Customer Service, Marketing & Other Interesting Thoughts
Just found this on the YP Sydney/Seriously Creative site....
In 25 Words design a new game with the following two Seriously Creative 'Yardparty' products
Belly Bumpers and 15m Tug of War Rope.
Submit your ideas to games@seriouslycreative.com.au before 1st November 2009.
Winner and new game will appear on our website on 10th November (winner will also be notified by email on that day). Winner will receive a Yardparty Hire to the value of $300. This will include Belly Bumpers and 15m Tug of War rope for their new game. The new game will be added to our current game ideas list for the benefit of our customers, who love to' Yardparty'. Yardparty prize must be received by no later than 31st January 2010.
Here is a worthy article in case you were thinking about a YPL vs a franchise.....
It convinces me of the benefits in Yardparty Licenses, what about you?
See comments for previous Posts....
Just found this on the YP Sydney/Seriously Creative site....
In 25 Words design a new game with the following two Seriously Creative 'Yardparty' products
Belly Bumpers and 15m Tug of War Rope.
Submit your ideas to games@seriouslycreative.com.au before 1st November 2009.
Winner and new game will appear on our website on 10th November (winner will also be notified by email on that day). Winner will receive a Yardparty Hire to the value of $300. This will include Belly Bumpers and 15m Tug of War rope for their new game. The new game will be added to our current game ideas list for the benefit of our customers, who love to' Yardparty'. Yardparty prize must be received by no later than 31st January 2010.
Here is a worthy article in case you were thinking about a YPL vs a franchise.....
It convinces me of the benefits in Yardparty Licenses, what about you?
See comments for previous Posts....
posted by Yardgames and Yardparty at
9:32 am
8 Comments:
Here is a tip that really caught my attention. If I ever forget about you and your business, instead taking this line, make sure you pull me up ok?
Getting out of your own way
Hi,
I was waiting for my car to be serviced, so I read the super-glossy magazine published at great expense by the company for its owners.
I recognised the senior executive who 'wrote' a short 'letter' to customers. It consisted of lots of good news: sales records were being broken and the company has won an unprecedented number of awards. This is typical of corporate newsletters and customer magazines. Management cannot help themselves. They imagine the customer is the same as them: interested mainly in sales figures. Hello! They don't give a [expletive deleted] about your sales figures.... unless they are getting something out of it.
"The Inner Game of Golf" teaches that to be a great golfer you must get out of your own way. Many teachers of eastern spiritual practices say we must get out of our own way if we are to become truly enlightened. Obviously our senior manager in charge of the marketing of cars like mine needs to get out of his own way. This means become less inward focussed and self-conscious of your role and responsibilities to the company. It means becoming more outward focussed and customer driven.
Managers can't do it by nature of their roles.
Cheers!
MK
Touch points.
Its relevant to all business because we all touch the client a number of times on their way through our sales process.
The challenge is to make each touch add to the overall experience. To look at each touch as an opportunity to add value.
By touch points I mean the contacts your client has with you in your sales process.
It reminds me of a recent experience Leigh and I had at a Gold Coast Motel. Don't want to mention any names but it was a hotel in Surfers Paradise.
Upon checking in, we were forced to sign a document saying that if we set off a fire alarm in our room we agree to pay the $896 call out owed to the fire department.
Now I have stayed in many ,many hotels and I have never been forced to sign anything of the kind.
The problem for them now was , because my experience has started off on the wrong foot, I start looking for things or "collecting stamps" and of course, I started finding flaws - needless to say my overall experience at this hotel left much to be desired. And I will be telling people I know to give the joint a miss.
So what does this mean for us? How are we interacting with our clients? To give you a simple opposite example...
I called one of my clients the other day and when I asked the receptionist if I could speak to my contact, she beamed in a cheery, genuine, fresh voice "of course you can!" How refreshing is that? Such a pleasant change from many of the receptionists you typically get when you call somewhere.
So the first step for you is...
Look at your customer journey and the touch points through out your process. Ask yourself how can I enhance my clients experience at each point of contact, how can I multiply the experience they have with me and my organisation.
And multiply it will - they will share their experience and it will come back to you and the good news is, you don't have to do too much...
Some simple ideas could be...
- A gift with new client purchase
- A gift on payment
- A discount voucher with certain dollar value spend
- A follow up thank you call after purchase (don't underestimate this one)
- A Follow up thank you letter or post card after purchase
Here is another interesting customer service 'lesson':
17/7/08...
How to get retail staff to suggest additional items, either by upselling or adding on.
This is certainly relevant to retail, but it also has particular relevance to any manager who seeks behavior change in any team of sales people in any type of sales role.
There are two main points that need to be considered in creating any type of behavior change within a group of sales people, especially if the group is Generation Y.
1. You need to give them a clear reason why you are suggesting they take the new approach. For example, what we know in sales is that the first sale mostly covers the overhead of the business like wages, rent electricity etc.
It's not until the second sale is made that the business actually starts to make money. And when that second item sale or up-sell is made all sorts of possibilities start to open up for the business.
Anything from bigger and better incentives to team celebrations and better opportunities for all people concerned.
Now this is important information to a team member who is wondering why they should do what you are suggesting.
It changes the reason why they should add on or upsell from "you just want me to sell more stuff", to "I can really affect change in this place and get something for myself if I do these extra things.
2. The second thing that should be considered is what sort of frame you put around the new behavior. By this I mean how you define it.The best way to define the introduction of a new behavior is to turn it into a game or theme or program if you are dealing with older team members.
For example a game around add ons sales could be "the let's get to 20 APH (add ons per hour) game". Which is, lets see if, as a team, we can get to an average of 20 second sales every hour.
This gives everyone something to focus on and monitor, and of course, what we monitor and focus on, expands.
You should have a short term reward system for the person who performs the best as well as an overall team incentive as well. It doesn't have to be a big thing - just some type of recognition (some instant gratification).
Get creative with the names you use to define the games you create that boost your KPI's.
Generally speaking, the more the title of the game is familiar to the team, the more they will embrace it.
An example could be the "Big Brother game". Now as much as I despise this program, young people know it and will relate to an association with it.
The big brother game could be the person who is secretly observed by the manager as
suggesting additional products or services over a weekly, fortnightly or monthly basis wins a prize.
First step.
Look at your KPI's and the behaviours you want to support within your business.
Then get the team members with the biggest influence in your team on board by asking
them what they think about it.
Then get them to come up with a theme or name for the game or theme.
Then run it for a week or a month and track the results.
Have fun with it.
Good luck
Hello Yardparty friends, Karon here from Yardparty in Sydney. This is my first Blog, Yippee!! Thanks Andrew for your help getting going.Just wanted to put a proposal to you regarding national advertising for Yardparty. Most recently i have had a few conversations with Parenting Australia who have a database 49,000 parents and who send information out to their customer base every week via electronic newsletter. They also have 30,000 to 40,000 unique visitors per month to their site. They are offering us the main story page in their e newsletter for $575 including GST or we could do 6 insertions in the Newsletter, first one being the main story in their newsletter, a good size spread followed by 5 display ads over whatever period we decide to advertise (within the space of 12 months) for $3105. Between us this would be a very attractive rate for this sort of advertising opporuntity. I have statistics and all other relevant details available for you to review on Parenting Australia. I will email these to Andrew at Eco Imports who will then forward them on to you for your perusal.
If you are interested in looking at this collectively please let me know and i will arrange for our contact at Parenting Australia to speak to you all individually, to satisfy and answer any questions you may have.
It does benefit all of us if we place an ad, as their audience is Australia wide and growing and when advertising Yardparty it will filter through to each office servicing that particular area.
Email to follow shortly. Look forward to hearing from you.
Regards
Karon
Hi
Re: the proposal/suggestion
I actually was on Parenting Australia’s mail out list. I joined up in Adelaide a fair while ago. I don’t know whether Parenting Australia are mainly in Cities, but I have never seen anything about them up here. I chose to unsubscribe because I felt they were only beneficial for the 0 – 5 year old bracket, so I now find that I don’t need this information (hence the un-subscription). I don’t feel confidant that this is the best form of advertising for us up here.
Regards,
Sharon
The Party Warehouse
Great Idea,
I’m interested. What about some radio advertising?
Eleni
The Play Space
Hi there yardpartyers
We have again been successful in logging into the blogging system.
Dont faint Andrew. We really enjoyed meeting and catching up with everyone last week at the workshop. We look forward to keeping in touch.
As promised here are the contact details for the Australian School Newsleters.
Phone 07 3290 1966
Fax 07 3290 1988
Freecall 1800 245 077
Email info@austnews.com.au
website www.austnews.com.au
Best of luck with it.
Anthea and Effie
Hi everyone,
I was supposed to get back to everyone regarding how my shopping mall experience is going.
As far as the Yardparty stuff is concerned there was some interest and quite a few people took flyers and or CD's but the response has not been great.
It worked as a marketing ploy for the edeucational books we sell to teachers rather than for the game hire. However, we ar now planning a Play Space Yardparty Brochure.
Ta
Eleni
13/5/09
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