Not so long ago, twittering was only done by elderly ladies drinking tea with their next door neighbors. These days twitter and similar social networking sites like Facebook have become an international obsession among the young and the restless. Which is very good apart from recent reports that state that twittering or facebooking is costing UK businesses close to one and half billion pounds in the last twelve months. How someone managed to come up with such a figure remains to be seen, but it seems that many of the younger employees of the UK financial juggernauts are spending hours interacting socially online instead of doing their jobs properly.

Tweeter lovers, in their defence, hasten to point out a particular anomaly. That is while even the largest UK companies are employing people to investigate the huge marketing possibilities that social networking sites generate especially among the less debt burdened, mortgage free sector of society, namely the under thirties, the same people are actively discouraging them from using the same facilities. The problem is more complex, as the traditional methods used to block employees from visiting certain sites is no longer viable i.e. blocking them. Nowadays, just about any young surfer worth their salt has his own mobile phone on which they can twitter all day long with nobody knowing the difference.

In a recent survey carried out among 1600 young people employed in private sector who were under the age of thirty, 57 percent of them admitted that they spent an average of 8 minutes a day on these sites, during work hours. While this may sound petty, when taken to its maximum possibility, the equation means that £1.35 billion pounds of employer’s time is being twittered down the toilet.

In addition, some of the UK’s major retailers and service providers have been forced to deal with customer complaints after they discovered that company employees were twittering abusive messages, usually about their appearance. How they discovered this abuse remains unknown.

Either way, employers and employees will be required to find some common ground in dealing with the issue of twittering in the workplace. In the meantime, more than three quarters of the people who took part in the survey had not been issued with specific guidelines regarding the use of Twitter and Facebook.

financial

• Finding Success With Affiliate Marketing On Twitter As an online business, you know how much traffic you...
• Will StumbleUpon Work for Your Corporate Blog? If you are not familiar with the site called StumbleUpon,...
• Succeed With These Twitter Marketing Techniques Twitter is now used by many online marketers and is...

Tags: British Economy, Economy, Employment, facebook, Financial News, marketing, Money, social networking, twitter, twittering, UK businesses, UK Economy

UK businesses that operate a call centre that does not meet sufficient standards could be harming their reputation instead of enhancing it. In recession hit Britain it is becoming increasingly apparent that the public at large are not prepared to accept standards of customer service that do not answer their requirements, both in terms of professional knowledge or levels of politeness.

Recent research has shown that around fifty percent of UK consumers in the 25-50 age brackets, who represent a large proportion of the spending power in the UK these days, are taking their business elsewhere rather than having to deal with the levels of inefficiency and lack of courtesy that they have encountered. And even more potentially damaging for UK companies whose customer service centres leave a lot to be desired, is that bad news travels fast. Consumers who have had a negative customer service experience are very inclined to spread the news, and fast.

The new research, carried out by a leading market research company, was implemented to coincide with the launch of the UK’s biggest ever industry-wide mystery shopping study to discover the standards set by the country’s customer service centres. The initiative was planned to recognize the professional levels required and to attempt to raise customer service standards across the industry.

The growing importance of word of mouth recommendations was highlighted by the research, particularly amongst younger consumers, with 51% of 16-24 year olds saying they would definitely tell someone about a negative call centre experience, compared to 38% of 45-54 year olds.

The research was designed to pinpoint the most important aspects of customer service that call centre could stand or fail on. They ran as follows:

• Friendly agents were seen as the most important aspect by 53% of consumers.
• Call response time were seen as the most important aspect by 57% of consumers.
• Agents with knowledge of the company’s products as well as their services were seen as the most important aspect by 49% of consumers.

financial

• What is an SMS White Label Program? An SMS white label program is the newest way for...
• Vitamin C: Researches, Benefits, Usage Vitamin C or Ascorbic Acid "We're conducting research projects that...
• Unbeatablesale.com Our company, UnbeatableSale.com, Inc. is a privately held direct marketing...

Tags: British Economy, call centres, customer service, Economics, market research, Recession, Retail, UK businesses, UK consumers, UK Economy, UK Recession

The signs are definitely there: Germany and France have already done it, even Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Thailand. The US is still in it, yet in name only. And the UK will be following not long after. To where?

If you haven’t already guessed, the answer is out of recession.

So what happens in post-recession Britain? Have we learned our lessons? Will the man in the street work longer hours, save up to buy that new 42" plasma, that Mediterranean holiday or to upgrade the family car? Or will he fall back into credit euphoria? Will UK businesses cut costs to build up their cash reserves or will they revert to being cash loan and overdraft junkies like before?

And the most leading question of them all is, will the banks be responsible and, if they succeed in becoming autonomous, will they once again become the profit-hungry, bonus-driven monsters that played a significant part in almost bringing the UK economy to total meltdown?

If there is a precedent to prevent the disasters of the first decade of the 21st century ever happening again then it is written in America’s 1933 Glass-Steagall Act. The act was drawn up following the Wall Street Crash that sparked one of the greatest depressions the world has ever known. One of the act’s principle provisions was to disallow risky investment banking and to channel bank funds and lending into the safer realms of retail banking, which the sort the UK public needs to finance the model life style that they deserve: everyday needs.

UK financial analysts hasten to point out that if such a system had been in place from around 2001 onwards, when the profit chasing was at full steam, the checks and balances would have prevented the UK banks from going as far over the top as they did. They would have been unable to hold the UK government to ransom and force the public to become reluctant shareholders in their business. Instead, the British public could have stood back and watched some of the more rickety financial institutions go to the wall, and without too many tears being shed in the process.

• Ceramic Piggy Banks Antiques -> Decorative Arts -> Ceramics, Porcelain Ceramic piggy banks...
• ShopSafe: Bank of America's One Redeeming Quality There are plenty of things not to like about Bank...
• Consumers to Banks: Take this Card and Shove it Consumers are unhappy with their banks. No surprise there. What...

Tags: Banking, British Economy, British Pound, Credit, Debt, Economy, Financial News, Glass-Steagall Act, Money Management, negative equity, Overdraft, post-recession Britain, Recession, UK Banks, UK businesses, UK Economy, UK government, Wall Street Crash