So long, Farewell, Goodbye

This shall be my final blogpost. My internship ended on the 30^th of October. On that very night, we held a media appreciation night where we invited all the reporters of the local newspapers in Miri, and on that very night, my supervisor and friend Ms. Agnes Nyelang announced that she would be resigning from her position as Interhill Group of Companies’ Corporate Communications Manager. I can’t help but feel that this was, in a sense, a poetic ending to a wonderful experience as I got to say goodbye to everyone that had made that experience unforgettable.

I would like to leave my final words of parting here, for those who are also leaving their internships soon or perhaps are just about to begin.

I would like to say that in this industry, we must be brave and we must be honest, and those two things are often inseparable. In whatever situation that you may be in, these two things will most likely see you through.

To be brave does not mean to be without fear, it means to conquer that fear and do the best you can under those circumstances. Speak in public, talk to strangers, defend your case passionately, do this all with a brave heart and conviction, because people will recognise that bravery and they will trust it.

To be honest doesn’t mean to speak any way you wish. I am not advising you to spill everything that’s on your mind regardless of how it may reflect upon yourself as a person or upon the organisation you represent. I mean be earnest and genuine in what you do, believe in the message you are trying to portray and have integrity in all that you do and represent. Believe in yourself, and others will believe in you.

Thank you, and I wish everyone all the best in their future.

So Long, Farewell, and Good Bye.

When Crisis Strikes!

What a week I had last week at my internship! Working at Ezeatm has been an experience so far, involving a range of tasks aimed at improving our reputation with our customers. In the past year the company has seen a huge decline in reputation due to a change of management and poor management prior to last year. The company have slowly been rebuilding their services and how they deliver them, however it seems when crisis strikes, the last year's hard work has been erased!

Last Thursday, the 'switch' network that connects all of Ezeatm's ATMs to the various financial institutions it interacts with broke down and completely shut down all of the company's ATMs around Australia. Not only was the company affected, however competitors were affected as well. In addition to this some Eftpos providers went down, causing an influx of customer phone calls and complaints.

As part of the marketing team, it was damage control time. I was firstly called into a meeting with the Managing Director and the Operations Manager to be briefed on the actual cause of the problem and the best actions to take in terms of communicating with our customers and various stakeholders.

After this I was asked to draft an email blast to all customers on our database to inform them of the downtime and the steps Ezeatm were taking to rectify the situation. In the meantime, I was assisting the administration staff with receiving customer calls and explaining the current situation.

What I had running through my throughout the day was to ensure that the company is seeming to be transparent in the way they are approaching this crisis. Be honest with the customers, explain that it is a problem and the company is doing everything they possibly can to turn the situation around. As soon as I sent the email blast was sent out, the customer calls eased. I truly believe that by keeping people informed it improves the reputation of the company and allows crises to be minimised.

At the end of the day, as soon as the problem had been repaired, I drafted a second email blast which included that the system was up and running again, steps each customer had to follow to reboot their ATM and an apology for any inconvenience caused.

The majority of people enquiring about this issue were calm when they phoned and no one was angry at the situation. I believe this is because everyone was kept informed about the situation and as any new information cam to hand it was sent out immediately.

Overall I was proud of the way I handled to crisis under the guidance of my Managing Director and felt that the whole day was a strong example of team work and effective communication.

For more information on Ezeatm's network provider First Data, please see the link below.

https://www.firstdata.com/en_au/home.html


Rebecca