Have You Noticed the Standard-Wording Template Used by Corporations & Government Agencies in Response to A Complaint (or A PR Disaster)?

It's such a standard formula, you know what it's going to say before you even open the letter or the email, right?

"We take customer service / your privacy / our (whatever) obligations seriously (blah blah)" . . . after they've just demonstrated in clear and present form that they absolutely  don't.

It's such a contemptuous gaslighting approach. Government agencies are usually the best at it.

This week, though, it was Qantas.

“We sincerely apologise to our customers and we recognise the uncertainty this will cause. Our customers trust us with their personal information and we take that responsibility seriously," ghost-wrote Qantas Group CEO Vanessa Hudson's PR agency.

The tired hackery of that standard line makes clear just how well past time it is that organisations adopt a more truthful and frank "Yes, we totally screwed up", honesty-is-the-best-policy approach regarding its responses and its communications.

Because until they do, they risk being fooled by their own PR.

And the problem risks being repeated . . . to some degree and at some time down the track. Why? Because there's also a certain arrogance in the weak "We're actually usually really perfect" attitude . . . and the arrogant are blind to their own faults.

Of course, though, in the case of a Government department, agency or Ministry (or local Council), it's usually (almost always, in fact) deliberate deflection. The standard "5 D's" formula.

And that's why - as you will read at the "5 Ds" article at the above link - I generally advise senior hiring executives from the private sector, to avoid - like the plague - hiring ex-bureaucrats. Because they're programmed to avoid responsibility for their screw-ups - and that's the most polite way of putting it, because - in their case - the "screw-up" often isn't so much a "screw-up" as an intentional act of working against the interests of the public they are meant to be "serving".

That brand of "service" isn't one you want permeating your culture. Believe me.