Client Servicing- Performance or Relationships?
By Editor on May 23, 2006 in clientservicing, industry
Media relations in the Public Relations India profession has become a complicated topic today. It’s getting redefined everyday, and the debate on relationship v/s content is ever famous. One interesting aspect is that we can raise the same question in Client Servicing.
We know that we as PR people need to give unbiased opinion to our clients- what will get into the news and what will not. What PR can achieve and what are its limitations. Our output at the end of the month should define our monthly retainer fee. After all, the client has a business to run and he expects value from us. This is the ideal scenario.
Practically it’s slightly different today in the great India Public Relations industry, or may be elsewhere in other countries too. Clients don’t necessarily come on the agency credential, but on whether the agency CEO knows someone who knows the client. The whole industry is run on referrals, and alliances. Some agencies get particular accounts because they have global affiliates who is turn handle the global PR of that particular client.
Also, client servicing is majorly influenced by the agency-client equation. Or if you share good vibes with the key people at your clients’ company. That’s why PR agencies map clients and try to figure out who got the shots in their clients’ organizations, the moment they get any new account. Anyway, they say, you are going to get almost the same results from any agency- big or small.
We have heard enough stories about the Corporate Communications Manager of a company favoring another PR agency, but couldn’t sack the present one because his CEO is pally with the latter.
But are all this going on rightly? Are we suppressing our abilities due to all these influences? I guess we couldn’t have expected much- after all PR is part of the corporate world, and corporate politics is omni present.
On the other hand, people ask how long are your clients going to be with you just becuse you could share a bottle of wine with them?
I suppose, as the industry matures, we will grow more into performance oriented industry than being relationship oriented. These theories above may not necessarily be true but these are alternate thinkings that could be in everybody’s mind even if not spoken about openly.
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On May 24, 2006, SJ said:
Hi Hobbit,
My reply to this is bound to have similarities with yesterday’s reply. I do believe that although relationships go a long way even with a client-agency situation, in the end if the agency is a non-performer, it will be the corp comm person’s neck on the line out there.
On May 24, 2006, sj said:
In the end its all about results. No matter how good your relationship is,if you fail to deliver you will get the boot.
On May 24, 2006, Anonymous said:
well India has become a mediate country still with it’s poor but they are a striving country its self from british rule so I feel some one has to pick up the tab for this and it become we there has been so many jobs lost jobs the united states in recent yrs going to india and china tiwan that still we still have ways to buy our Amrican asian products that are shipped cheaply over here American asian products means that send over across what was our American companies that we worked for that Now Asians are making to have us buy from them.what was from american companies who was here before they went across before all who lost there jobs in America.
when one went to the W.T.O in Washington State to fight on there actions of world trade issues here I feel these ppl that who lost there jobs had a right to express there to American jobs t hat was lost from American manufactures who they worked for 30 yrs for textiles and making shoes or the steel mills paper manufacter these were import to American sociaty