Wednesday 3rd March.

Today we are exhibiting at Business South at the Rose Bowl in home of Hampshire Cricket.

Business South is a business directory brought to life, representing the broadest cross-section of the regional business community. We are hope todays exhibition will help raising our awareness, by providing good networking opportunities.

Why not come down and check out out stand?

The Business South exhibition covers every aspect of business today, from the tried and trusted to the new and exciting:

Stay informed of cutting edge business ideas

Meet the widest selection of suppliers in the region

Benchmark your competitors

Develop and grow your network

Learn from the experts on key business issues

Meet fellow professionals

Benefit from personal and professional development opportunities

We know that your time is your most valuable resource. The unique format of the Business2Business Shows allows visitors to maximise return on the time they invest in visting by offering a range of key features to compliment the exhibition.

See you there!

David Jones (Managing Director)

05/01/2010 the night we got snowed in at the Frontline contact centre

It was a lovely Tuesday; blue skies and a refreshing mild breeze – that was until it started snowing…

(this is the grass verge and road outside our office)

The snow came down quicker and heavier than we’d ever seen in Whiteley. We very quickly realised that things where wrong when the usual stream of traffic outside the business park ground to a halt; we wouldn’t be going anywhere for a while. An hour turned into three as people started abandoning their cars in the road and on the verge. All roads in and out had been closed – the overnight staff would not be getting through and we wouldn’t be getting out!

A few brave souls made a dash for it just before midnight once the roads had cleared but most stayed on through the night to cover for the overnight staff who were unable to make it in through the snow. David, the M.D., made sure that everyone was fed and watered (with his epic trek to Dominos and cups of tea!). We made it through. Andrea, our Client services manager, pulled off the most impressive stint with a 31 hour shift operating the phones – proving that she still has the knack with the callers!

This event, and the staff’s reaction to it, simply highlights what fantastically dedicated and professional team we have here at Frontline – nothing will stand in the way of supporting our clients businesses. Everyone who stayed and all those who walked miles through the snow in the unearthly hours of the morning to relieve those who’d been in overnight are absolute legends – We couldn’t wish to have better group of people on our team. Thank you all!

Christmas is just around the corner now, Merry Christmas everybody!

Here it is…. the final instalment!

Tip 10

Let the caller hang up first! Nothing worse than ending a perfect call by hanging up on the customer!

Heavy snowfall has disrupted commuters nationwide, shut about 2,000 schools and caused traffic chaos in many parts of the UK.

So what if your staff can’t get into work? Do you have a plan for when things go wrong?

Disaster recovery is the process of restoring operations critical to the resumption of your business. One of the main factors this includes is communications, both incoming and outgoing calls. Frontline Telephone Answering Service specialise in disaster recovery and emergency response, we could be crucial to your disaster recovery plan.

A disaster recovery plan includes plans for coping with the unexpected, including the sudden loss of communications. Disaster recovery planning is an essential part of any business.

We are here 24/7 365 days a year ensuring we are always on standby for you!

Setting up a disaster recovery plan is not as complicated as it may seem. If this is a service you are interested in then feel free to come down to our premises in Hampshire to discuss your requirements.

Tip 9

Tell the caller what you’ve done and what you’re going to do next. For example “Thank you for your call Mr. Jones. I will now pass the details onto our sales team who will be in touch by end of business today. If you don’t hear from anyone or have any questions please feel free to contact me, on any one of my colleagues, on the helpdesk. My name is David.”

Tip 8

Go that extra mile. As the first point of contact for the company it is important that the call handler displays an ingenuity and enthusiasm that will make a positive and lasting impression on the caller. For example; a caller

Tip number 7

Mirror the caller – Mirroring the callers tone and pace helps build rapport.

PS. Its snowing yey!!

We hired someone to handle SEO for our company. That person agreed to generate more traffic to our site, and build back links for us. The “expert” we hired went about generating traffic through spamming various blogs.

One of these blogs was the hpHosts blog, at http://hphosts.blogspot.com. The admin of that blog contacted our company to let us know the person we’d hired was spamming. A staff member at our company who did not have a full understanding of what SEO entails, and how white hat vs. black hat SEO works, responded on our behalf. He defended the spammer.

We fully recognize that our staff member responded inappropriately. Frontline is a respectable, family-owned business, and our reputation, the integrity of our work, and how we are perceived are incredibly important to us. That’s why we wanted to take the time to respond to the blog posting, and to publicly apologize to those who have been affected by this situation.

In attempt to rectify this situation, Frontline Telephone Answering service has taken the following steps:

· We acknowledge that spamming is an unethical and unacceptable way to generate traffic. We have ended our working relationship with the expert we hired to assist us with SEO, and are in the process of recovering the records of sites the spammer attempted to link to. Our relationship with the person we contracted has stopped, and so will any further spamming.

· We are reviewing internal policies in our company relative to PR and communication. We will go over policy changes with our staff to ensure a situation such as this is never poorly handled again.

· Our executives have hired experts to help consult with us about ethical ways of online marketing. We run extensive reference and work quality checks on these experts before hiring, and ensure that any expert we hire is willing to give us a “white hat” guarantee – meaning, he or she will use only ethical methods in order to generate traffic and get us higher in the rankings.

· We would like to publicly apologise to MysteryFCM at hpHosts blog. You were right to call us out, and we were wrong in mishandling complaints about the quality of the work done, and in how we monitored the person who was handling our SEO work.

If your blog has been spammed by someone claiming to be a representative of Frontline, please contact us at spam@frontlinecom.co.uk. We will do everything possible to make things right. We understand there are no excuses for the poor business practices that have happened here, and this has resulted in a hefty lesson for us.

To MysteryFCM, we apologise for wasting your time, as well as transgressing implicit rules of online conduct. We are a small, ethical business, and it’s upsetting to feel that we’ve hurt small businesses by allowing the spam to take place, and responding inappropriately once a staff member was notified.

Thank you so much for your time, and for bringing our focus back to where it should be – serving our customers with quality business solutions here in the UK.

Managing Director David Jones

Tip 6

Use clear English and avoid jargon. Nothing puts a layman off more than being subjected to a barrage of acronyms or technical jargon. You can’t expect a customer to always know what you are talking about.

Tip 5

Mind your manners. Good telephone etiquette is essential. Refer to the caller by name or using Sir/Madam. Always remember your please and thank yous. Avoid interrupting the caller whilst they are talking and most importantly, be nice.