Steve Lee, APR
President and CEO

For many years now, public relations professionals have dreamed about and yearned for a way to communicate directly with special constituencies–employees, members, customers, suppliers and others who have direct and significant impact on an organization. The operative words are "communicate with," rather than the traditional "communicate to."

With the coming of the Internet and its digital technologies, the dream has come true. Now there is a way. Call them "intranets," "extranets" or "targeted Web sites." The label is unimportant. It's the capabilities that matter.

A case in point is the largest independently owned residential real estate firm in Texas and the 7th largest in the United States, Ebby Halliday, Realtors®, or just "Ebby" as it"s known to Texans.

Ebby needed to actively communicate with and provide services for more than 1,000 real estate agents in 26 offices throughout north Texas. The traditional paper-based methods of communicating were slow and costly. Blast e-mail distribution was an improvement, but it is effective only in communicating to, not providing services for the agents. Focus group interviews told us that Ebby agents really, really wanted an intranet–a special Web site devoted exclusively to their needs.

The result is "MyEbby," a private and protected intranet, which provides a myriad of services and functionality to the active real estate agent, including:

• The latest company and industry news
• Downloadable, specialized software
• Electronic greeting cards that can be sent to clients
• Links to dozens of helpful Web sites
• Guidelines for independent contractors
• Downloadable company logos and graphic art
• Detailed mortgage information
• A directory of residential services companies
• Local tax information
• A detailed company history
• An online "store" for company specialty items
• Customizable marketing flyers that can be printed on any color printer
• Scores of legal and other forms
• Calendars of training opportunities
• For more than 130 north Texas communities, information on schools, shopping, recreation, where to get driver licenses, where to pay utility deposits, etc.

Sprinkled throughout MyEbby are opportunities for feedback. Agents are encouraged to ask questions, ask for directions or voice their opinions. To spur this electronic interaction, when the site launched, it contained an online survey where the agents were asked to rank the usefulness and importance of each section of MyEbby and suggest new areas or functions.

Beyond facilitating communication between agents and the company, MyEbby sports a means for agents to communicate directly with other agents. An electronic bulletin board is provided where agents can post special properties they have to sell, share extraordinary opportunities for products or services or share lessons learned with service companies or individuals.

Be it internal audiences like employees or agents, or external groups like customers and shareholders, the use of two-way communications is crucial to a company's success, according to many business media and research organizations. But companies so used to communicating only "to" their important audiences aren't doing as well learning to communicate "with" these audiences. It seems to be harder than expected for these companies to accept and process incoming communications.

A recent study by the Gartner Group found that 100-percent of etailers failed to achieve rankings of "excellent" or even "good" customer service on the Web. Looking at the customer service of the top 50 online consumer etail sites, 23-percent were rated as average, 73-percent were considered fair, and 4-percent were ranked as poor.

CRM, Customer Relationship Management, which received a lot of the hot corporate buzz this past year, is proving slow to show results. In fact, in a recent CIO conference, less than one percent of the companies who have installed significant CRM infrastructure say they have realized the gains they expected. That's not to say that CRM initiatives are not worthwhile, they are. But, it does indicate that corporations may be expecting CRM to be a quick fix for the better handling of customers and other important audiences.

Think about it. If companies are doing a poor job handling two-way communications with customers, where budget and attention to solve a problem is usually plentiful, how ignored are smaller, key audiences like employees, media and shareholders? Even some public relations pros balk at the suggestion that media representatives, brokers, financial analysts and others should be able to use Web sites to provide feedback and ask questions. Some of them act as if the "dream come true" is more of a nightmare than a dream fulfilled.

If not via your Web sites, then where will your important audiences go to get their questions and problems answered? Maybe at your competitor's Web site?

Be careful what you wish for; you might get it.