Did you use Play-doh as a child?

Ever inadvertently leave your simple shapes to harden in the open air? Though your brittle pieces later crumbled, a simple finishing process would have sustained them for centuries. Ceramic firing transforms malleable clay into a rock-hard, durable substance.

In May of 2018, Barbara Carroll ordered three cartons of toilet paper from Amazon. The order total: $88.17. The shipping charges? $7,455.

Carroll wasn’t overly concerned, as Amazon typically takes great care of its customers. But in this case, Carroll complained to Amazon six times and even wrote a letter to CEO Jeff Bezos. After every complaint, she received a form letter explaining a refund was impossible because the delivery arrived on time and undamaged. It wasn’t until Carroll notified a local television station (and the story went viral) that Amazon took action. Months later, she was finally reimbursed.

While this case is extreme, every company has its share of customer service flops. In some situations, the problem is no communication. In other cases, it’s inconsiderate attitudes.

Want to steer your team toward positivity? Here are five customer services phrases to avoid.

Recently we have seen several debates, both online and off, about whether newsletters are still an effective marketing tool. Quite a few online marketing “experts” have stated that newsletters have become largely useless, and there now exist much more effective marketing tools for reaching your current and potential customers. To quote a recently famous college football commentator: “Not so fast, my friends!”

In the fast paced, ever-changing world of marketing, people are often looking for the newest, latest and supposedly greatest idea for reaching people that no one has ever tried. Newsletters quickly get dismissed for being too time consuming to write and put together when they are destined for the trash bin (hard copies) or spam folders (email copy).

While this may be true for some newsletters, at Print It Plus we have found through the years that our bi-monthly newsletter still gets read by a sizable number of recipients, and we still get a consistent number of responses to either our call to action, a comment on our marketing tips and advice, or someone complimenting our “Recipe of the Month”.

How can you still find consistent value in creating and sending out a monthly newsletter?