Yellow Dog Consulting

Sales & Marketing Consulting for solo-preneurs.

April Customer Service Roundup

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You know how I love good Customer Service and tend to rant when I get bad customer service. So this month I thought I’d try something new. Here are my favorite customer service experiences for the month…

  1. MeUndies

    photographer_bestYup, I bought underwear online. And they are AWESOME. So I decided to sign up for their monthly club and “treat yo self” each month. I had a hard time figuring out how to do that because it wanted to send me the same pair again. So I went to their customer service page and boy if I wasn’t surprised that “Ryan” my CS rep was incredibly handsome and super helpful. I’m all set. And can’t wait for my May box to arrive!

  2. ThinkGeek IMG_9139

    I found a cool scarf on Think Geek’s site last week AND it was Star Wars, AND they were doing a special where I got a rad pin if I bought $x of Star Wars merch (which I did). And it was 20% off, but then I noticed I could only use ONE PROMO code. No cool pin for me. But when I tried to add the 2nd code? No problem – this is the right way to run a promo – what’s the worst that happens when you are giving something away for free AND have a discount code? You give them both and have a customer for life.

  3. My new CSA

    IMG_8592I signed up for a CSA last month and in my first box I got KALE, which no one ever wants. If you say you want it, you’re lying. So I shot my CSA a note when I saw kale was supposed to come in the next box and said “hey, no kale please, and also no X & Y.” And I got no response which always annoys me. But then my box showed up that week and written on the box were my substitutes for the stuff I didn’t want AND “extras” as an apology for the kale I received. There was so much delicious produce I thought we’d never eat it all!

  4. T-Mobile

    I’ve had terrible cell service since we moved to our new house. I had a client call two weeks ago where my phone dropped the call FIVE times. So I finally did a chat with T-Mobile last week and they said their engineers would check it out and add necessary support to our neighborhood. We’ll see if it works but hey, it wasn’t a “that’s too bad” which is really what I was expecting…

What about you? Did you have any great customer service experiences this month?

Can Anyone Find You?

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company-productsEarlier this week Google updated their search algorithms to boost “the ranking of mobile-friendly pages on mobile search results.” What does this mean?

Well, for the small business owner with a website that you’ve already spent an arm and a leg to get up and running – start here: Test your website with the Google Mobile-Friendly Test. If it says you’re friendly then calm down, it means you’re totally fine. If it says you aren’t, follow the instructions for whatever your website is designed in. Google is really helpful here, they WANT you to be mobile friendly.

Talk to your web developer, hopefully they already reached out to you with a heads up that this was happening. I told all my clients what was going on and we’ve decided with each client what the plan is. Some have updated and revised their theme to be responsive. Some are going to wait it out and see how these updates are really effecting their traffic, and some are figuring out if it’s in the budget to get it updated.

The point of all this is, Google thinks mobile is important because mobile is important! Your website needs to be easy to view and interact with on my phone or tablet. If you have a location I need to be able to easily call you or get your address so I can get to you. If my phone can’t get me there easily I’ll go elsewhere.

This is also an excellent time to remind you to make sure you have set up a Google+ account for your business. AND while you’re at it setup a Bing Places page. The perk of Bing Places is you just need to set it up, you don’t need to update it. With Google+ you can and should update your pages on a regular basis. I have my blog posts auto-post to my G+ pages (business & personal) and I find I get traffic from them since it’s not overwhelmed with content like other social media outlets.

Welcome to the next wave of your website. Make it mobile, make it social, and make sure that all that money you spent on your website wasn’t for nothing!

College Kids are More Polite Than You

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IMG_9108This past weekend we had 4 college students stay at our house. They were kids from the debate team who were at a conference near by. As we discovered how close they’d be I invited them to stay at our place. We had a GREAT time. They fell in love with Hank (obviously) and we were up way to late talking and discussing post-grad life. I’m excited for what’s in store for them!

When they left on Sunday they left us a thank you note that they’d all written notes in. They are the GREATEST kids. We’ve had a revolving door of guests since we moved to Oregon, and it’s been awesome. Mostly family and a few friends so far. And the first thank you note we received was from our youngest guests (except the 3-year-old, but he drew us pictures for the fridge!). It’s the little things in life, make sure that you’re sending thank you notes, make sure you do your follow-up, make sure when someone takes time out of their schedule to help you that you are grateful for it and don’t take it for granted.