WorldHost Customer Service Training helps businesses gain a competitive advantage
With Northern Ireland currently hosting an impressive series of events, celebrations and new visitor attraction launches, we need to provide worldclass customer service to our visitors. For just £20 per participant, this practical, activity-based, 2-day customer training course will help businesses gain a competitive edge and build repeat business through customer service excellence and providing a world class welcome to all visitors. It also includes a half-day trip to local tourist attractions.
Who is WorldHost Training for?
Private businesses in the retail, tourism, hospitality, leisure and passenger sectors with under 250 employees
How much does the course cost?
Only £20 per person - discounted from the full £190 cost as the Department of Employment and Learning (DEL) are paying 90% of the course cost (£170). The Northern Ireland Tourist Board, the sector skills council People 1st and the Department of Employment and Learning are working in partnership to provide this WorldHost customer service training.
Course Dates and Venues
Newtownabbey - 8 & 15 January
Cushendall - 14 & 21 January
Lurgan – 21 & 28 January
Antrim - 4 & 11 February
Lisburn - 5 & 12 February
Ballymena - 18 & 19 February
Banbridge and Cookstown - 25 Feb & 4 March
To find out more, please call Lynda Willis on 07773 423675 or email
Lynda@customersensetraining.co.uk.
Mobile customers living in the border region can pay up to £300 a year in accidental roaming charges
From Journal.ie
THE NORTHERN IRELAND Assembly’s committee on communications has agreed to contact its Oireachtas counterpart to investigate whether roaming can be abolished within the island of Ireland.
The Assembly committee will look to work with the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Communications and Transport to investigate whether coordinated legal moves can be brought about to abolish the charges within Ireland.
The contact comes on foot of a report by British telecoms regulator Ofcom, which found that Northern Irish mobile customers living in the border region can pay up to £300 a year in accidental roaming charges.
“It is unacceptable that companies such as O2, Vodafone and 3, which operate across the island of Ireland, continue to impose unacceptable roaming charges on unsuspecting consumers,” said Sinn Féin MLA Phil Flanagan, the committee’s deputy chairman, who added:
These excess premiums imposed by the same parent company is pure and simple profiteering as there is no additional operating costs incurred by the companies.
It is likely that any action in the short-term would focus on the four network operators in Ireland – Vodafone, O2, Meteor and Three – and seek to prohibit those companies from levying roaming charges when customers travel into Northern Ireland.
The Northern Ireland Assembly does not have power in the field of telecommunications – with competence in that area being reserved by Westminster – so any attempt to block UK networks from levying roaming charges within the Republic would be a matter for the government in London.
Flanagan said any co-operation between the Assembly and Oireachtas committees would “exert greater pressure on the operators to remove all roaming charges, deliver a fair deal to consumers in Ireland and improve coverage in rural and border areas”.
“It is time that the operators stopped ripping consumers off,” he said.
Separate rules being pursued by the European Commission will mean that from next year, mobile customers will be able to change their domestic mobile provider for the purposes of roaming – effectively allowing them to take out separate mobile subscriptions for domestic and foreign services.
Rules already in place limit the price of a voice call to 29c per minute while on roaming, with text messages costing a maximum of 9c each.
Last summer, for the first time, the EU also brought in a limit on prices for data downloads while abroad – with a cap of 70c per megabyte of data downloaded.

Members of IC and CMI in Northern Ireland are reminded about a recent email from Ann Francke, CMI Chief Executive and John Morgan, Chair of the CMI Forum Chairs’ Committee inviting members to to express an interest in becoming members of the new CMI Regional Boards.
CMI is about to enter an exciting new phase in its development through the launch of a strategy focussed specifically on growth. This strategy supports our mission of increasing the number and standard of professionally qualified managers and promoting the art and science of good management and leadership.
These Boards will have responsibility for supporting the development and execution of the overarching strategies of CMI, Institute of Consulting (IC) and Women in Management (WiM) at a regional level including delivery of member, employer and learning centre engagement activity. There are also plans to broaden these to include special interest networks based on topics and sectors as well as activities such as mentoring in order to be more relevant and reflective of CMI's diverse communities.
The deadline to express your interest in the position of the local Board member is on the 17th January 2013 and we are keen to ensure that as many members as possible are given an opportunity to support CMI’s growth in Northern Ireland.
The first stage in this process will be the appointment of the Chair Northern Ireland Board who will then work with the Northern Ireland Forum and CMI Support Team, to facilitate the election of the Northern Ireland Board Members. Activity in Northern Ireland and its network of Branches will continue as normal up until 1st October 2013, at which point the new Regional Board will be in place and begin the process of developing Networks based on geography, i.e. reflecting current Branch groupings and potential growth throughout the whole of Ireland; but they may also group together members by function, sector and/or specialist interest.
Full details of how to register your interest as a Member of the Board, including background information, can be found at: www.managers.org.uk/engageforthefuture.
We hope you will join with us in moving CMI forward and welcome your interest.
Should you have any comments or questions please contact CMI via email to memberengagement@managers.org.uk

When grey hairs matter.....
Most of those who stay at their workplace past the age of 65 have been there for 10 years or more, according to the Institute for Employment Studies, and the bulk (69 per cent) will end up working part-time. That means workplaces have to change in order to keep up with them, and we can expect to hear more about how companies must help staff plan their later working life, just as they’ve had to adapt to mothers staying in the workforce.
In Germany, BMW has led a charge among manufacturers to keep their precious skilled workers as long as possible, introducing special floors to soften painful hip movements, rotating, rather than repeating, tasks to focus attention, and piping in more daylight.
Read more here...

Google immersion
25 January 2013, 09:30, Dublin 2, CPD 2.5 hours.
This event has been designed to enhance marketers' understanding of various aspects of digital marketing including search, pay per click, display, video, mobile and the future according to Google. It also includes a behind-the-scenes tour of Google headquarters.

Business change in a digital age
19 February 2013, 12:00, Belfast, CPD 1 hour.
Múirne Laffan, managing director at RTÉ Digital, through innovative examples will show how RTÉ is placing content at the core of its development. Krishna De provides practical guidance on how to integrate social technologies into your marketing and PR communications. In association with CIPR Northern Ireland.

The Pitch NI
22 February 2013, 17:00, Belfast, CPD 1 hour.
The competition grand final in which the remaining three teams of marketing students present a potential marketing strategy for a brief provided by our sponsor, Subway. Will you agree with the judges' decision?
