Monthly Archives: April 2010

I know – there are all kinds of clichés that promote positive thinking.  Lemons being made into lemonade.  Looking at the glass half full.  Etc.  But, when things go wrong, it really does not pay to get upset or overly stressed out about the situation.  Remaining calm and thinking things through to figure out what CAN be done is a much better route than complaining and making things worse.

Case in point.  Today we had a MAJOR problem with our phone system.  Our Customer Service area, which normally boasts 8 phone agents, was reduced to only 4 of those phones being able to accept incoming calls.  And, on top of that, our local phone line routed to this group, resulting in 30% more calls coming in to less than 50% of our agents.  Ouch.

Rather then getting upset, our CSRs banded together to rotate in and out of the four workstations with phone connections to cover for each other and reduce some of the burden and stress on each other.  Those on the phones helped customers while those with no phones worked with fax and e-mail orders, ran messages throughout the company, etc.  This fast paced day was actually fun – and helped build a better sense of teamwork in the department.

While I don’t want to go through this again any time soon, I look at the crisis and am proud of how everyone pulled together to make our situation invisible to our customers.  Just one more way that Nelson-Jameson customer service goes the extra mile to serve our customers.

Working in the Technical Services department can pose some very interesting requests from our customers and sales people. Some of the requests seem almost silly. A good example was a request for coffee. Now, if you were thinking like most of us were, you would be saying something like this, “Why the heck don’t they go to the local grocery store and buy it?”

The biggest reason they ask us has to do with liability issues. It would cost the customer more money to send an employee to the store than buy from us. Think of the cost and paperwork involved if that employee got in an accident while running the errand, not to mention the potential for lost time from work if they were injured. 

We may not be able to source all the items, but these requests help us grow our line of products, and keep us in touch with what our customers need and want.

Social media seems to be the business-to-business topic of 2010.  Facebook, Twitter, and blogs are all becoming innovative ways to reach a large number of customers quickly … whether it be about industry information, product-based solutions, or general company communcation.

As we work on a redesign of our web site and review our business processes, we plan to incorporate the use of social media.  Please be patient with us – many of us are “old school” and still trying to wrap our arms around the concept of blogging.  But, with the help of the younger generation we employ (and a wonderful web development firm), we are embracing this concept of two-way communication with our customers, prospective customers, and vendors.

Please feel free to subscribe to blog updates, as there will be a lot of interesting information funneling through our blog,  The Wide Line.  And, as always, your feedback, comments and suggestions are encouraged … and appreciated.

We’re excited about this new venue of communication.  And we hope you’ll be on board and join us as we go forward.