Billing mistakes earn TalkTalk £3 million fine

An IT failure has resulted in TalkTalk and its subsidiary Tiscali being hit with a £3 million fine, after the communications regulator Ofcom found the error meant that some customers were charged for unused services.

The regulator gave TalkTalk until December 2010 to rectify the problem - caused by a failure to correctly integrate Tiscali customer details into its system - however almost 3000 customers still received inaccurate bills between this date and March 2011.

The resulting fine could have been far higher - Ofcom can levy up to 10 per cent of a offending business’ turnover - but the regulator took into consideration TalkTalk paying compensation of £2.5 million, and reducing complaint calls by 40 per cent by introducing new customer service and IT systems.

“We are of course disappointed at the scale of the fine and feel it is a disproportionate penalty; however we are striving to continually improve and invest in customer experience and are pleased at the clear progress we are starting to make,” says TalkTalk CEO Dido Harding.

Career Opportunities: Account Manager (new)

Account Managers


ROLE:
This position is ideal for a self-motivated and ambitious person with strong communication skills and who enjoys working in a customer facing environment. We offer a competitive compensation package which includes a base salary + an excellent uncapped commission plan. In addition, we provide comprehensive training sessions, which offer all the necessary tools to succeed.


RESPONSIBILITIES:
Develop new prospects and expand existing accounts.
Maintain required number of quality outbound calls to customer contacts.
Generate incremental revenue according to specific targets.
Conduct in-depth product presentations.
Record accurate customer data in the CRM system.
Provide high level of customer service to ensure customer satisfaction.


SKILLS/EXPERIENCE:
Demonstrable Software sales or similar experience,
A good technical understanding
Excellent communications and customer service skills.
Determination to surpass performance goals.
Willingness to learn.
Ability to work individually and within a highly collaborative team environment.
Excellent written/oral communication skills
Accountability and Professionalism


Applications in the first instance to: info@richmondsys.com and include “Account Manager Role” in the subject field along with up to date CV


No agencies

Service Desk Statistics – Practise What You Preach

For more than 15 years Richmond Systems have been developing service desk software and advising customers on best practise for their service desk implementation. But how does their own service desk perform? Chris Ware from Richmond Systems answers this question.

“We use SupportDesk to record, classify and action incidents and requests raised with the support team. We’ve configured automated email responses as these are a useful way of reassuring Customers that we have received their requests and are working on them, especially in the case of requests logged via email or the web – customers’ hate being left in the dark.

We use service level agreements (SLAs), which are applied automatically when an incident is logged and the priority of the incident then advances until a resolution has been achieved. The technician is notified as the priority escalates and at pre-defined thresholds the team leader is also notified. Together these techniques help to ensure that Response SLAs are met.

Another visual feature that works well for us is to colour code the incident by the time since the incident was last worked on or the incident priority. This capability, combined with the use of automated escalations and notifications, means that an incident or customer should never be left without relevant information.

SLAs and response targets are analysed using reports from the Web Reporting module; these enable the service desk manager to effectively manage the team, set targets and objectives to improve customer service. Reporting back to senior management shows the current status and progress of outstanding incidents raised. All reports are scheduled and delivered via email to the relevant people at the right time.

So we certainly practise what we preach - are we any good at it? We naturally I’m biased so I’ll let the figures speak for themselves:

• Response success rate year to date: 95.8%
• Proactive incident reduction of 81% in the past 12 months
• Average customer satisfaction rating of 4.2 out of 5

We use this information to set future targets and improve our technology. Best practise requires continuous improvement and we are certainly not going to rest on our Laurels!”

Richmond Announces Reseller Agreement with RM

Richmond Systems are delighted to announce that they have entered into a strategic reseller agreement with RM, the leading provider of ICT software, infrastructure and services to education. Under the agreement RM will resell Richmond’s flagship help desk and asset management solution, Richmond SupportDesk, in their UK and international markets.


Commenting on the agreement Richmond’s Managing Director, Eric Wright, says “In recent years the requirement for technology support infrastructure use in education has grown substantially. We anticipated this high demand and have established Richmond as a leading provider of service and asset management technologies in schools and colleges. Working with RM is a logical step that will extend accessibility of Richmond SupportDesk to a larger community whilst allowing us to maintain focus on core product R&D and support.”


Su Kinton, Senior Product Manager for RM, commented “'We have seen increasing demand for helpdesk systems and are delighted to be working with Richmond Systems to meet this need for our customers.'

See us at the Service Desk & IT Support Show

What is the Service Desk & IT Support Show?:
Europe’s largest IT service management event, from the 27 - 28 April 2010 in Earls Court, London.


Where will you find us?
Stand 814.


http://www.servicedeskshow.com/


We look forward to seeing you there.


Eric Wright
Managing Director, Richmond Systems.

Our Best BETT!

The general consensus from the Richmond Team was that this year’s BETT 2010 Exhibition was the busiest by far, some of the team members have been attending for over 13 years and despite the adverse weather conditions found that the footfall was up, the level of enquiries had increased and the general awareness of our product was very high, creating an extremely high level of interest in our Helpdesk technology.


We would like to thank everyone who visited our stand for keeping us very busy over the four days of the show, and we look forward to seeing you there next year.

Richmond Racers

Richmond Systems Kart Racing Team – Richmond Racers – put on an impressive performance at last nights’ 3 hour endurance team challenge at Gosport indoor karting circuit. The team, comprising Chris Ware, Phil Hollingsworth, Steve Boardman, Jacquie Deadman, Matthew Blessington, Eric Wright and Will Johnson stuck to race orders and successfully negotiated a 176 laps in what was a highly competitive field.


“It has been a very busy and challenging year.” commented Eric Wright, Richmond’s MD “but it has also been a highly successful year for us, everyone has worked hard and last night the team were revved up and ready to play hard.”


All drivers outperformed on the night but top honours go to Chris Ware with an incredible fastest lap time of 30.27 seconds.

WWF slams IT industry over slow reaction to climate change

Research carried out by Gartner and supported by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) says that despite positive moves by most large IT equipment and service suppliers to minimise carbon emissions, progress has been disappointingly slow. This is despite methods for reducing energy such as building more environmentally friendly facilities, using cloud applications and reducing travel through the use of IT conferencing seemingly being high on the IT agenda. This news is not surprising given the apparent costs of overhauling a multi-national organisation to fall in line with the current expectation about becoming green. This prevalent attitude does however highlight that many businesses are failing to see the bigger picture in terms of how greener working could help reduce costs and offer other financial gains.


Dennis Pamlin, global policy advisor at WWF said that those businesses who are embracing the low carbon economy are already reaping benefits in terms of falling costs and improved image. The environmental issue is likely to keep growing, bringing with it the potential for incentives such as tax breaks for those businesses having the smallest impact on the environment. We only need to refer to the ever growing road tax levy for high polluting personal vehicles to realise this is a trend that is likely to grow. “The current financial crisis provides an interesting short-term opportunity for ICT providers to position themselves as low carbon leaders that deliver services that both save money and carbon emissions, especially compared with many other solutions where there is a choice between money or the environment,” says Pamlin.


The report highlighted that many companies have no economic policy or any targets to reduce emissions; the most basic tenets of creating a low carbon business. The message is that businesses of all sizes should look at their operations and begin assessing where savings could be made. Energy efficiency means financial efficiency in today’s economy and with this issue set to continue intensifying, all organisations need to treat this with urgency.