The Beginning - PR in the Real World

I am Rebecca and I am currently working for an ATM company in a marketing and public relations role, gaining experience in dealing with a wide variety of stakeholders. The company is called Ezeatm and offers generic, non-bank ATMs to small business owners around Australia. Our most important customers would be small business owners in rural areas, particularly rural and remote New South Wales and Queensland.

Communication is key

I am currently working for the Managing Director of the company who wanted me on board to assist in the development of the company website and company communications directed towards key customers and organisations we work alongside. Ezeatm works in conjunction with two large organisations in order to provide reliable and efficient products to their customers.

Crisis Management

Dealing with technology on a regular basis can cause a variety of operational issues, customer dissatisfaction and tension between collaborating organisations. Crisis management is of great importance within a company like this. I have worked with the Managing Director to devise effective plans to combat or prevent a crisis from occurring.

Internal Relations

The internal set up of the organisation is challenging also as there are three offices, the Head Office being in Perth and two others in Sydney and Brisbane. The company operates largely as a team where each department relies on each other in order to carry out their individual duties. It is important that internal relations are maintained and effective communication between the three offices is maintained at all times. This often fails in busy periods, which is something the Managing Director has asked me to help with.

In my first week I had a meeting with an outsourced website design consultancy who trained me to use a program which involves sending email "blasts" to our key stakeholder groups. We send them to staff (internally) and customers (externally). We also constantly communication with organisations we collaborate with to ensure the smooth delivery of our product and our service.

I hope this first blog posts provides an insight into how the organisation works. My future blog posts will focus on the key areas I have briefly touched on in this first blog post. Stay tuned for more interesting experiences!

Rebecca