High performance and expert handling - it must be Verbatim

Or it could have been the Audi R8! Perhaps it is both!

Morgan PR spent time at Verbatim today, our client and our supplier, to prepare press releases and coverage for the company newly launched Receptionist of the Month competition.

Verbatim answer our telephone when we cannot - whether on another call, with a client, on holiday or simply ring fencing our time, their call handling skills are second to none. Customer surveys reveal the high level of satisfaction among all their clients too, and yet still they strive for perfection and this competition is part of that.

Verbatim clients, including Morgan PR, have offered up prizes to reward the monthly winners of the competition; however, it was the heart racing rumble of the Audi R8, that captured the attention today, for that will be the prize for the overal winner - a weekend with the super car!

Dreamcarhire.com, who is a Verbatim client, have offered the £80,000 car as the main prize and Pete Dando, sales executive for Dreamcarhire.com had brought the good looking beast to the New Greenham Park offices of Verbatim, both for the photoshoot, and to give the staff a taste of what they would be competing for.

The proceedings were also captured by videographer Jay Blake from ichthus video, who also took the opportunity to capture a video testimonial from me; we'll bring you the highlights of that on this blog one day soon!

Incidentally, Greenham Common was pretty windswept today and the Verbatim banner, pictured above, took on sail like qualities as the breeze whipped up. Company founder Graham Hill was happy to wrestle with it, until that is, he needed to fetch something from the office and I was asked to take hold! Hang on for dear life more like!

Videographer Jay kindly swapped his camera for mine to capture the spectacle for this blog: suffice to say I was putting on a brave face, ever the professional.

Not quite Verbatim on ITV Thames Valley

Ah, the best laid plans... ITV Thames Valley Tonight did a terrific job covering the kind hearted gesture by call handling supremos Verbatim to handle the calls for one of its staff when she gives birth later this month... except they did not mention Verbatim by name!

Morgan PR always explain to clients that while public relations is the perfect way to promote the news stories within an organisation, the superior rewards of being in the news are tempered by the control you relinquish. If you want to guarantee what will appear in any medium and when, then advertising is the method - but of course does not attract the same objective consideration from the public.

All that said, it is not unreasonable to expect the hallowed six points of good journalism to be addressed - Who, What, Where, When, How & Why. These boxes were ticked, but only superficially - for example 'Who' is Donna Cox - which gets mentioned, but it is also founder and director of Verbatim Graham Hill and Verbatim itself, neither of which is mentioned.

On the brighter side, other media watch the news and are a bit more resourceful and one eagle-eyed publisher spotted my name on the text message that appears during the report and was quick to get in touch!

Below is what ITV showed last night - or rather it is what they showed with some helpful titles and subtitles to help fill in the gaps.

Getting on the telly: Morgan PR helps Verbatim, the phone answering service appear on Thames Valley Tonight

Morgan PR works closely with clients to help identify what they want public relations to achieve for their business and sometimes this can involve television exposure - this was certainly the case when Verbatim, the phone answering service came up with a brilliant idea to help one of their employees who is about to go on maternity leave - and this tempted the TV cameras.

Donna Cox is one of the team who answers the telephones at Verbatim, which can take overflow calls through to providing a full call handling service for its clients - which includes Morgan PR! She is expecting her second baby in a few weeks time and is just about to go on maternity leave safe in the knowledge she will be under less pressure than many pregnant women.

Above: Donna Cox is interviewed by ITV Thames Valley reporter Kate Cooney

Founder and director Graham Hill takes up the story: “Using the same service we provide to clients we are able to put Donna and her immediate family in control of the phone, and when they speak to people. They can turn the phone off to enjoy some peace and quiet, to spend some quality time with the new baby or even to get some vital sleep all without being disturbed.

“All of her callers would get to speak to the Verbatim team who could update on any progress and take all of the messages of congratulations and well wishes, then send them through to Donna.

“Our VIP list is normally used so we recognise our clients’ regular and important callers, however by getting Donna to input everyone she wants to know about her happy event, she can make one call to us and we can send a text message to everyone to let them know. We are also providing a 0845 telephone number so we can take messages and pass them on without callers disturbing Donna and her baby.”

From a PR point of view this is a lovely story and one that we were able to tempt ITV Thames Valley into covering a much of today was spent filming with them at Verbatim's offices on New Greenham Park, south of Newbury.

Above: Verbatim founder and director Graham Hill is interviewed.

We will need to wait until tomorrow night to discover how many seconds more than three hours of filming will result in, but this exposure will be the start of wider PR campaign.

Please speak after the tone? Not with call handling service Verbatim

Who among us has not despaired at being prompted to leave a voicemail message, immediately unsure when or even if it will be checked? And how often is an important voicemail message apparently never received?

Here at Morgan PR we are proud to use local Newbury company Verbatim to ensure that people do not have to leave voicemail messages or indeed hear an engaged tone when they call us. Admittedly out of hours you have the option of leaving a message that is promptly emailed to our data hungry Blackberrys, but experience has taught us not many people call out of hours!

So we were interested to spot this story on Times Online which illustrates the frustration that people have with voicemail, explores some high tech solution, but completely misses the opportunity people have to use companies like Verbatim to ensure their callers never have to speak after the tone!

Let's do lunch

Morgan PR has recently joined NRG and attended the Swindon meeting yesterday. The seminar before lunch was hosted by Graham Hill of Verbatim and covered how to increase profits from incoming telephone calls.

This was an interesting and engaging seminar that provided a host of hints and tips on how to enhance your company's telephone skills. Their fabulous new website has a whizzy forecasting tool on it which will calculate the impact Verbatim can have on your business; why not try it out today and see what they can do to help you?