Blog

Peptalk is delighted to confirm that PCI Pal® - the secure payments provider to contact centres - has been announced as a finalist in two further industry awards, having already been recognised for five awards this year alone. 

The awards are the Computing Technology Product Awards, in which PCI Pal is shortlisted for two categories; ‘Best Enterprise Security Product’ and ‘Best Cloud Security product’ categories. In addition the CIR Risk Management Awards has recognised PCI Pal in its ‘Cyber Security Product of the Year’ category.

As a consultant that supports clients with the development of award submissions, receiving recognition such of this is extremely satisfying. I really enjoy being able to communicate the unique advantages of a client's product or service and differentiate it from anything else in the market.  The award submission tells the clients' story and to be recognised by industry peers and judges provides a fantastic impartial endorsement of the brand in question.

Good luck to the team at PCI Pal at the various awards evenings that will be taking place later this year - I await the results with great anticipation!

PS

ROL Cruise celebrates multi-award successes

Peptalk is proud to announce that ROL Cruise, the UK’s No. 1 independent cruise retailer, has celebrated a steady run of awards successes at several high profile industry and business award programmes recently. 

Within the last month, ROL Cruise has been recognised at seven individual award schemes, with successes including winning three awards and being announced as finalists in five others schemes, across a range of categories and specialisms.

The cruise specialist won two categories at the inaugural Scenic and Emerald Waterways River Awards 2017. ROL Cruise was awarded the Emerald Waterways ‘Top Agency (South)’, and also the Scenic Eclipse ‘Top Agency’ award.

This was followed by another award win last week at the prestigious TTG Awards; Stacy Day, Cruise Consultant, was presented with a winner’s award for the Cruise Agent of the Year category.

ROL Cruise has also been announced as finalists in the following:

-          Engage Awards for Customer Service for the ‘Best Use of Training’ category;  

-          Wave Awards 2018 for the ‘Cruise Travel Agent of the Year’ (reader voted)

-          CLIA River Cruise Excellence Awards for the ‘Best Overall Performance (South)’

-          Customer Experience Awards, for the ‘Hospitality, Leisure and Travel’ category

-          British Travel Awards, for the ‘Best Cruise Holiday Retailer’ (reader voted).

Peptalk supports ROL Cruise with the development of its written award submissions and is delighted for the group to be recognised by so many schemes.  We are of course only communicating their successes and great work, but we are certainly proud with the results they have achieved so far!

Making Twitter Work For You

Twitter is a communications tool that can be used in many ways. For example, @VodafoneUK use Twitter mostly for customer support, while Dell uses Twitter to sell products, mention promotions or share company info. A majority however use it to build relationships with both existing customers, to engage with prospects, as well as to raise their overall profile in a given sector.

Whatever your goal, it is vital to consider what you want to achieve with Twitter before spending your valuable time and resources on it!  It ultimately needs to be considered as part of the wider marketing mix and not in isolation.

Tip 2: The Three R’s

• Be relevant
• Be regular
• Be responsive

Tip 3: Connect and Engage

• Follow as many as possible of the people relevant to your interests
• Find links or write material that they'll find interesting
• Engage them in polite conversation or discussion
• Don't get too hung up on the number; it is better to have 100 people who are relevant and engaged than 10,000 who aren't

Tip 4: Understand the Basics

• A good twitter bio helps...  explain who you are, what you specialise in, geography if relevant etc.
• Hashtags - #FF and the like are a great way of connecting to people with a common interest but you have to experiment with your field – e.g. #webdesign #digitalmarketing #suffolk #food
• In general only follow people who are following you back, especially once you have past 250 people you are following as twitter put a 10% follow limit after that. I.e. you'll only be able to follow 25 more. Following people is more or less the best way to grow an account.
• Keep chatty followers chatting and mentioning you – but don't get dragged into too many personal conversations; try to generate conversations where everyone can join in. Think ‘round table discussion’ rather than ‘two people chatting privately in a corner’...