I  joke about the want ads I saw back in the 80s when I was looking for my first job in PR:  “Work directly with customers, use your excellent public relations skills.”

As a profession, PR was coming into its own back in the 80s, building a reputation for providing quality consulting to senior management on issues of corporate branding and consumer mind share. We carefully crafted messages in keeping with our client’s goals, communicated these messages via print and broadcast media gatekeepers and measured success by evaluating how prevalent those messages were in resulting clippings. So the idea that public relations had anything to do with dealing directly with the public was a little silly.

We’ve now entered a new era, where customers drive brand reputation. Examples are everywhere… the BP Oil spill being the most visible at the moment.

But its not just multinational corporations that need to monitor their corporate reputation online. I recently had one of the worst customer service experiences of my life at a Bonsall’s Foot Solutions, a specialty shoe store here in San Jose.  I’ve chronicled the whole story, and I’m continuing updates as I wait for my refund to be processed. The CEO was obviously monitoring Yelp! because he responded to me via personal email about 4 hours after I posted my review there, linking to my blog. I’ve got to hand it to him for that.

But he’s not out of the woods by any means. He’s got a franchise business with 250 stores, and some of those stores seem to be running afoul of his intended brand identity.

But reputation is everything. Perhaps he should read my friend Micah Solomon’s book “Exceptional Service, Exceptional Profit.” Micah built is business, Oasis Disc Manufacturing, from a basement enterprise funded with his personal credit card to one of the leading sources for high quality CD and DVD manufacturing for the music industry and corporate marketing as well. I can personally vouch for the dedication to customer service demonstrated by every person I came in contact with at Oasis, as they manufactured our CD Any Doorway Will Do.

Corporate culture always starts at the top. In the case of Oasis, I know that’s true. Micah is a straight up guy who wants to do the best job for you that he can, and that permeates throughout Oasis. I don’t know Foot Solutions CEO Ray Margiano, except for our brief email exchange yesterday. But it seems like his heart’s in the right place.

I hope he can turn his brand reputation issues around. He certainly seems to understand that thought he has a “PR problem,” it has to be genuinely solved by turning around the poor business practices demonstrated by these franchises – not by hiring someone to attempt a spin campaign to change public opinion. And that’s a great start.