Since I try always to see the good side of things ("try" being the operative word), this incident helped me to sharpen my notions of what good and bad pr actually are, and the razor-thin margin that exists between a good experience and a relationship-ending one. Here are a few points I'd like to pass along:
Though we in pr are all stretched as thin as bigfoot's toothpaste tube, we have to slow down when talking to our clients. We have to treat them as though each were our only customer, and that holds true for everyone from small start-ups to massive corporations. More specifically, what I mean is this: don't be typing an email while talking to client #46 on the phone, don't be cueing up a new radio station on Pandora, don't be pounding out a tweet about a new foursquare feature so you can beat supertweeterx to the punch: none of it.
Point #1: The Tone of Your Voice Matters
When the client is on the phone, the spotlight is on them. Try as hard as you can not to be distracted, and certainly don't make them feel like they're eating up precious time that you could be devoting to other clients.
How the cab driver screwed up Point #1:
A little background: I went to the hospital a week ago. Without giving a lot of details, someone related to me had had an accident (nothing serious, thank goodness), and I was picking them up from the ER. So I called a cab. People call cabs so often from this ER that they have a red phone bolted to the wall that, when you pick it up, dials directly to the taxi company (I won't name names because I've had lots of other good experiences with them).
After I gave my name to the taxi co. and arranged for a cab to pick me up, I walked to the waiting room lobby, where I saw a few other people lined up, waiting for a taxi. One of these people, an elderly woman with a walker and accompanied by an assistant, told me she'd been waiting for 45 minutes for a cab! (Ok, this is actually screw up #1 - don't make people at a hospital wait 45 minutes for your bloody cabs). The ER receptionist said that she'd called four times on behalf of the lady, and no cabs had shown up. Suddenly, I saw a cab pull up to the wrong entrance, and two kids hopped in the cab, which quickly sped away. Obviously, the kids had stolen the lady's ride.
Fuming, I walked outside with the old woman (for whom the ER receptionist called another cab) and stood with her, hoping a taxi would come. And then one did. Mine. I walked up to it, verified with the driver that he was there for me. He nodded, and at that moment, I did something that probably a million other cab riders have done over the long, storied history of taxis: I volunteered to give it up so the old lady could have it.
Cue Twilight Zone music.
With a tone not unlike the drill sergeant in "Full Metal Jacket", with eyes like blow gun darts, the driver yelled at me, saying, "No! I am here for you. I cannot take her. I must take you!"
Monday Morning quarterbacking though this may be, I see at least two huge errors here worth noting: 1.) Never, ever, ever ever ever ever yell at a client. Did I mention "ever"? and 2.) The driver reacted as nimbly to the changing events on the ground as an elephant on Xanax, and I got the feeling - judging by the way he kept looking at his dashboard computer thingy and consulting his watch - that I was jeopardizing other fares by holding Super
Cabbie of the Century there, arguing with him.
The point is this: stay professional and always be in charge: when the client (in this situation, me) sees you freak out, he will ascribe this freaking-out nature to your whole business.
Point #2 - Instant Karma's Gonna Get You
Always act like the pr police are standing right behind you, just waiting for you to screw up. This is especially important for us freelancers who don't have a dreaded boss breathing icy tendrils of paranoia down our neck. Sure, you may have had a long day; sure, the blood vessels in your head may be belching out arias of headache-inducing mania, but you have to be patient with everyone.
How the cab driver punched karma in the face and took its lunch money:
After I repeated my proposition a few more times, each time feeling the steely rebuff of the world's most stubborn cabbie (he never did articulate clearly why he couldn't take the woman home instead of me; he kept blabbering about rules and some arcane liability nonsense), I grew fed-up and finally slammed the door in his face, cutting off his senseless monologue mid-sentence. He peeled out, leaving the elderly woman, her assistant, and me in the dust. "Hahahaha!" I could almost hear him cackling gleefully. "I showed them how in charge I am!"
Ah, poor, misdirected cab driver man. Little did you know that also standing nearby in the parking lot, hanging back in the shadows so she could take in every syllable of our exchange, was a woman (I'm still not totally sure why she was there) whose husband is a dispatcher for the same cab company (I mean: tell me karma doesn't exist). She walked over to me and said that she'd noted the cab's license plate number and had already called her husband to tell her about all she'd seen. Her husband assured her that he would report the cab driver to management.
Will I boycott this particular cab company? Probably not, since they have a monopoly in my area (sigh). But I look at them with less regard than I used to, and that matters. What happens if a competitor pops up? Will I be willing to try them out? You bet I will. And I'll even be willing to give them more than one opportunity to impress me. And, just to be safe, I'll make sure to befriend a relative of one of their dispatchers.
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