I have come into journalism in a rather unusual way in the sense that I didn’t take a journalism degree or any other formalised training specific to the industry and neither did my colleagues. When ADSLguide.org.uk started (I’m supposed to call it thinkbroadband.com but I think “AG” has a ring to it :-p), we were just a bunch of techies who wanted to provide users information about ADSL services which were in their infancy at the time. Indeed we weren’t even forward looking enough to think that using a name with “ADSL” would potentially be seen to limit us in the future

The site grew fast and we became known as ‘the’ source of ADSL related information. We suddenly had the opportunity to talk to senior people in companies who wanted a piece on our front page (or indeed some who just wanted to help us grow as they valued the independent information we provided). I think at this stage, our site was seen more as a technical aggregation/discussion site rather than a source of news so we dealt almost exclusively with the technical and product people within broadband service providers.

Over time we grew more and started being asked by other journalists to provide information for them about broadband.. I think they liked the way we aren’t there to promote any particular provider (indeed at this point we were running our site on a borrowed old server from Jezzer at the bottom of my hosting company cabinet in Telehouse only seven years ago).. With this, we started becoming much more the centre of attention, probably Andrew (MrSaffron) in particular who was the public face of our news items (and still is to a great degree). This also began the time we started spending more time on research, talking to providers, etc.

At the beginning it was an eerie feeling walking into a room and someone saying “Oh you’re the people from ADSLguide!” as if we were some celebrity which they met for the first time. This kept being repeated a few times until eventually we had met quite a few people so they began to know us. We spent quite a bit of time explaining to everyone what we did, how and why so they understood how we preferred to work.

This leads me to my point, namely how PR people deal with journalists. I was reading a series of white paper by Daryl Wilcox Publishing on how to write press releases which reminded me of the frustrations I have in dealing with PR people, leading me to believe that we are not alone.. This problem is clearly something that has been around in the traditional press for some time.

To this end, here is some advice to anyone about sending us press release:

• We only want to receive broadband-related press releases, or those that affect companies which broadband users could be affected. If your product/service is a tool broadband users might use (e.g. video streaming), then this is entirely welcome.
• All press releases should be sent by e-mail (usually to the staff member(s) you’ve dealt with before, or via the team@ address on our About page. Bear in mind that sending the press release to every e-mail address you can find on our site is likely to result in it going into the spam folder.)
• We do not open attachments unless we have a good reason to do so. All PR text should be in the body of the e-mail. By all means send us a PDF or Word file that goes with it with the nice photos and formatting, but unless we find the text appealing it won’t get opened.
• We receive lots of press releases and only write up articles on very few. This doesn’t mean we’ve not read your release, but we aren’t a news wire.
• Focus on what makes your company/client special. Have they introduced a new price point, or done something innovative? This is especially more important to the small companies because we’re not going to broadcast to everyone you’ve just introduced a £1 discount for a few months.
• We will use quotes but rarely lots of them. They are usually there to support the text but equally they should add something.

General issues to consider for anyone who writes to us at thinkbroadband (since if you’re still reading this you probably care enough to listen):

• The thinkbroadband staff are not employed full time to read press releases, announcements or to promote your company. We all have other jobs to get on with and have limited time to devote to the website. This means we don’t really want to receive a phone call from your PR people asking “have you received our press release?” ten minutes after you sent it.
• We all work in diverse locations and not in one office so we rely heavily on e-mail. This doesn’t mean we don’t exist and don’t have phones, but we find it’s the most efficient way for us to work.
• We are not an extension of your marketing department – That is to say we will give our opinion about your services, even if it’s bad. We’re not an affiliate marketing site the primary focus of which is to drive users to the highest paying service providers.
• We try to respond to courteous e-mails about concerns over comments our users have posted on the site. When we receive such requests via lawyers (the usual kind of in-house, including “corporate security”) making claims of dubious merit, they won’t incite a positive reaction. Just because we don’t have huge offices doesn’t mean we remove content because you think it shouldn’t be public.
• If you want to tell us about something brilliant or innovative, get one of your ‘techies’ to talk to us.. Marketing jargon doesn’t get far with us and you’ll just end up looking silly if you don’t know the answers to our questions.

I hope to write something more permanent for the thinkbroadband site in the coming weeks but I hope that may be of interest to anyone in the meantime.

The European Commission has acted on the roaming charges charged by the mobile operators for calls when you’re abroad but very little discussion has centred on the data roaming charges which are even more extortionate.

Vodafone has been charging £4.25 (ex. VAT) per MB when roaming abroad on ‘partner’ networks and over £8.00/MB on non-partner networks, although I note that they now suggest all networks are at the lower rate.

Within the UK, the entry level Vodafone Mobile Broadband plan costs £25/month and includes 3GB (i.e. 3000MB) per month of usage (still subject to a fair usage policy). This is about £0.008 per MB), making international access about 500 times more expensive than UK data rates.

Vodafone has indeed appeared to have realised this is unsustainable (at one point I paid £10 to check my e-mail) and they have now launched a £95/month plan which includes 200MB abroad, a mere £0.475 per MB, only 60 times the cost of UK traffic (assuming it was all used abroad).
This is still far too expensive to properly use 3G abroad and sooner or later the mobile network operators will need to realise that this is hindering use whilst travelling, with many opting to use Wi-Fi networks where possible, whereas in the UK I would often use Vodafone’s 3G service instead as it’s low maintenance and less hassle. I also have a pay-as-you-go SIM card in one country I visit regularly, something that a few years ago couldn’t be used for GPRS/3G but now can. Also, the availability of 3G roaming agreements leaves a bit to be desired for.

I tend to be a very ‘hands on’ person when it comes to helping customers and I’d like to think my companies’ service levels are considered very high.. I’d use the word fanatical but I think Rackspace already use that term.

We have customers to use both our services and those of other providers be it co-location, servers, connectivity, e-mail, web hosting or something else and I’ve noticed two things:

1. When a customer joins us for the first time, and they have a problem with their server for example, they call us and ask whether we have a network problem (or “is the Internet down?” in laymen’s terms) to which the answer is usually “No. If we had a network problem, I’d hope we already knew about it before you :-p” (the smiley explains the tone). This happens a few times until they realise if there’s a problem, it’s probably not with our network.
2. When a customer has a problem with something that isn’t caused by us, if they think it even might be, they call us first, because we are ‘accessible’.. i.e. They can get through to us.. Other companies might not offer phone support, might charge premium rates for it or might just not give the right answer (or dare I even say, might claim it’s our problem). This gets annoying because it’s offloading the costs of their support on us (as it often takes us time to check it’s not actually us having the problem).

We have customers who truly understand the value of the service, and I find those are the ones who I even have to talk out of buying something I feel they don’t need. I like them because they listen to my advice (whether it gains or loses us revenue) when making decisions, and rather than always going for the lowest cost service, they welcome the list of options and then make an educated decision (and sometimes, that may be not to buy the service at all).

I have also found most sales enquiries we get are from customers who either don’t understand their own requirement (which is fine, we’re here to help) or, and this is very common, over-specify their requirement by a large factor (100% or more usually). If a customer insists on buying a service they don’t need, then so be it, who am I to complain? What concerns me is when other companies quote for the service they think the customer needs but pretend it’s what the customer actually asked for. We tend to explain to the customer why we think another solution is better (and often cheaper), but they feel they are getting less, when in fact they’re not wasting resources on services they don’t need.

The supplier-customer relationship is a two way process driven by supply and demand and the interaction between the two agents. It should not only be a customer-driven process.

The customer is not always right.