Note to Vodaphone: your call may be recorded

We've all said it before but it bears saying again because it's (very) important. This is the age of social media. If you run any sort of customer-facing business, every single time one of your employees talks to one of your customers they are talking to the press. Every time someone in your call centre - or more problematically the call centre you've saved a few pennies by outsourcing customer service to - picks up the phone, it's an opportunity to make your brand perception a bit better, or a bit worse. By way of illustration, here's James Whatley, noted mobile/tech blogger, getting dicked about by "Vodafone customer service".

Spend all the money you like on PR consultants and staying "on message" to the press. Everyone is a media company now. That's money that could be far better spent getting the customer service right every single time.

(HT: Paul Sweeney)

(Also - is it possible that Google is the world's favourite brand because it has almost no customer service at all? Just a thought.)