Speaking Sensis

Earlier today, the Yellow Pages® earned a mention in Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s opening address to the 45th ALP National Conference. The story our PM told highlights the enormous social value these directories bring to the community.

You might be surprised to know that Australians turn to the Yellow Pages® and White Pages® directories about five million times a day¹.

Every one of those five million or so searches is a story. It might be a story about contacting a loved one. Or getting in touch with a mate you haven’t spoken to for years.

It might be about an Australian getting the help they need from a business, organisation or government department.

And, just as importantly, it might be about a small business owner finding the customers that are so important to the livelihood of her business and employees.

What might not surprise you is that the people at Sensis love these stories. They’re the source of pride that gets us to work every day.

And it’s fantastic when we hear one of those stories recounted by none other than our Prime Minister.

In his opening address to the ALP National Conference yesterday, Prime Minister Rudd told the story of 18 year old Matthew Jenkins. Matthew finished school at the end of last year and had worked hard to find an apprenticeship… sadly without success.

Then Matthew saw a piece on the news about Mr Rudd’s visit to CO-WYN Building Contractors in Bankstown NSW. According to Prime Minister Rudd:

Good on you Matthew and CO-WYN. We’re really proud we could help.

Yet another improvement hit your handset this week, as a new look and functionality upgrade was added to Yellow Pages® Mobile.

Yellow Pages® Mobile has had a fantastic year so far. People have been using the service more than twice as often as last year¹, and smart phone owners have been turning to it in droves. In fact, Apple iPhone users now make up 14% of all Yellow Pages® Mobile usage.

The latest upgrade includes not only look and feel improvements, but:

• The introduction of ‘Popular Searches’ to replace the browse heading section, which will give people a much simpler user experience
• An updated ‘Business Details’ page which brings advertiser listings to the top of the page
• Improvements to the ‘click to call’ function, which means a more seamless experience with fewer page loads
• Upgraded location maps to the latest version of Whereis® maps.

If you haven’t tried Yellow Pages® Mobile, why not give it a try today? You can find Yellow Pages® Mobile:

• At the top of the BigPond browser;
• Via the ‘Get it now’ feature at http://yellow.onyourmobile.com.au, or;
• By texting “MOBILE’ to 0429 YELLOW (935569).

With the support of Yellow Pages®, the Mornington Bay Run – an annual charity run that raises funds for the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre – was held over the weekend.

As dawn broke over the bay, hundreds of runners and walkers lined up to participate in the annual bay run.

A picturesque route saw many participants finish the 8km run and 3.7km walk in record time. In fact, even the Yellow Pages® Chicken Boy completed the walk with ease.

Members of the Mornington Yellow Pages® team participated in both the run and walk, and also acted as ’support crew’ for other participants.

The Mornington Bay Run is organised by the Mornington Chamber of Commerce. Yellow Pages® Mornington is a major sponsor.

In his April speech “The Rise of Social Media“, Sensis CEO Bruce Akhurst commented on the US mobile takeaway business – Kogi BBQ – and their success in using Twitter to keep customers in touch with where their vans would be.Bruce commented that Kogi BBQ had acquired 15,000 Twitter followers in its short life.

Well, I happened across Kogi BBQ’s Twitter page the other day. Turns out their band of followers has more than doubled – to over 36,600 – in just three months.

Ahhh… the tweet smell of success.

There’s a lot of improvement going on at Sensis. And our customers like what they’re seeing.

If there’s one thing this world definitely doesn’t want for, it’s business advice.

I mean, there’s more business books out there today than skivvies at a Trekkies convention. If you don’t believe me, try searching for “marketing” at Amazon.com’s book section… and be amazed by the mind-snapping 535,000 results you get .

The irony is that this torrent of advice all boils down to some pretty basic principles. And the most fundamental of them all is:

Give your customers what they want.

With that in mind, Sensis has been working closely with the buyers and sellers who rely on our services: listening to them, learning about their needs and launching the solutions to help them.

This approach has led to a stream of new innovations over the last couple of years. From info-rich advertising and metered ads to the Yellow™ in the car directory, to agreements with Ninemsn and Google Maps, to re-builds of our directory web sites to the new mobile sites that are now delivering 8% of our total digital traffic (1) .

More importantly, this customer-centric approach – which can be seen not just in our product development, but in our focus on effective sales and customer service – has contributed to a real spike in customer satisfaction. Between February 08 and May 09, for example, satisfaction among users of our directory sites increased by 10 percentage points (pp) for Yellow Pages® OnLine (2) and 14pp for White Pages® OnLine (3).

And we’re keeping the heat on the innovation front so we can deliver continuous improvement to our customers. In just the last fortnight, for example, we’ve launched the following upgrades to our digital local search sites.

Easy to access

Buyers are looking for more touchpoints, so they can access our services whenever and wherever they want to.

To assist this, we’ve just launched White Pages® Mobile. The new mobile version of White Pages® gives you access to residential, business or government contacts together with maps and directions and the ability to save listings to your contacts or share them with friends. And it’s all just one click away from the BigPond mobile menu.

We’ve also improved the popular send to mobile feature on Whereis.com. Send to mobile is a simple way to send your online search results to your mobile. That way, you can easily take the business details you found on your computer out on the road with you.

Easy to search

People are also looking for easier ways to search – less entry boxes and more relevant results. Over the last fortnight, we’ve continued to answer this call by launching:

• Streamlined search in White Pages® OnLine. We’ve reduced the number of entry windows, which means less typing and faster results. For example, the number of business search windows has shrunk from four to two.
• Auto-complete for White Pages® OnLine searches. By suggesting answers while you’re typing this new facility saves even more time and helps ensure more relevant results.
• New user-friendly URLs for Yellow Pages® OnLine advertiser pages. This means site users can easily bookmark the results page for businesses they’re interested in. And, if you’re an advertiser, you can link straight from your web site to your Yellow Pages® OnLine ad.
• The addition of business listing names to the Yellow Pages® OnLine search algorithm. This has the potential to greatly expand the relevant results site users will receive. For example, a search for Thai Restaurants on the Gold Coast currently returns 87 listings, instead of only 26 in the past.

Easy to find

And what about when you’ve found the business listing you want? What are we doing to make it easier for you to get in contact with that business?

If you’re hungry, Yellow Pages® OnLine has made it easier than ever to book a restaurant or order a meal. There are already over 500 registered Menulog restaurants across Australia that are now also listed with Yellow Pages® OnLine under headings like Restaurants and Cafes.  For example, you can search for Indian Restaurants in Melbourne VIC, and find restaurants like Nirankar Fine Indian Cuisine or Bombay Beat Restaurant that provide one click access to Menulog’s booking and ordering facilities.

We’ve also added landmark navigation to the Whereis.com web site. As a result, you’ll begin seeing turn by turn directions like “turn right at the Post Office” rather than just “turn right in 200m”. This enhancement is the result of research undertaken by Melbourne Uni’s Geomatics department and Whereis. The research clearly showed that people are able to navigate more easily and precisely using landmarks.

I hope you’ll agree that that’s not a bad haul for a fortnight. But it’s far from the end. Continuous improvement means continuous innovation, so keep your eye on Speaking Sensis for more listening, learning and launching in the future.