InsidBlog

Last april I purchased a mailbox to use at The UPS Store for business things.  I don’t really use it, but to be CanSpam compliant I must include a contact address on all outgoing marketing emails.  The UPS Store offered a box the price was about double what the post office would charge, but the post office had a large waiting list so it wasn’t really a viable option.  I check it very periodically but only ever have advertisements from their store in it.  When I purchased it I was told I could access it at any time, I went in the other night at about 8:30PM and it was all locked up and I could not access it.  That’s strange I thought to myself, but sort of shrugged it off as not really a big deal.  I went in a couple of days later during business hours to check the box and mentioned it, “I thought I was able to access my mail box at any time?”  The lady working assured me saying “Yes, you can access it any time.”  I asked out of sheer curiosity why I wasn’t able to access it the previous visit, thinking maybe it was a new employee closing or something that locked it up in error.  She then said “Oh, well you need to rent a key from us for 24 hours if you want to access it at night.”  Hmm, that’s odd, so I guess saying I can access it at any time is a bit of a loaded statement, if I were to rent a key for 24 hours that would mean I would be there during business hours one day, and again the following day to return the key, so going there after hours is a bit pointless at that rate.

I went on to check my mail and I found a note inside my box from the Manager, Lindsay Whitlow.  I read the note and it said that I had received an item addressed to a business name and that if I wanted to use a business mailbox it is an additional $20 monthly.  Already being the highest priced box rental in the area, I thought an additional fee for this was a bit silly since the service itself wasn’t any different, just the name above the address.  Again, this is something I sort of shrugged off, I thought this is a terrible deal, but I obviously have no choice if I want to get my package so I will just go for it. Only to find out Lindsay had returned all the mail I had received that were addressed to my post office box with my business name on them.

Lindsay had an opportunity to do right.  She saw the mail come in with my address on them, and she made a decision at that point to return it, as opposed to keeping it for me.  It is these decisions that define us as business people and give us an opportunity to shape the way we perform it.  Lindsay could have easily held my mail until I made the upgrade to a business box.

Lindsay had an opportunity to exceed customer expectations by delivering my mail to my box which it was addressed, along with the note saying that in the future I would need to upgrade.

Lindsay instead decided to do put the needs of her customer aside, in exchange for a potential increase of profits by forcing this upgrade.  She instead make the conscious decision to return all the mail I had received to their senders and tell me that I need to upgrade before she will accept any mail addressed to my address box with a business name on them.

These sort of decisions make or break a business.  You can choose to give your customer the benefit of the doubt, you can also choose to enforce your policy, but in a way that still accommodates your customer.  I did not feel the extra $20 monthly charge was fair, but was still going to pay it in order to access my mail.  Or you can choose to enforce your policies with complete disregard of customers needs.

Brian Rooney was kind enough to send me a sample of his gourmet coffee, I thought that was very generous of him and was looking forward to receiving it.  However I went to pick it up, and Lindsay had returned the package like discussed above.  Her decision has impacted my business in that now I have spent $70 for a mailbox that I can not use without paying an additional $140, despite already being at $70 priced well beyond the competition.  Her decision has gone beyond that though and now also impacted Brian’s business, he was generous enough to pay for shipping to send me a product sample, but the product was delivered and then returned wasting the money he had put into shipping it to me.

Lindsay’s split-second business decision has created a very negative impression of the business.  She could have easily made a decision to do the right thing, but instead she chose to return the package creating a chain of consequences, one of which being a loss of business.  I’m sure I’m not the only one, how many customers has The UPS Store lost because of Lindsay and like minded individuals making decisions without considering the needs of the customer?  I was willing to pay the increased fee to receive my package, had she kept it.

Keep this in mind when you receive a customer email, skype message, or support ticket.  It’s too easy to make these split second decisions without thinking of the impact on your customer.  Her action was done with the intention of enforcing policy while potentially increasing sales, but instead it cost her business.  Always consider your customers needs when making choices that impact them, a little bit of respect can go along way.  What was to her likely a simple small decision has impacted my business, has impacted Brian’s business, and ultimately impacted their business.  What do your customer service decisions say about you and your business?

Recently Explosive Traffic received a review from Don Snyder of Horror Movie Hits – I have tried literally 7 times to reply to his blog post however every time I have posted a comment it shows up, then a few minutes later is gone, I don’t know if there is an issue with the blogging platform or if the post is just being deleted, or what the problem is, but the issues clones the comments another person had made about the site and I wanted to address them here.

You can View Don’s Original Blog Post here.

To Don and others with similar concerns:

I appreciate your feedback and would love an opportunity to clarify some of the points you tried to make here. I have been programming features for Traffic Exchanges for several years now and have seen every attempt to cheat the system in the book, and I assure you that there is no conventional means to cheat this system to gain extra credits, and I continuously monitor it all day to ensure that remains the case.

Also I wanted to clarify that all sites actually ARE manually verified, not automatically approved. If you are an upgraded member (which you are as you clearly saw the value in this site as many do), there is a preliminary check, if it passes this check it goes into rotation, but is still manually verified at a later time. If you are a free member your site will be manually verified before it goes into rotation, ensuring that it is safe for a variety of viewers.

The reason you notice some TE’s that you deem as ‘bad traffic’ in the first place is because I have designed a site that is 100% transparent, unlike other co-ops, I show you where every hit you get comes from, and even allow you to opt out of any source you do not want your site shown on. Viewing this data you will also see that this ‘bad traffic’ issue is non existant. If people were cheating this sytem it would be apparent when you view this data as your traffic sources.

A Co-Op, by definition, is member controlled.  I would argue that traditional traffic Co-Op’s are not actual Co-Ops at all because they are controlled by an owner and that’s it.  Explosive Traffic is controlled by it’s members, they all share the workload, the results, and choose where it is shown.  If members get consistantly poor results, sites will be automatically blocked from the system, as you can see on your ‘My Sources’ page.

A member joining the site can simply add their site, and rest assured that poor traffic sites are constantly being monitored and removed as necessary.  Those of us who like to get our hands dirty and dig around will be pleased to see that autosurf and ptc sites make up less than 1% of traffic combined, most are blocked automatically by the system before they have even reached 0.01% of traffic delivered.

I invite you and your viewers to revisit Explosive Traffic, I think you will be pleased to see the results, add credits to your sites and see where the hits are coming from. You will quickly notice that it is not plagued with bad traffic sources as some would lead you to believe, but that in fact you are getting high quality traffic and results from all corners of TE land.

I take all feedback very seriously and have been pleased to see an overwhelming amount of that is positive but if you have any suggestions or concerns please contact me so I can address them, I am always available and I feel like if you were slightly more informed on the way the system works you would be 100% confident in recommending it to your friends (which it appears you did anyway since there is a referral link).

You not only get traffic from hundreds of different traffic sources, but I spend hundreds of dollars each week on the top performing traffic exchanges to ensure that in addition to the variety of traffic, you are also getting guaranteed hits to the top traffic exchanges.

Again I’d invite you to give Explosive Traffic a second look and more closely monitor your stats and results, I think you will find the issues you describe in this post are essentially non-existent, and that the price and variety of traffic can not be beat by any of our competitors. If after some time using the site you still have concerns or issues, please contact me any time and I would love to address your feedback and take any necessary action, as I always do with all of my projects.

Explosive Traffic can be found here.