Crafty Kraft or a longer term Own Goal?
I read in the news earlier about Kraft’s decision to continue with the closure of the Somerdale factory in Keynsham after the takeover of Cadbury. This was despite its alleged earlier indication that it would keep it open even though plans to close it were already well advanced.
It’s not just the 400 workers at this plant and their union representatives who understandably view Kraft’s actions as a “cynical ploy” and “cruel manipulation” purely to gain public support for what was from their view an unpopular bid – though the PR from that angle would be bad enough in itself.
Lord Mandelson has joined the fray by pointing out that Kraft’s CEO would have known a week ago what the announcement would be and should have been straight.
Let’s say Kraft is willing to take the employee and union backlash on the chin. What message does the company think it’s sending out to the business world? That it’s a company of its word? That you don’t have to ‘count your fingers’ after shaking hands with one of its representatives? That it actually cares what anybody thinks of it?
I have no idea what Kraft is like as a company to work for or do business with but I know what impressions it’s giving me – and I can’t be the only one thinking it’s actions are more than a little tacky.
It may have got its way in the short term but I wouldn’t be surprised if this comes back to bite it in the you-know-where down the line.
Moral of the story for the rest of us?
Business is business and it’s not all warm and fluffy – we know that. What I can’t understand is that Kraft seems to have ignored the fact that it takes time to build and nurture a reputation and only seconds to demolish it 
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What are your thoughts?
Crafty Kraft or a longer term Own Goal?
Linda Mattacks is the author of a series of training courses available at SellingForBusiness.co.uk developed to provide easily accessible training for small businesses who are not in a position (or may not want) to take time out to attend formal training sessions.
How would you describe You ‘Plc’?
Okay, so you run or work for a company. That may be a big part of you. Yet it’s not the whole story by a long shot, is it?
How often do you step back to get a perspective of the whole, great big picture and see how your work is serving what you want out of your life? When was the last time you came up for air and even thought about what you want out of life?
A client we ran this exercise with recently said:
“I now have a much better idea of how to allocate my time and energy to get to where I want to go.
The funny thing is that where I want to go is also clearer. This tool will
be something I will continue to use to review and evolve how my
purpose, passion and process are aligned.”
Worth you having a go?
By the way, regular visitors and followers will see we’ve just added the Tweet gizmo and applied it to earlier posts, too – it’ll be interesting (for us, anyway) to watch – and it adds colour to the site 
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Linda Mattacks is the author of a series of training courses available at SellingForBusiness.co.uk developed to provide easily accessible training for small businesses who are not in a position (or may not want) to take time out to attend formal training sessions.
Did you say something BAD about me?
We often feature customer service here and the importance of getting it right – never more so than dealing with a customer complaint. Or even preventing a problem turning into a complaint… so I thought I’d share this with you…
Background
A land line went down here the other day and I was having real hassle getting through to the telecomm provider to report it.
- The recorded service I got through to (using a cable line) said it couldn’t run the test on the faulty line as it was busy… and suggested I call back…
- The form on the website accepted all the details I inputted then wouldn’t process…
- When I finally got through to a human being, English wasn’t her first language and she insisted on trying the web route again on my behalf – only to discover it wouldn’t register the fault…
I was eventually transferred to someone in the UK who manually logged the necessary information and started the process of sorting it out. From then on, I must admit in all fairness, it all happened pretty quickly.
Meanwhile, the interesting bit
Half an hour into this malarkey I was really getting hacked off, so I tweeted about it on Twitter, naming the company. Within about a further 20 minutes I had a direct tweet from its Care team inviting me to email them the info and they’d get on the case!
I did email them and thanked them for spotting my dilemma and offering to help. I also suggested they get the ‘powers that be’ at their (blue chip) company to phone in with problems/ use the website to try and solve them and see how they get on see how they like the experience.
Even when I received a follow up call the next day to check that everything was okay I still felt that they were playing catch up from a customer service viewpoint:
The competent human interaction should be there right from the first contact.
Now a question for You
What happens when a customer phones your company with a complaint?
PS: You Plc coming soon – Customer service happened to be more topical for me right now
Linda Mattacks is the author of a series of training courses available at SellingForBusiness.co.uk developed to provide easily accessible training for small businesses who are not in a position (or may not want) to take time out to attend formal training sessions.
