would be good to try to involve some of those people even earlier so that they could be developing more things that would help support this among their employees,"
she says.
Nonetheless, the campaign registered as a solid success. The "Take A Stand" campaign challenged SBC workers to boost their company's profile, and the numbers suggest they rose
to the challenge. Follow-up surveys found that employee awareness of the company's new offerings stood at 83% several months into the campaign, while 82% of workers said the
campaign had helped them to understand what they could do to help the company.
Nearly two-thirds of SBC employees said they spoke with friends and neighbors about the company's products, while 40% said they referred people to the company's toll-free
number. Indeed, nearly 1,200 employee calls came into the new service hotline by mid-year.
"It provided a very effective rallying cry for our employees," says Gary Shutt, executive director of employee communications at SBC. "Just the name, 'Take A Stand,' it
communicated very clearly what we wanted employees to do. Then it provided them with a way to get the information they needed in order to do it."
Contacts: Christine Drab, 312.751.8878, [email protected]; Gary Shutt, 210.351.2151, [email protected]
Keeping It Real
Charged with improving "service," a vague notion at best, Fleishman-Hillard executives decided it would have to be done the hard way. They convinced executives at SBC
Communications to lay out in stark terms just how much business the company was losing to competitive forces in a newly deregulated industry.
"We were very candid with employees and shared a lot of numbers that people had not seen before: 'Here is how many phone lines we have, here are how many customers we have.' In
that way we were really able to show them the kind of impact that competition was having on our business," says Account Supervisor Christine Drab.
The disclosures helped to make the situation more concrete. "We did not just say, 'Competition is out there.' We said: 'It is out there, and look at the difference in our
business.' Because if employees do not understand what it happening, then why should they act? We did not set out to scare anybody, but we wanted them to understand the
seriousness of the situation."