You’ve been Twitterhacked

PayPal UK's Twitter account was yesterday taken over by a disgruntled customer who fired off a series of angry tweets complaining about the service. The unidentified person railed against PayPal freezing their account and also linked to paypalsucks.com, the "anti paypal site exposing the nightmare of doing business 'the paypal way.'

Last night, the Ebay-owned outfit suspended the account and stressed that this incident only affected Twitter and none of its credit card or other sensitive data had been breached. The account was quickly back up and running and the company tweeted: 'This account was hacked earlier. We have it in our control now. Your personal data is still 100% safe, hack occurred on Twitter not PayPal' and 'We apologise for the bad language and childish nature of tweets that came from this account at the time.'

I’m a big fan of Twitter. It is proving to be a really useful way for FStech to communicate with readers, distribute news and catch stories that might otherwise have passed us by. However, the relative ease with which one can access someone else’s account is a concern. The simple password system needs to be looked at and perhaps replaced by a two-way authentication system, at least on certain accounts.

The swinging sixties

 It's been a week of birthdays. First the humble ATM machine clocked up its 44th year of existence (see previous blog post for more on that). And then Barclaycard announced that 45 years ago it introduced the UK's first credit cards.

My Dad is forever going on about the swinging sixties, greatest decade in the history of mankind (to quote the mighty Withnail and I). And so on...Looking at some of the facts and figures, I'm inclined to believe him. In the year that the credit card arrived, England won the World Cup, The Beatles and The Stones were riding high, the average price of a house was £3,840, petrol cost just 7p a litre and you could go to cinema for 10p - 10p! You need a bank loan to buy a ticket and popcorn these days, all for the privilege of seeing Shia Labeouf and a bunch of robots causing mayhem.

Within a year of the credit card launch, Barclaycard had attracted a million customers. Today the figure is 11.2 million of a total of 31.2 million (UK Cards Association, 2010) credit cardholders in the UK. Last year, two billion transactions were made to the tune of £136 billion. But the credit card's big day was somewhat undermined by figures from the British Retail Consortium (BRC), suggesting that cautious customers are increasingly turning to cash and debit cards. The proportion of transactions using credit cards fell by 12.9 per cent in a year while those involving debit cards rose by 15.8 per cent. Cash was used for a greater proportion of overall retail spending as the average amount spent in each cash transaction increased by 13 per cent to £12.93.

It seems that pesky old cash won't go away, despite the best efforts of those with power and influence to burn.

Happy birthday to the ATM

Forty four years ago this week, the world's first ATM was installed at a branch of Barclays in Enfield, north London. Reg Varney, from the bafflingly popular ITV sitcom On the Buses (74 episodes and three spin off films! I mean, what were the British public thinking?), was the first to withdraw cash. 

On the subject of ATMs, Ron Delnevo, managing director at Bank Machine, will be one of the speakers at our forthcoming payments conference. Ron will be discussing one of the hot topics of the day - 'cash vs contactless'. The conference will take place in London during November and we're holding it in conjunction with our sister title, Retail Systems. Paul Rodgers of Vendorcom will chair and there will also be speakers from the likes of Barclaycard, Best Buy UK and S1 Corporation.

We're currently putting the finishing touches to the website, but in the meantime if you would like further information on the agenda, speaker opportunities, time, place etc, feel free to drop me a line at: scott.thompson@fstech.co.uk

Lulz Security calls it a day

So. Farewell

Then

Lulz Security...

Just days after declaring war on the banking sector, hackers Lulz Security have announced they are to disband. The collective issued a statement over the weekend, in which it referred to its crew of six and said its 50 day adventure was done. More on that at our website.

I've recently introduced a Talking Point section in FStech magazine, which sets out a burning issue of the day and asks leading industry figures for their views. In the next issue, the question is: Lulz Security - freedom fighters or cyber terrorists? If you'd like to give your take, email me at: scott.thompson@fstech.co.uk

Happy birthday, dear IBM, happy birthday to you...

Happy birthday to International Business Machines, 100 years young today. It's certainly been a rollercoaster ride to this point, with the company rising from humble beginnings to biggest technology company in the world. Employees winning Nobel Prizes, a pioneering role in both the American New Deal on social security and in civil rights, yet also running into controversy when being accused of providing equipment to Nazi Germany.

From a dominant position, the firm lurched close to disaster in the 1980s when it failed to keep up with others' innovations. But it reinvented itself and once again became a world-leading firm.

What will the next 100 years bring? The company said recently that cloud services, analytics, its Smarter Planet initiative and growth markets will be the four key areas of focus for the near future. 

Things certainly won't be dull. As I write this, speculation is rife about who will succeed CEO, Sam Palmisano, when he turns 60 next month (the typical age of retirement of an IBM CEO). Palmisano has said he's going nowhere but that, of course, won't stop us from speculating. 

How happy are consumers with call centre service?

Guest blog post by Mark King, senior VP, Europe and Africa, Aspect 

Think back to your last conversation or email exchange with a contact centre agent. Did it resolve your query, leaving you feeling positive? Or did it fail to help, leaving you feeling frustrated? The Aspect Customer Service Trends 2011 survey set out to explore what European consumers really think about contact centres and its findings may surprise readers.

Of the survey’s 1,345 European participants, 70 per cent were “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with the service they received - a figure that rose to 76 per cent among the 278 UK respondents. These figures compare favourably with those recorded in the 2007 Aspect Customer Satisfaction Index survey when, asked the same question, just 53 per cent of European consumers and 55 per cent of UK consumers stated that they were 'satisfied' or 'very satisfied'.

65 per cent of European consumers said their inquiries were typically resolved on the first or second contact - and the ability to resolve queries rapidly was found to be a major influence on satisfaction, according to respondents to the 2011 survey. 70 per cent of those who were “very satisfied” or “satisfied” said their problems were usually resolved on first or second contact; and 40 per cent of those who were “dissatisfied” or “very dissatisfied” stated that their queries were not.

Communication preferences are changing rapidly according to the survey. 35 per cent of respondents used email for their last service inquiry, while 36 per cent phoned. A further eight per cent posted their last query, seven per cent used web self-service, and five per cent turned to social networks. Overall, 56 per cent of respondents used 'new media' channels (i.e. email, SMS, web self-service, social networks, smartphone apps, web chat, blogs and forums) for their last service query compared to 44 per cent who used 'traditional' channels (i.e. post and telephone).

When asked to state their 'requirements for good customer service', 73 per cent of respondents pointed to the 'secure handling of personal data', 69 per cent to a 'prompt response', 65 per cent to 'the friendliness of the service representative' and 35 per cent to 'being able to make customer service enquiries via smartphone apps, Twitter, web chat etc.'. However, there were some notable exceptions. In Germany, for example, the percentage of people stating that a 'prompt response' was a requirement rose to 91 per cent, while the availability of 'smartphone, Twitter, web chat etc. options' was a requirement for a significant 41 per cent of UK consumers.

For a free copy of the Aspect Customer Service Trends 2011 Executive Summary, visit: http://www.customerservicetrends.com/UKPR

Forthcoming FStech roundtables

Quick plug for three roundtables we’ve got coming up. Further info here.

If you're interested in coming along and contributing to the discussions, feel free to drop Tim Skinner in our events department a line at: timothy.skinner@fstech.co.uk. The roundtables are taking place during June/July at The Gherkin and Tower 42 - discussion lasts for around 90 minutes and is followed by a three course meal and a chance to network.

Hope to see you there!