Posts

Certainly rattling their share holders! Bet it will be next months virtual chip wrappers though as the next big company crisis kicks off 

I think it's time for a camera crew to start following you round, it would be the best fly on the wall documentary on the telly 

Always hard when it's family, but there's normally two sides to every story. Maybe there was an actual reason, maybe its a qualification thing, but at the very least she should be told why and have some feedback/appraisal. As Barney says, if I was her I would be talking to her line manager, or booking a meeting.

If there's no answer or reason given, might be worth having a quiet chat with her UNISON rep, even if it's just advice. After so long in the role, it must seem a very raw deal if it's offered to another team member, without even the courtesy of anyone explaining why. 

I don't there are many people on the planet that haven't heard about the cyber attack on TalkTalk.

The trouble is with these stories, they tend to get whipped up into a frenzy and analysed to death by "security experts"by in our 24 hour news hungry culture. Then you have the corporate spin as the company goes into full reputation management mode, telling us it's not as bad as the media are making it. 

Somewhere in the middle is the truth, which must be frustrating and worrying if you are a customer.

But as this incident will be generating oodles of Google content (this forum post being one of them), how do TalkTalk ensure they get their story out and stay above the news websites?

By an adwords campaign  What a superb idea. Then for extra reassurance, links to a You Tube video so you can hear the news from the Boss lady herself, rather than the BBC or Sky.

Now I thought she came across quite well, she explained the hack was on the public website which doesn't store all the financial information or complete card numbers. 

Then again, there seems to be a few thumbs down on her You Tube video which says others are not so convinced!

But in 15 hours of the video being online, it has generated 99,162 views, so it's been seen by a lot of people. What those people think of it is a different story, but at least they have heard the official line and can now draw their own conclusions.

There is an action list for any TalkTalk customers, including access to a free credit reporting service: help2.talktalk.co.uk/oct22incident

When it comes to reputation management, or damage limitation, getting your story and the facts out is key, before its spun by competitors or armchair analysts. No doubt it's been done before, but it's the first time I've seen a PPC campaign being used as a pre-emptive strike to target your own customers.

Be interesting to see how they weather the storm and, what or if anything comes out about how they could have mitigated against the attack or how they put safeguards in for the future.

I don't think I'd make too many assurances about not happening again in case the site gets compromised again  At least it's taken the pressure of VW for 5 minutes 

If you are starting out, the easiest way to start getting facebook likes is to like other pages and see if they like youback, join like schemes, ie put your business page on a like ladder thread. Means you get likes from real people. 

Don't do it too much, and dont be tempted to buy fake likes or followers, thats a short cut too far and a risky strategy. 

Obviously the correct way is create engaging posts and let people like you naturally.

One trick we do on our twitter page is have an auto response that says like our FB page and we willlike you back.

Twitter wise its down to followers. Old tricks are to follow your competitors followers, and a proportion will follow back.

But social media is all about being social and regular posting. Post regular decent posts, make use of hashtags, if people like what you are saying, they will follow you, simples 

My missus is a yahoo fan, no idea why. Maybe its on the way back? 

Currently sat in the office with no net as Mr BT has his spanners out, so running on iphones 

Just realised you can't access admin from the mobile, so shall attend to a couple of dodgy posts as soon aswe come back on line!

<edit - we have arrived in the 21st century! 83Mb/s download and 23Mb/s upload - huzzah! >

That's interesting feedback. I remember awhile ago I tried a Bing PPC campaign, the conversions were really cheap, a lot cheaper than Google PPC, but we could never spend our budget! 

Maybe time to try it again

Our steam powered internet connection to the office is finally being upgraded to fibre next week, after the information super highway which started in the 1990's, finally made it Alcester! We are very excited, imagine it, the thought of being able to run more than 1 internet browser at  a time, or transfer files bigger than 2KB 

So with our super duper warp speed access, I thought maybe it was time to look at phones and the Voice over IP revolution. 

On paper, it looks like we could halve our quarterly bills, from line rental and call costs by moving to BT Cloud Phones. But the bit I'm worried about is call quality. I've spoken to some people on VOIP and there is such a delay that it feels like I'm talking to Australia rather than someone about 30 miles away.

Also there is the hassle of current numbers, which I assume you would lose, and have to source new ones, so things like stationary, marketing materials, biz cards etc need changing.

Has anyone moved over to VOIP or a big advocate of it? Or anyone had any horror stories I need to be aware of?

Are VOIP phones just like normal landline ones? (other than plugging into a network port rather than a phone one) ie same sort of functionality?

Interesting story on the beeb this morning:

After an 18 month inquiry, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has stopped short of recommending a break up of the banks.

But it said customers should be prompted to change providers if their branch closes or they are overcharged.

The CMA concluded that the current market is not working competitively.

It said that the majority of consumers - 57% - have stayed with their provider for more than 10 years.

And 37% have had their accounts for more than 20 years.

Source: BBC

So the analysis is we don't change banks often enough, and if we did the average customer could save £70 a year.

Is it just me that isn't blown away with that number? Anyone who has changed banks in the past will know it rarely goes smoothly and there is always a mopping up exercise to catch the things the automatic switching service has missed, unless things have drastically changed since the last time I did it about 8 years ago.

It seems a lot of hassle to save an average of £5.80 a month, unlike say changing energy providers. Then put a business spin on it, you'll need to change paperwork, invoice docs, quotations, update accounts packages etc etc.

Has anyone shopped around and changed banks recently either personal or business banking? Was it smooth and straightforward or was there any hassle factor? Most importantly, was it worth it, did you make a significant saving/gain benefits versus time/hassle factor?