I have often looked at my job to “ask questions, to be curious about the other person’s point of view, to have empathy.” No, I didn’t write this, but it could clearly be my credo after all these years and words of wisdom. I found the quote in a blog written by Jessica Carroll about 18 months ago. She has had a long career in IT management, running that department for the US Golf Association for decades before moving to roles in customer experience leadership and now has her own consulting practice.

I used to interview Carroll for various pieces that I wrote when she was at the USGA about 15 years ago, and decided to catch up with her recently. Back then, cloud computing was the shiny new thing and gathering lots of attention — just as AI is getting now. “Everyone now is looking at AI and reacting the same way as they did back then about the cloud,” she said. “I think AI is more evolutionary and not as big a job threat as many people are predicting.” We spoke about how the tech world has changed, however: “We don’t look towards IT as the ultimate authorities anymore. This could be because executives don’t really care about the IT details because tech has become a commodity.” I suggested that perhaps the deeper acceptance of tech throughout businesses has made us less fascinated with it than in those early days when email, the internet, and clouds were quickly evolving and far from generally accepted.

In our chat, I caught up with her in her new role as world nomad. She and her husband, a commercial photographer, have spent the last year living for weeks or months in different places around the world: Barcelona, Florence, Peru, Cape Town, and now in the UK. This was after planning their transition more than a decade ago and selling their home and most of their possessions in New Jersey last summer. They initially thought of early retirement but both enjoy working remotely and have made it possible with being experts in their respective fields — she mostly consults on customer experience — and manage to mix work with the travel. For example, both reserve Mondays for work, and that includes being available during US work hours when they are abroad.

You might think the current political situation was what motivated them to make this move, but as I said their planning started long ago. Nevertheless, “it is refreshing though to remove ourselves from the constant US news cycles. And also to listen to people’s views of our domestic political climate when we are abroad. I tend not to share my views but just listen,” which gets back to the quote at the top of this post. The rest of the quote continues with the point of her article, which was written before she hit the road full time: she tries to “foster an atmosphere where the various teams become enthusiastic about collaborating to solve problems or create innovative solutions.” She goes on to talk about finding common ground: “What if, instead of territorial boundaries, we find a common purpose and intentionally seek ways in which to communicate more productively to help each other make our daily lives better?” Good advice, both in the corporate world as well as for all of us personally.

Once upon a time, I might have envied her nomad way of life, but lately I have been enjoying sticking closer to home. Still, she wrote more recently: “It’s not enough to build great solutions. Without deep, ongoing engagement, opportunities fade, and loyalty weakens. A one-time transaction doesn’t sustain growth. A relationship does.” I agree completely.

I want to introduce you to one of St. Louis’ premier restaurants, Charlie Gitto’s. It has been around for decades and you can be sure of a great meal, with great service and a quiet place where you can hear your tablemates. So go on over to their website and check out their menu. I’ll wait while you take a look.

What don’t you see on their menu? Prices! Now lest you think that this is common among top-tier restaurants, I did a quick check and found many of their competitors have prices listed, some who charge even more than Charlie Gitto’s does.

My interior designer wife reminded me of another example. We have been to one of her lighting supplier stores. There are no printed prices on any of the items in their showroom. Instead, there are QR codes that you can scan for the retail prices. Imagine looking at a dozen lamps or whatnot: this gets tedious really quickly. Far easier to just bring up the Google pages.

This is not a new subject for me. I wrote about this back in 2011 when I said priceless is not a marketing strategy. Back then, I wrote that those vendors who don’t publish prices really are unsure about their pricing strategy, and so have instructed their PR firm or marcom team to just omit this information and see what the reaction is by potential customers and other related parties. Based on this free research, they will come back and adjust the Web pages and add the appropriate pricing.

Well, I was wrong. These priceless vendors never plan to publish anything publicly. Take a look at these two examples which are long on details on how their prices are calculated without providing any actual dollar amounts.

• Tines, which has this supposed pricing page and
• Google’s pricing page

Tines’ page shows you how many degrees of freedom a price depends on: depending on how you count, there are four basic tiers (one of which is free, kudos to them), and seven different add-on tools, and five different usage tiers and you get at least 140 different prices, and then a note saying that older customers are on a different pricing model. Yikes!

I was eventually able to squeeze out a range from Tines, but it took several emails. Another vendor initially refused to name their prices, when I published the article I had the wrong information, gleaned from some online information (which turned to be incorrect). They finally did come clean with the right schedule. Hopefully another lesson learned!

Now I realize that posting a fancy restaurant’s menu and posting a $500,000 or so enterprise security service are different things, but not really. What if when you came into the restaurant, and they presented you with a menu that had different prices for the following

• If you are going to pay cash, you get a slight discount, since they avoid the credit card processing fee (I have started to see more this situation).
• If you are going to occupy your table for more than 90 minutes, there will be an add-on per minute charge.
• If you made a reservation for a certain size party but show up with fewer diners, you will be hit with a surcharge.

You get the point.  Some restaurants are even charging in advance, when you make your reservation. Those are restaurants that aren’t getting my business.

When I first wrote about this situation, I had a lot of comments. One vendor told me they cleaned up their act and thanked me for my POV. One small step for vendorkind. But really folks: the harder you make it for your customers, the fewer customers you will have. And that is something really priceless.

I wrote this some time ago. Can you guess when?

So it is that time of year, when we think back on all of our past successes and failures. Here are the most notable PR blunders that we’ve seen in the year. We have removed the actual names of the offending parties, just to make it a more sporting game.

1. Berating the reporter for non-responsive emails. This includes: cc’ing my boss about my behavior, intimating that I was in bed with one of the client’s competitors, and USING ALL CAPS. Totally not cool. Focus on building a relationship with me and my colleagues.
2. Calling after emailing some news. See above about berating. Once is enough for contact. Twice is annoying. Thrice means you go to the back to the bus. I do look at my emails. Assume no response from me means I am not interested. Realize that every day I get dozens upon dozens of requests to “have the CEO brief you on this amazing trend.” Also, if you email multiple people here at my website, don’t expect any of them to answer. The more is not the merrier.
3. Stating this is the “first ever thing” when it most certainly isn’t. Don’t you think I would check? Shouldn’t you challenge your client to provide more details and specifics and you’ll find out they really aren’t the first. And don’t argue with me. If I don’t think it is the first, accept this and move on. We always have the last word.
4. Not answering a direct question for more information with specifics. I am on deadline. Seconds count. Get your ducks in a row before calling me. You would be amazed how many emails and press releases omit basic information, such as pricing. “We don’t publish pricing because we are a Web service and every deal is custom.” Still not an excuse.
5. Starting a conference call with more than three people on it: you (PR rep), me, the client is all that is needed. Actually, we don’t really need you on the call. But more than that isn’t going to end well. It is hard to ask a question when so many people are on a conference call. And speaking of which, don’t just read me a script either. Interact and ask me real questions about what I am interested in. Don’t know what I am interested in? Try reading my clips, and more than the one that the client is berating you for not appearing in too.
6. Insist on making it slide-by-slide through the entire 57 slide PPT deck. Three slides should be enough. Or none at all. See above. The less scripted your presentation, the more I will actually listen. Calls shouldn’t last more than 20 minutes.
7. Don’t schedule a Webex to show me slides without any demo, particularly after I said that I wanted to see a demo. Listen to me please. Better yet, give me an eval account to your client’s new whizbang Web service and I can try it out on my own and not tie up everyone’s time. If it really requires hand-holding, then perhaps it isn’t ready for the press to look at it either.
8. Don’t send me an analyst’s report without a URL where I can actually download it and read it. I don’t want your summary, if I am interested; I want to read the report. A link to a lead-gen capture page doesn’t count. Same goes for the press release: you would be amazed how many releases aren’t posted on the client’s website.
9. If you want me to do an embargo, play fair with all of my competitors. And be specific about times and dates. Yes, I can get confused sometimes. Put the expiration date information on each piece of correspondence, because sometimes I forget. Better yet, forget embargoes entirely. And understand that embargoes also complicate my ability to reference something that won’t appear on your client’s website until the due date. We like to actually check our outbound links before we post the article containing them.
10. Remember we have a comments/discussion forum for the following things that you are free and welcome to use:
    –Your client was not mentioned in my article, but does offer these amazing things and you want me to write a separate piece on them. Use the comments.
    — You would like me to make these additional points that I some how forget to mention in my article. Use the comments.
    –The CEO has a different take on things than I. S/he is entitled to that opinion, and welcome to post a comment.
    –You have this great case study about a customer using your client’s tech. Post a link to the website where you have more info.