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Archive for September 2009

Introducing The Support Team

Thursday, September 10th, 2009

Here at WhiteLabelDating.com we recognise the importance of customer service and the impact that this can have on your brand and the reputation of your company, which is why we take it so seriously. We have a dedicated and professional support team who work 7 days a week and respond to all member queries within 24 hours or less. Our average response time is just 3 hours! Unlike other Internet dating sites, we make our phone number easily accessible to members and are on hand to help with account upgrades and any technical issues that may arise.

Our support team have all had expert training in this field and aim to ensure that every member leaves the customer experience with a smile and hopefully a date, happy with the service they’ve received from your brand!

Whilst these staff are part of the White Label Dating team, they are working for you, looking to provide your members with a top-notch experience and so we thought that it might be quite nice to introduce you to the team. There are currently 12 members of staff, some have been with us for over 3 years with others having just joined a month ago - it’s a rapidly expanding team! So without further ado, let us introduce:-

Jessica Dimsdale

Jessica Dimsdale - Customer Support Manager

Jessica joined WhiteLabelDating.com 3 years ago after deciding to move away from the beauty industry where she worked as a beauty therapist. Jessica originally joined as an Administration Assistant, but with all of her hard work she made her way to the top of customer support, to our Customer Support Manager. It’s her keen eye for detail and perfection in her work that has now led her to manage one of the largest teams in the company, which is still continuously growing! Her biggest achievements to date are; expanding her team from only 2 members in December 2007, to 12 in July 2009 and slashing customer complaint rates to an all time low! Now her focus for the future is to create specialised sub departments in our customer support team for further improvements. And of course, to continue supplying one of the best, most accessible internet dating customer care departments in the world! Jessica really is someone to watch out for at White Label Dating.

Charlotte Ebel

Charlotte Ebel - Customer Support Supervisor

Starting when the team was much smaller, she’s seen the team and the company grow as one of our more experienced members of the support staff. Before starting in the company as a Customer Support Executive in March 2008, Charlotte worked at a business centre for 2 years, and had plenty of experience she needed for this customer focused role. Charlotte proved she was eager and keen to work as hard as we needed and more! She always went the extra mile in her work, which not only gained her an admirable work ethic but also set a good example for the other members in the team and quickly earned her the role of Customer Support Supervisor in January 2009. Charlotte continues to deliver a high standard of Customer care and support for our members, and assists Jessica in what ever she needs as her right hand gal!

Lucy Kappelides

Lucy Kappelides

After working as an events coordinator previously, Lucy decided it was time for a change and a new career, thankfully we found her! Lucy started in her role as Customer Support Executive in February 2008. She’s grown to become not only extremely experienced in her field of customer care, but very valued in the Support Team for her dedication and quality of work. In fact, Lucy has become so familiar and efficient with dealing with your member’s queries that she’s been given the nickname the “Support Query Queen” …not bad eh!

Kelly WareKelly Ware

Kelly joined us in June 2008 after leaving her previous job as Passenger Service Agent in Heathrow Airport. She started within the Administration Team just as Jessica had. Kelly was quickly recognised and snapped up for the Customer Support Team where she was far better suited. What with all of her wealth of previous customer care experience we would have been silly not too! She is always suggesting ways to improve our team and the systems we use. Being the great team player that she is, combined with her strive for perfection, Kelly’s an all important member of the Support Team!

Alana Jackson

Alana Jackson

Alana joined WhiteLabelDating.com in August 2008 after finishing her 3 year degree at University, to become an Administration Executive. Within 6 months she worked her way up to become a Customer Support Executive where she feels far better suited, and we think so too! Alana has proven to be a patient and relaxed member of the Support Team in times of stress, and always ensures to have done her best to assist your customers in every way she can! Throughout the day her relaxed nature makes her a calming member of the team to be around and she always manages to make you see the brighter side of life! She also actively looks for ways to improve the system we work on and is keen to expand and promote the dynamics of our Support Team.

emma-finalcopy Emma Newman

Emma instantly fitted into the Support Team with her bubbly personality, which found her place in the team in no time! She came to us from a well known retailer in Windsor where she worked as a Customer Service Supervisor. Having known she was so close, we wish we got our hands on her sooner! Emma quickly became a vital member of the Customer Support Team bringing with her a great knowledge of customer service, and that all important vivacious personality. :-) She thoroughly enjoys ensuring that all members on the site are genuine and keep those nasty scammers at bay! She never lets them “slip through the net”! And you may wish to know she’s more commonly known in our team as the “Scammer Queen”!

Alexandra Osbourne

Alexandra Osbourne

Alexandra joined WhiteLabelDating.com in June 2009. Although she has not been in the company long she has already settled into the role with ease and strives to do her best in all aspects of the job. In the short time that Alexandra has been with the company, she has already written a document to train new members of support with telephone queries and dilemmas which has aided the new team members with answering any phone questions that may arise. It is clear that Alexandra is confident and has picked up the ins and outs of support in no time! She’s a strong member of the Support Team who we value very much!

Gurdeep Daffu

Gurdeep Daffu

Gurdeep landed himself a role with WhiteLabelDating.com earlier this year. In 2006 he studied Double Award I.C.T. for his A-levels whilst working for an online call centre. This was great experience for him as he was able to improve on his skills and gain knowledge of how businesses should work. He then moved on in his career working for a respectable car manufacturing as a Parts Administrator. Here he gained excellent knowledge on the new and used car rental business alongside integrating with large corporate businesses. Working for a dating agency is a big career move for him, and he aims to work hard and grow within the company working his way forward to a better future.

Karl Offord

Karl Offord

Karl first started at WhiteLabelDating.com back in 2004 after he finished his degree in Human Biology at Oxford Brooks University.  He was only with us for a short period of time working on our Administration Team. When he left he became a qualified Rowing Coach and in recent months has joined us back on the Support Team. Karl has over 10 years experience in customer service and brings with him an excellent phone manner. He sure is a charmer! ;-) He has settled in to the Support Team quickly and is known as the “Big Friendly Giant”. We’re glad to have Karl back on board!

Amy Loudon

Amy Loudon

Amy joined the team in July 2009, having just completed a three year degree in Advertising. Having previously worked in front line customer service related jobs, Amy had the skills and strengths to fulfill the role. Although still relatively new to the company, Amy has fitted in with team perfectly and we feel like shes always been part of the team! Her best attributes are her positive attitude and her polite telephone manner. With the ability to understand each individual customers problem and remain calm in all situations, Amy prides herself on resolving customers queries both effectively and efficiently. Amy feels lucky to have found a job that she enjoys getting up for in the morning, and hopes to spend many happy years progressing within the company, and so do we!

Kate Hyder

Kate Hyder

Kate has joined the company in the last few months. After 3 years at Portsmouth University, Kate graduated with a degree in Sport Science. She has previously worked in reception and customer support roles for two large hotel companies, bringing with her a good knowledge in customer services. She has fitted into the department extremely well and we love having her on the team! Kate is one to watch out for, she’s a hard worker and a big achiever. We’re thankful to have her on side!

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Jenna Keating

Jenna Keating

Jenna is the newest member of the Support Team at WhiteLabelDating.com (Awww!) Although she has only been with us for a short period, Jenna has become one of the family here and we love her. With a cheerful telephone manner, and that eye for detail that we need, Jenna has fitted in perfectly among the team and is thoroughly enjoying her role as Customer Support Executive.  She’s been so helpful and quick to learn everything so far that we look forward to what she has to offer in the future as our new addition!

We regularly receive success stories from members of the sites and so we thought that it would be helpful to provide you with a weekly customer service status update blog post with details of the main member query, success stories and complaint rate which helps you keep on top of your members experiences. If there’s anything else that you’d like to see included, be sure to get in touch!

Status Update - Payment Issue Resolved

Wednesday, September 9th, 2009

It’s with much pleasure that we’re able to announce that the payment issue that was recently experienced has now been resolved in full. For those of you who didn’t get to read the last post, please find below a summary which outlines the issue and steps that are being implemented to stop the same issue from occurring in the future.

SagePay, our payment provider experienced a series of failures in their main and standby systems on Monday evening which failed to failover as expected. No data was lost, but SagePay prioritised getting all data restored in favour of returning the system online quicker but only restoring part of the data. SagePay have told us that they are taking immediate actions to improve the reliability of their processes and backup systems to prevent a repeat of the last two days.

All rebills from 8pm on Monday through to early this morning have been processed today so our partners will see a larger than expected rebill figure for today, incorporating the missing rebills during this period. Initials/re-initials between 8pm and midnight on Monday were affected but had mostly recovered yesterday.

WLD will be working closely with SagePay to ensure that these goals of having stable and reliable backups are met and that our partners aren’t affected in this way again.

We apologise for the huge inconvenience this has caused all our partners and customers.

Status Update For Partners

Tuesday, September 8th, 2009

Here at WhiteLabelDating.com we like to keep our partners up-to-date which is why we wanted to let you know with a problem that we’re currently experiencing regarding payments from members.

We experienced issues with our payment provider, Sage Pay,  yesterday evening (9-11PM BST) which impacted all of Sage Pay’s clients. At first there were issues collecting payments from new members, which has now been resolved meaning that all new members can make payment as normal. However, we are still experiencing issues collecting re-bill payments and this is being investigated by our payment provider.

These payments are currently being back-logged and will be collected just as soon as the issue is resolved. However, this will mean that you should notice a lag in revenue on your statements. This is a matter that we take very seriously and are working incredibly hard with our payment provider to resolve, however in the meanwhile please feel free to get in touch with your Partner Manager who will be more than happy to help.

Almost Famous…

Monday, September 7th, 2009

Here at WhiteLabelDating.com we pride ourselves in being experts in our field, truly understanding the industry, its community and how best to serve those people. We go to extensive lengths to innovate and to try and make the dating scene more fun, safe and successful than ever before. We do this for our own piece of mind, knowing that when we come to work in the morning, we’re improving and enriching people’s lives, often introducing them to their mate for life.the-sun-news1

We were very excited to be approached as industry commentators for a number of national newspapers. This in turn is great for raising the profile of online dating, increasing awareness and making it more socially acceptable and thus increasing the size of the market, which hopefully in turn should earn our partners more.

The Sun featured an article on “Netting a Husband.” The article discussed the issue of women no longer looking for one night stands, but instead looking for their Mr. Right. The article quotes Ross Williams discussing his thoughts on the issue, “They now search for traditional marriage partners rather than casual sex. It’s a return to more traditional female and family values.” You can check out the article online at, The Sun, Netting a Husband.

The Daily Star features a similar article stating that women are rejecting one night stands and are instead going down the route of dating more guys, until they find the right one for them. Ross is quoted again in this article backing up this statement with figures from our sites, “A year ago, 30% of women said they used sites like ours for a night of passion. Now it’s down to just 5%.”

Not only were we mentioned in these national newspapers, we have also been mentioned in an article published in City A.M, which went live on 4th September 2009. The article, titled ‘Looking for Love’ discusses some of our niche dating sites and in particular talks about some of our developing sites such as, nicegirlsforbankers.com and nogolddiggers.com, which are not yet live. The sites are aimed at gentleman who may have been a little unlucky in love in the past due to their bank balances! Ross is asked how we will prevent those sneaky gold digger types from registering on the sites, to which Ross replied, “Well, that wouldn’t be in the spirit of things, would it? Though I suppose if any relationship fostered by the site subsequently went sour and provoked any attempts at gold-digging, the membership might serve as an online form of pre-nup?”

It great to see some much press attention focused on online dating in the media. Let’s hope the trend continues as more people switch on their computers to find love.





Forces Reunited dating has launched

Friday, September 4th, 2009

Forces Reunited is a British Armed Forces Community and are leaders in their field. They are a growing community that offers a variety of things for their members. They help people from the British Forces easily find their family and friends and help people to stay in touch with one another.  Their special message, unity, and drive to stay connected is something that can really touch your heart. Do you happen to know anyone in the Army, Navy, or Air Force?  Let’s be honest now, everyone has at least one friend or possibly a beloved family member who has, or continues to serve for our Queen and Country. In fact a lot of people know that our very own Ross Williams, Founder and Chairman, has learned to fly with The Royal Air Force once upon a time.

Forces Reunited is growing fast and it’s fantastic to be a part of that enabling them to flourish in their message and goal to grow further. Naturally we jumped at the chance of making this a reality because love after all is what we do best! We’re excited to be working with Forces Reunited, and of course always happy to have another addition to our ever growing White Label Dating family.

Forces Reunited is a community that can definitely bring families together and old friends who’ve just lost touch, or finding information on your great, great granddad you wanted to know more about! You can get information on over 1 million British Armed Forces personnel records, and from dates starting from 1630. Now that’s impressive!

Whether you’re a member or not the site is easy to navigate and can easily find any regiment, base or ship. It’ll all be on there. With Forums, News, Guidelines on how to find who you’re looking for. This site really is something special! We’re both happy and proud to have such a respectable community on board. Forces Reunited once wasn’t able to cater for those people who wanted to get online and find a date. But with a little White Label Magic we’ve joined “forces” so we can continue to help spread the love.

For more information why don’t you check out their website and see for yourself at www.forcesreunited.org.uk/newdating

forcesreunited

September Newsletter from WhiteLabelDating.com

Friday, September 4th, 2009

Welcome to the September edition of the White Label Dating newsletter…..We have had a full packed month, with a very busy month ahead of us! Read on to find out what we have been up to.

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ad:tech 2009

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ad:tech 2009 is finally around the corner and with us being the web geeks that we are, we always get very excited when ad:tech comes a round. It is after all the number 1 event for digital marketing so it’s bound to get our hearts pumping!

The event is taking place on the 22nd and 23rd of this month and takes place at the Olympia National Hall in London. Some leading industry brands will be presenting including Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, something not to be missed!

Why not come along, attend some workshops and get some great tips and techniques on how best to promote your brand as competition in the market place increases.

As we’ll be exhibiting, we’ll have many of our team at the event, so be sure to pop over to stand 210 to say hi….we can’t wait to see you there.

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New PPC Blog Series Coming Soon

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After the success of More Content = More Cash we are planning on producing another series of blogs, this time on Pay Per Click.

We want the WhiteLabelDating.com blog to be a place where you can come for helpful tips and advice on how to build your sites up and help them become as profitable as they can be.

If you have anything that you would like to see in the new series of posts, or any questions you would like answered please just drop us an e-mail and we will do our very best to help you out.

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Far From Over the Hill

Dating is definitely the new hip thing to do in your 50’s! Whilst we’ve suspected this for a while as the older generations become more tech savvy, we’ve now got figures to prove it. Statistics show that in this month alone there has been an 8.22% rise in members joining the over 50’s basic network and a further 6.78% are signing up and becoming full paying members!

The over 50’s networks are really booming at the moment! Make sure you don’t miss out. Why not give your account manager a ring and find out just how easy it is to add an over 50’s site to your portfolio.

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My My Haven’t We Grown!

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Our little family has grown so much! We’re not so little anymore! WhiteLabelDating.com now has a very impressive 71 dedicated employees, ready and waiting to help you out whatever your enquiry may be! All of our staff are based in our head office in Windsor, UK and are always on hand to help.

It’s really quite the success story for the little dating company that started up nearly 5 years ago. We’re now growing so big that we’re bursting at the seams and it’s not stopping there!

Here at WhiteLableDating.com we pride ourselves in the support and commitment we offer our partners and with the team growing so much it gives us even more opportunities to widen that support network, providing even better service to you and your members.

We’re so excited that the business continues to grow from strength to strength and we promise to keep you up to date on any new additions to the family!

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Until Next Month…

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Thanks so much for reading I hope you enjoyed September’s newsletter, we like to keep you as updated on events as possible!

Please do drop me a line if you would like to see anything in the next edition, or if you would like to add anything to our blog posts. You can reach me on fheath@globalpersonals.co.uk

Tune in next month for more news and updates.

Kindest Regards

Francesca Heath

Marketing Assistant

fheath@globalpersonals.co.uk

WhiteLabelDating.com