Ylliks

Not so long ago I wrote about how I thought a company went about it all wrong with their communication so it’s only fitting that when I have an experience that is completely satisfactory I should write about that as well.

For a while now I’ve ordered items from Avanti Sport which is a large online sporting goods retailer. Orders I’ve placed in the past have been shipped as confirmed and I haven’t had any trouble whatsoever. So when it was time for a new gym bag, since my heavily used one of 3 years was beyond mending, I ordered one from the site. To be honest, I didn’t really look at the specs, just the dimensions. That was a mistake. It proved to be one of those football players use with a hard bottom and spinning wheels. Not what I wanted, but my mistake. Still, I wanted to see if there were any option to return the bag. And there were plenty.

First I had a choice of returning the bag with a full refund or exchange it for another product (for both, items had to be in original package and unopened, which mine was). I choose the latter and picked another bag. The system immediately recognized that the newly picked bag was cheaper than the original one, so it gave me a choice to either order something else to make up the difference or have it reimbursed to my bank account. Again, the latter was my choice and then it was just a matter of picking the shipping method. I could either bring it to a Kiala point and shipping would be free, have it send to their postal adress and have a few euro of administration costs or have it send to their shipping address and have the shipping costs on me. Since the Kiala point was close by I opted for the first. I confirmed the new order and received an email confirming the exchange. I dropped the return parcel at the collection point, got a receipt with a tracking code and went home.

With the tracking code I could see the parcel had arrived at Avanti a few days later and that same day I received an email with the shipping tracking code of the new order and the amount difference was transferred to my bank account. Next day, new bag arrived.

As positive as I was about them before this, I noticed that I turned into an advocate for them, telling friends and family this story and how much I’m impressed with their service. Perfect example how a customer experience like this can create great word of mouth. I will surely order from them again.

First of all may I wish you all the best for the new year.

As I have been doing for a couple of years now the new year for me means getting some perspective on the year before and identifying the things I want to focus on in the upcoming year.

Last year the 3 words I focussed on were: Social, Experiment and Execution. I have been fortunate to meet some new people through work and new activities. And although none of those new relationships have grown into the kind of friendships I have with some of my older friends they certainly have improved my life. Experimenting and execution have come together in my new online income experiment. The beauty is that some of these experiments have become lifestyle choices (such as the primal/paleo diet). I have to be honest and confess that in some areas execution still is a bit lacking, but overall there has been a significant improvement on that.

Now on to my 3 words for 2012!

Relationships

As was the case in 2011 I’m more open to meeting more people. But on top of that I want to spend more time with the people I love spending time with, whether those are new acquaintances or people I’ve known for years. I don’t feel I’m neglecting people, but I find that I love spending time or doing things with certain people. I want to make more time available for spending even more time with those people, while spending less time with people that feel like a psychological drain.

Health

I’ve been around the same weight for about 8 months now, which is about 10-12 kg away from my goal. So this should be the year that I reach the goal of my weight loss journey which has started a couple of years ago (yes, I was that overweight). In order to do that I will be focussing on being stricter on what I eat (read: more strict with Paleo) and increase the number of times a week I will Crossfit, something I started about 2 months ago, and keep on spinning. Crossfit is something I really like to do, despite the fact that my muscles have been extremely sore after every workout and I’ve been called crazy by a couple of my friends for even doing it. And since I hate people telling me I can’t do something without me even trying, it’s just a bit of extra motivation. It’s also about more than just the weight issue. I want to improve my overall health, cutting down on sick days and appointments to doctors and dentists, but also being more agile and flexible. This means I have to take (even) better care of my body (and all aspects of it) than I have been doing previous years.

Entrepreneurship

Although I consider myself to be far from an entrepreneur, I think the word represents what I will try to achieve in 2012. As part of ongoing experiment I think it’s important for me to learn what running an online business entails. It will certainly mean more learning but also testing what works and doesn’t work. I’ve started a blog a couple of months ago and the information I’m getting from running it has already helped me in understanding what it means to run a site where the ultimate goal is making money.

I’m looking forward to 2012. Beside my 3 words I’ve just started a new job which seems to be a challenging one and I’m looking forward what the year will bring. Hope it will be the same for you.

One of the reasons I started this blog is the fact that I wanted to have a place where I could have an outlet for my writing. A place to improve it. I think there’s truth to the saying that you can only become a better writer by writing a lot, so that is what I have been doing during the recent weeks. Just not on this blog.

As part of my experiment in generating online income I’ve been starting up another blog and have been writing for that. The blog has been launched on November 1st (yes, 3 months later than expected due to some issues) and since then it has published 7 posts. Not a whole lot you would say, but I’ve also had to create an about page, a disclaimer, a privacy statement, a disclosure and other pages. I’ve also written some drafts for upcoming posts.

Furthermore I’ve been going back to something I did a while ago and that’s creating Squidoo lenses. I came back to them in order to create some backlinks to the new blog, but I had some ideas for some new stuff and started to create new lenses. I still have some ideas for some other ones so I set myself a goal to get to at least 20 lenses, with 50 being a long term goal. With 50 lenses and some good content I believe this can also become an online revenue generator, albeit not a big one.

So yes, I’ve been busy writing, but because that writing has taken up most of my time I haven’t been coming back to where my online writing has started: this blog. So see this post for what it is: not as an excuse to why I haven’t been writing here for a while, but a simple update on the experiment I’m running.

In Holland there’s this expression that roughly translates to “You have a no, but you can get a yes”. This means there’s no harm in asking for anything. However Dutch parents often use another expression when children (who are bound to do this alot) ask for something: “Children who ask, will be passed over” (it sounds better in Dutch since it rhymes as well). This of course sends a mixed signal when you grow up so you’re often hesitant to ask for something you want. However it’s much better if you do.

Besides having a great holiday in september, I also did a small experiment: I asked for what I wanted. Whether it’s about some extra perks you can get in the hotel/hostel you’re staying, a more personalized dish in a restaurant or better seats on a flight. There are a lot of possibilities out there which are not willingly advertised, but are feasible nevertheless. And all you have to do is just ask.

It’s also a trick of wording your question just right. When booking a rafting trip I thought the price was a bit high. So I asked him if any type of discount was available. When the answer to that was no, I asked if there were any combination trips available which would lower my price. When it turned out that I could also book a personal driver for a day there, which would help me get from Sanur to Ubud AND look at some sights along the way, which would half the price of the rafting and get a 25% discount on the ride I booked immediately.

I did have one rule though: when the definite answer was no, I didn’t push further. I hate it when people nag about something not being possible (especially when you notice the person you ask is trying to help but just can’t) so it would be wrong for me to do it myself. When something just wasn’t possible I thanked them for trying and let it go.

Asking for what you want is a bit of a trick and for me a change in mindset. You often think that when it’s not advertised it’s not possible, but that proved to be a wrong assumption in some cases. As said, the wording of the question is important and if you do it right the benefits can be great. I know it helped me enjoy my holiday more than I already did.