Welcome to another week and we are kicking off our Christmas a little early with the first of our festive bashes tomorrow with the Birmingham Press Club.
It's being held at the Studio in Cannon Street,
Birmingham. And favourite comedian and panto star Joe Pasquale will be the guest speaker. Oh! yes, he will!
One of the core reasons we're doing this is to ensure that we make some noise about the forthcoming Midlands Media Awards which are set launch in the New Year.
We are busy with the website and preparations for the 2014 Awards including the appointment of judges, starting to talk to sponsors and generally getting everything in order to make this the best Midlands Media Awards ever.
There is still a little time to make a difference to the awards with your suggestions on categories for next year, so please email Shannon if you think we are missing any - we can't promise to include them but welcome your views.
In other news this week our long awaited move looks like it's finally here with BT finally getting their act into gear with phones lines, broadband and a spangly sparkling new telephone system. Whilst we'll leave our big, formal announcement (address, phone number etc) until next week, the issue with phones has been a bit of a pain and it made us wonder just who else out there has had similar experiences, or indeed worse ones to make us feel slightly better.
We think the following is a completely made up load of baloney, unless the Ribrock Plaza has changed its name, but even so, the moral of the story is quite a good one and classically demonstrates that the bigger companies should always listen and more importantly, learn...
Leola Starling of Ribrock, Tenn., had a serious telephone problem. But unlike most people she did something about it.
The brand-new $10 million Ribrock Plaza Motel opened nearby and had acquired almost the same telephone number as Leola.
From the moment the motel opened, Leola was besieged by calls not for
her. Since she had the same phone number for years, she felt that she
had a case to persuade the motel management to change its number.
Naturally, the management refused claiming that it could not change its stationery.
The phone company was not helpful, either. A number was a number, and
just because a customer was getting someone else's calls 24 hours a day
didn't make it responsible. After her pleas fell on deaf ears, Leola
decided to take matters into her own hands.
At 9 o'clock the phone rang. Someone from Memphis was calling the motel
and asked for a room for the following Tuesday. Leoloa said, "No
problem. How many nights?"
A few hours later Dallas checked in. A secretary wanted a suite with two
bedrooms for a week. Emboldened, Leola said the Presidential Suite on
the 10th floor was available for $600 a night. The secretary said that
she would take it and asked if the hotel wanted a deposit. "No, that
won't be necessary," Leola said. "We trust you."
The next day was a busy one for Leola. In the morning, she booked an
electric appliance manufacturers' convention for Memorial Day weekend, a
college prom and a reunion of the 82nd Airborne veterans from World War
II.
She turned on her answering machine during lunchtime so that she could
watch her favourite soap opera, but her biggest challenge came in the
afternoon when a mother called to book the ballroom for her daughter's
wedding in June.
Leola assured the woman that it would be no problem and asked if she
would be providing the flowers or did she want the hotel to take care of
it. The mother said that she would prefer the hotel to handle the
floral arrangements. Then the question of valet parking came up. Once
again Leola was helpful. "There's no charge for valet parking, but we
always recommend that the client tips the drivers."
Within a few months, the Ribrock Plaza Motel was a disaster area. People kept showing up for weddings, bar mitzvahs, and Sweet Sixteen parties and were all told there were no such events.
Leola had her final revenge when she read in the local paper that the
motel might go bankrupt. Her phone rang, and an executive from Marriott
said, "We're prepared to offer you $200,000 for the motel."
Leola replied. "We'll take it, but only if you change the telephone number."
Of course, on the flip side we feel fairly certain that a lot of call centres and customer care lines also have to put up with rude or daft people who call for a variety of reasons so we'll put our own personal phone logistics down to experience!
However, we couldn't resist listing some of the best ones here, and you have to feel very sorry indeed for the telephone operators...
A customer threatened to escalate his complaint, adamant that his phone
should have withstood a full wash cycle. The label sewn to his jacket
pocket clearly stated that the pocket was “fully waterproof”.
A utilities company received a call from a customer complaining about
the exceptionally high quality of customer service. It was suggested
that less money was spent on staff training and the savings put to
reducing customer bills.
And finally, an internal help desk received a call from a user complaining that she
could only view her monitor correctly if she lay her head on her desk.
Once the monitor was rotated by the support team, the problem was
solved.
That's it for this week, please check in next week for our big new Cloud 9 Event Management contact details....!
It's been a very busy year in which we have delivered over a dozen different award ceremonies, a couple of conferences, several promotional events and delivered venue finding solutions for a range of client activity.
We've been all over the UK with events in Birmingham, Bristol, Derby, Edinburgh, Leeds, London, Manchester, Newcastle,Nottingham, Sheffield and even Thetford to name a few.
We've won a couple of competitions from some of our lovely venues and suppliers including overnight stays in hotels, photo shoots and a weekly cupcake delivery.
But perhaps the biggest news this year has been our move to new offices, which we only just managed last week after months of planning and delays (please note our new contact details*) and to kick start 2014 we'll also have a lovely new website.
