The AAPHI Blog

Last week I went to a local pharmacy to have a prescription filled. As I approached the prescription counter I noticed a sign beside the cash register that said, ” Let’s Talk.” Considering it an invitation I said in a friendly, cheery voice, ” OK let’s talk.” and proceeded to say ” How are you today?” The woman waiting on me was not amused. She looked at me in frigid, non-responsive silence and finally said cooly, ” Can I help you?”

It didn’t take a degree in nuclear physics to figure out that she was totally ignoring my humble attempt to be friendly so I too immediately responded to her icy tone with one of my own. I gave her the information regarding my prescription and was told curtly that I was at the wrong counter. I was at the “PRESCRIPTION OUT” counter when I should be at the

” PRESCRIPTION IN ” counter. How silly of me to make such a mistake. Maybe that’s why she was so unfriendly to me. I had committed a huge unforgivable sin in Pharmacy Land.

As I approached the proper counter I once again saw the sign, ” Let’s Talk.” and decided to give the place a second chance. I looked at the lady waiting on me and said once again in an upbeat and friendly tone, ” The other woman who waited on me wasn’t really in the mood to talk so I came down here. So “Let’s talk.”

Again stone cold, icy silence followed by ” Can I help you?” If you can’t beat them, join them so I too became cool, abrupt, assertive and said, ” Mike Moore/ Doctor Quinn/ asthma medication/ repeat required please. She checked the computer and found that I did have 4 repeats left. I told her that I would be in at 10:00 a.m. the next day to pick it up and I left. I know I shouldn’t have responded in kind but I was ticked off at the way a paying customer was being treated.

I wanted to hand the woman my card and tell her that I spoke to companies and organizations on customer relations and would be more that happy to conduct a seminar for their employees on the topic. But I didn’t.

I’m not saying that dealing with the public is easy. It isn’t. In fact it can be very stressful but you can neutralize the stress with a simple smile and a bit of humor. All these people needed to do when I responded to their invitation to talk was smile and say in a friendly tone, “OK. Let’s talk. What can I do for you?”

Simple, easy, effective and it leaves your customer wanting to return to do business with you. Isn’t that what customer service is all about?

Mike Moore is a speaker/humorist who speaks on ” Humor and Stress” Humor in the Workplace” and “Customer Relations”
http://motivationalplus.com/cgi/a/t.cgi?motplusarticles

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Colin Shaw urges you to ensure that your branding and marketing activities are aligned with your Customer experience.

I work with a client in the North of England. Whenever I visit them I always stay at the same hotel. At this hotel their slogan is “We never say No”. All the employees wear badges saying “We never say no”, and there are even posters and flyers in your room saying the same thing. So ask yourself this, do you think the people “never say no”?

Of course not! This is marketing hype, and so far from reality it’s ridiculous. The marketing people have sat in a darkened room and come up with a great slogan that is totally impractical to implement on the shop floor. The contrast is vivid. You talk to an employee who is saying “No” to you about something and yet their badge tells you that they “never say no”.

You hear customers point out the inconsistencies - “I would like a non-smoking room, are there any available?”. The employee replies “no, I’m sorry they are all gone” - and inevitably the customer says “but I thought you never said no”?. The employees get into games saying everything but the word “no” like “not really” or “that is not possible” to avoid saying the word “no”. When a customer points out they are really saying “no” I’ve actually heard an employee say, I didn’t say no, I said “not really”. It becomes like the game show where you cannot say the words “yes” or “no”. It made me think, “what are the brand values of this company?”. Given the scenario above I guess they maybe:

1. Create and expectation that is not fulfilled

2. Treat customers as if they are stupid

Now clearly these are not their brand values. But why have a slogan that is so obviously incapable of being implemented?

These examples are all around us. Only this week I wanted to buy some travel insurance. Therefore, after seeing an advert on TV, I decided to call this company - their slogan was “Quote me happy”. The images portrayed on the advert are of customers rolling around the floor laughing, and being very happy, with a telephone glued to their ear as they receive their quotation - and of the company’s call centre staff happily dealing with the customer’s enquiry. SO I thought I would give it a go……………..

The first thing I was greeted with was an automated service! The message said that when they collect my data to give me my quotation that they would use this information to send me further information about their products and services! Does that make me happy? No it doesn’t. The message also says that if you don’t want this to happen that all you have to do is tell the agent, when you do get through to them, and they will take you off the list. Do I trust that will happen? I eventually got through to the agent and asked for travel insurance. I explained that I didn’t want to give my details as I don’t want to be mailed with 20 million emails or letters and that I simply want travel insurance. Their reply was they couldn’t provide it to me as their process is to collect the data before the quote. Does this make me happy? No. Were the people really friendly and happy? No. Were the messages happy? No.

So why do marketing sit on one side of the fence and the people who deliver the reality sit on the other? The creative people in agencies and marketing have great fun in creating marketing campaigns without any thought to how these actually get delivered, and the subsequent impact on the Customer Experience. In my experience, most employees do not even know what their companies brand values are. These are something that marketing do. They mean nothing to the people in the front line. Therefore what happens is that an expectation is created by marketing which is then not fulfilled by the people who touch the customer.

I would urge you to ensure that your branding and marketing activities are aligned with your Customer Experience.

About The Author Colin Shaw is the Founding Partner of Beyond Philosophy and guru of the Customer Experience. His first book, Building Great Customer Experiences sold out within just eight weeks, is on a third reprint and available in paperback. Colin’s second book, Revolutionize Your Customer Experience will be released in September 2004. Colin has enjoyed over 20 years of experience working in blue chip companies, including Mars Ltd., Rank Xerox and BT. Colin’s final position was Director of Customer Experience for one of the world’s largest global companies. In his career, he has held senior positions in a number of different functional areas including Sales, Marketing, Customer Service and Training. Colin now indulges in his real passions, strategic thinking, conference speaking and Executive Briefings, writing books and advising boards of companies. Colin is a member of the Professional Speakers Association and enjoys a hectic conference speaking schedule. beyondphilosophy.com

It is just as simple as it sounds. You are paid to click ads. Stop getting annoyed whenever such an advertisement pops up and see the positive side of it. Consider that whenever such a thing happens, instead of a pop-up window, dollars appear. Now, all you have to do is click on them, and the money is yours to spend. The more ads (dollars) you click the more money you earn. It is not a scam, it is advertising. The companies or persons that advertise afford to pay people to click on their ads. The more people click, the more money the company spends, but if one in a few people purchase their services or products, the ads are profitable. Join other thousands of people who earn money online every second. It is almost too easy to be true.

How can I get paid to click ads?

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Have you ever tried to launch an affiliate program? If you have, then you know that one of the challenges you face is to get people to be your affiliate marketers. After all, if you are new on the block, people who have never heard of you may be reluctant to encourage their list or web traffic to come to your website.

Logical, right? After all, if someone asked you to recommend their product to your customers, you would want to know about it up front. More importantly, you would want to know who they were and if they were going to be a trustworthy and long term marketer.

First, let me tell you about how NOT to do it. I just heard about a would-be marketer who sent a big dog an email with an offer to market his $700 program to his list and he would get an incredible $70 from each sale. Incredible is right! Can you imagine someone pushing that program to his list? There are several things against him. First, there are many $700 programs out there that offer 40 - 50 - even 65% of the sale price to the referer. Second, this was someone new on the block who was not even on the big dog’s ezine list. Third, nobody else had heard of him either.

Now, lets find out how to do it right.

First, analyze what you want out of your affiliate program. Do you need money from the product you are selling? Do you want to make a name for yourself that people recognize? Do you just want lots of subscribers to your ezine? The way you market your program will depend on what you want out of it.

Second, go to your favorite search engine and discover who is linking to your competition. A good way to do this is to search for a keyword related to the product you wish to sell. Look at the websites of the first page that pops up. Now go to a search engine like google and see who is linking to that website. You can do this with a special form of search. For instance for my website http://www.affiliatetreasurehunt.com you would type in link:www.affiliatetreasurehunt.com.

Check out some of those who are linking to that site. You will find that most of these are affiliates. Check out more of the websites from your initial search with the links to them. You will start to see a pattern. Many of the sites that link to those affiliate products are coming from the same websites. These are likely what are known as super affiliates. In other words, they are the ones that are most successful at refering traffic to those affiliate programs.

Once you have identified the super affiliates in your niche, get to know them. This may be a slow process, but will be well worth it. Start by subscribing to their ezines and reading them. Buy some of their products and review them. Give them honest feedback - either positive or constructive criticism. If you have a legitimate reason, call them up and chat with them.

Now you have a working relationship, you are in a position to make a joint venture proposal. I highly recommend that you give your super affiliates a free copy of your product and ask them for a review. If you want to get their attention and have the best chance at the kind of response you want, mail them a hard copy. Even send it FedEx!

Depending on your ititial analysis, you may want to offer them 70 - 80 - even 100% of the sale price! Consider this - if they have a list of 100,000 highly responsive buyers, and you have a product that is a downloaded information product, it won’t cost you anything to product even 100,000 copies of that product! However, look at the possible benefit. You will be able to present your product to a good percentage of his list. You can possibly get them to opt in to your ezine. Furthermore, gather the emails of the buyers. You will have a very exclusive list. After all, customers of a $700 product can become repeat customers - if you over deliver. That is the name of the game on the internet. Make sure that when people plop down $700 that they feel like they are getting at least $1000 worth of value. And if possible keep them coming back for more.

Get to know the big dogs and throw them some good bones and soon you will find that you are barking with the best of them.

Ron McCluskey has been marketing online since the early eighties.
Now he has a growing internet empire and is willing to
share his knowledge at Monthly Affiliate Income

Pick up some great free products while you check out some extremely profitable affiliates at Affiliate Treasure Hunt