EuroTunnel 'almost on track with customer relations' shock

I'm a right grumpy git about customer service. And other things, but particularly customer service.

So EuroTunnel should get a small medal after the recent fire. I asked for a refund after being told that the work to repait the damage meant a restricted service and certain delays.

I got the automated email back saying I'd be refunded. I (a bit rudely, admittedly) wrote back asking whether the refund would credit my account within a week, or whether it might take a period of several months.

Then I got this email back. OK, no firm commitment but at least they wrote back as I hadn't expected a response. I've responded asking for clarification on what "a few" means of course.

Dear Mr Earl,
Thank you for your email.
Due to the number of refunds issued after the suspension in our service it will take somewhat longer for your refund to be issued, we currently estimate it can indeed take a few weeks. Please accept our apologies for the inconvenience caused by this.

Kind regards Eurotunnel Sales Support Team

PLEASE INCLUDE YOUR ORIGINAL E-MAIL WITH ANY REPLYSales Support Team Eurotunnel Group UK Terminal Ashford Road Folkestone Kent CT18 8XX E-Mail. sales.support@Eurotunnel.com < mailto:sales.support@Eurotunnel.com>(RL)

It's all bad news: so cheer yourself up Zimbabwe-style

Blimey.

I take a week off and the whole country seems to have gone to sh&t. And I thought the Calais docks on the way back from holiday was depressing enough.

A quick scan of the BBC's business news today reveals little to smile about. All negative news stories, except one. Zimbabwe is issuing new bank notes, again, to deal with its 11.2 million per cent inflation rate. I'm not suggesting this is good news, far from it for the people who have to live with the reality each day.

Apparently the new notes help overcome the problem of computers and tills not being able to cope with the amount of zeros when totting up.

But look on the bright side - this all means that any Brits daunted by our economic woes can at least cheer themselves up by buying one of the outgoing 100 billion dollar notes off eBay. And the current bid is less than a quid.

More wine-ing

No posts from me for a while as I'm in France tasting the vino.

Only out of action for a week though, which is better than can be said for the poor Large Hadron Collider.

Bad week/good week?

Not been the cheeriest week for news has it?

Technology PRs should look on the bright side though. While there will inevitably be some disruption to the IT and telecoms sectors caused by the turmoil, the change in the markets will probably create as many opportunities as it scuppers. And perhaps create even more.

I was talking to a client yesterday who says the level of M&A activity that the whalloping of share prices is already creating will mean pressures on IT teams that cause a flurry of activity, and technology spending. It's not like the last economic pinch, where capital expenditure froze over for a while. Instead, change means IT change.

Look at the size of mergers in the offing: EDF and British Energy, Barclays picking over Lehmans, the horse and the annoying singing people. People there will be impacted no doubt and that is extremely unfortunate, but IT should be in a position of relative strength.

Home, alone

Next time you are working from home, remember one thing above all others - the Government is doing absolutely sod all to help you.

With fuel prices ridiculously high, business competitiveness at a premium and a looming 'soft' recession, surely the flexibility and other benefits of working from home should be supported by the powers that be?

Not a bit of it. Instead, it taxes home broadband use as a personal benefit. Sure, it's impossible to show what percentage of home broadband is for personal versus business use if your employer pays for it. But the Government should be supporting home working, not dissuading it.

Rainier PR has just been billed by HMRC for back tax owing on employees' use of home broadband, over a period of several years. It's not a huge amount, but a slap in the face for a company that has won awards for its progressive approach to home working.

Wise up Gordo. Brits hate commuting and the media reckons they don't like you either. At least you have the power to change one of those factors.

Lehmans battered/other banks crumbling - good time to start a business

I woke this morning to the cheery Monday morning news that, as expected over the weekend, Lehman Brothers has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

Those who've been in tech PR for a while will recall Chapter 11 from the tech bust of 2001 - it was all the rage back then, with clients extending courteous invitations to agencies to "be our strategic partner through the Chapter 11 process". No thanks mate we thought, but actually in many cases it gave businesses the ability to stabilise from a heady period of economic boom as a more resilient, sucessful operation.

So Chapter 11 may not be all that bad: a lifeboat for sure, but a way to weed out the wobbly bits.

And to provide further Monday cheer, the UK has today been named the sixth best place in the world to start a business. Yes money is tight, yes your bank may not be there when you turn up cap in hand, but many of the best businesses are conceived from the depths of recession.

Tech PR seems to be holding its own in this country, but equally several agencies have been laying people off recently. It's not a time for the faint-hearted, but my guess is that the strong will shine through and we'll see several hot tech PR start-ups born over the next year that become the next generation of challengers.

And no this is not a subliminal plug for something I'm starting on the side.

The A to E of B2B (think DNA, BTW)

It’s a bit rich to be writing on a PR blog that a lot of approaches to doing digital PR border on farcical.

But that’s how I see it. PR agencies are paranoid about missing the boat (some probably have). It strikes me that a lot of them have tried to jump onto what they see as a digital PR bandwagon simply by launching a digital team.

I’d love to have a real pop at that, but it’s not really fair. Rather, the point is that the ability for PRs to get to grips with increasingly diverse, typically digital media forms should be in their professional DNA, not bolted onto the side of an old school agency team.

Doing that is a bit like confessing that the rest of your staff are out of touch with the way that PR is having to change.

Anyway, don’t just read me banging on about this, there’s far more proficient matter in Rainier PR’s new eBook, the definitive 20,000 words on how business-to-business PR is addressing this shift today, and what it needs to do to address the future.

I might point out that it was written by a team drawn from the four corners of Rainier PR and its sister agency Lighthouse PR, not a bolt-on team of digital specialists kept in a pen at one side of the office. Oh, I just did.

There’s even a chapter from me about the legal implications of PR programmes for diversified, fast-moving media. Defamation, slander, subjudicy, stuff like that.

I'd better double-check those previous blog posts pronto.

Bang on (offline)

More evidence to bolster my theory that the best headlines remain in the print media and when news is transposed online, the potency goes out of the window.

Today's Financial Times uses 'Up and atom' for a front page pic story on yesterday's CERN proton test success. Genius. Yet online it doesn't feature.

Headline-writing is a slightly different skill online, but it still needs the sales punch. I reckon the reach of online news and number of times a headline is repeated as the story is touted means headline creativity is an even more important PR skill in the digital age.

Shame then that a lot of technology press releases still seem to suffer from some of the blandest headlines ever created.

Bang for buck?

We're still here then.

Despite morbid fears of armageddon or lasting side effects, the big switch-on of the Large Hadron (careful not to commit a typo there..) Collider (LHC) experimental machine took place today deep beneath the Franco Swiss border.

The world didn't end this morning, and the planet may have gained a way of finally discovering how life allegedly began - how the big bang happened (if the scientists are right of course). Hopefully without the opening of black holes left, right and centre.

Google is certainly glorifying it today.

The project is being run by CERN, the research institution where the world wide web was born.

The thing is, all the publicity has focused on the enormity of the project and the safety fears, but very little has questioned what would happen if it fails, and what hurdles it faces (other than avoiding global destruction of course).

Sure, that's quite a negative perspective and wouldn't have helped NASA in the 60s, but what if this £5 billion experiment doesn't deliver the goods with a clear conclusion? The early signs are promising, but the project is apparently now four times over budget, big loans have been secured for it and many countries have committed to funding it.

The point is this: PR is going to be fundamental to whether it's seen as a success, and whether it can continue on its path if the world's biggest-ever physics experiment gets the hiccups. Otherwise the LHC may be a tougher sell than PR to a sales director.

Despite what are pretty understated press releases on the topic, at least the media seems to be giving it a fair shout. An earlier story in today's Metro cited an expert saying anyone who says it will cause black holes is a "tw&t".

Plus apparent CERN staffers are doing the rounds on You Tube with a LHC rap. Part of the official CERN PR strategy? Hmm.

Grin and bear it

I am not going to add even further (insignificant) fuel to the fire of the Republican Party's PR this week. But suffice to say Rainier PR is drawing up a shopping list in lieu of a potential office move and a whacking great scary-looking bearskin to drape along the back of a sofa in reception is not on it.

But I was interested to see it has been a bad week for poor grizzlies media-wise. The military has apparently gone cold on the idea of using fake fur for a new range of bearskin hats and will instead explore the alternatives, with Stella McCartney and Vivienne Westwood allegedly being considered for design input.

True lies?

After months of criticism, Management Today has finally really gone for Alistair Darling - and reckons he needs PR advisors telling him to cushion the truth, as his honestly policy is screwing the economy.

Journalists practically begging politicians to fib? It's absolutley shocking, particularly given that the media always reports a complete and unpointed version of the truth, with no agenda whatsoever. Well, apart from all that Helen Mirren (though she is cool) nonsense in Metro today, which was nothing but a blatant excuse to stick HM The Queen and drugs into the same headline.

But back to Darling. Yes, whatever PR advice he is getting currently seems warped. But surely when the man supposedly managing the economy starts making open confessions about its state when most of the electorate would rather be painted a rosier picture it's time to go back to the drawing board on how PR is used in politics?

Has the age of the spin doctor finally been ended by what may well turn out to be its sickest patient?

War on grammar erosion: starter for 10

Tesco has pulled off a PR coup using one of my very favourite things - grammar.

Apparently signs at its express checkouts are being changed to 'up to 10 items' to overcome the debate surrounding whether 'less' or 'fewer' is the correct English.

Smart move and a good Sunday for Monday story. Personally I'd like to see the issue confronted head-on, with the correct English displayed and a precis of the issue in hand. Might be difficult to fit onto the signs though.

But the big retailers do seem to be getting better at grammar. Several recent sales promotions have referenced 'more than xx reductions in store' rather than 'over xx reductions'.

Plus the BBC has, for several years now, been ending its weather bulletins with "and that's the weather wherever you are" rather than "wherever you live", so acknowledging the rise of a more transient population (and doing its bit for pedanticism).

Bring it on.