27 June 2006

24hr crisis line? What 24hr crisis line?

The woefully poor Bell Pottinger Group website makes a point about highlighting the group’s tip-top crisis management expertise.

It even goes so far as to offer prospects in need a 24hr Issues and Crisis telephone number (020 7861 3290).

At 22:49 tonight we had a crisis that only a large corporate PR company that we’d never worked with before could solve.

So we called the 24hr Issues and Crisis line....

The call went unanswered. 40 rings. Not even a recorded message giving us someone’s mobile number.

Appropriately, we called while Channel 4 was showing Lost. Which, had we actually been a company in desperate need of PR support, we still would be.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

40 Rings? Sounds worrying. Our system logs every call received. And there was just one incoming call on the night in question. And yes, it was indeed between 10 and 11 o'clock pm. After FOUR rings the call apparently went through to a voice mail system as the desk was temporarily busy. The caller failed to leave a message on the voice mail system and simply hung up and did not try again. We've had no other reports of problems with the system, but we're looking into possible explanations for the problem. I've tested it a few times in the past 24 hours and it’s working fine. If you want to try it again, please do.

Anonymous said...

So did you try it again??

....the world's leading.... said...

Yes we did. And it works now. But it didn't before, honest.