Thank You Cards

I remember the first time I had to write a massive quantity of thank you cards to people.  It was 2001 and I was getting ready to graduate from high school.  Gifts ranging from clothes to dorm room supplies to (my personal favorite) money began to pour in from even the furthest branches of the family tree. 

It was great.

It was so great that I wanted to do it again.

I'm not saying that I got married for the gifts but that was a really sweet perk of my nuptials.

Then we had a baby and I didn't get a lot of gifts but whatever.

Then I graduated from college and had more parties with more Adam-centered gifts.

Throughout these processes of receiving gifts, the voice of my mother continued to resonate in my head.  (Hearing mom's voice isn't an uncommon event.  It is more of a daily occurrence and some of the time it is a good thing.)

Mom always taught me to write hand written thank you notes to people.  Because at 18, I was way smarter than my mom, I asked why I couldn't just make a form letter of thanks and mail it out to everyone.  Efficient right?  She didn't go for it.  She said that hand written notes were the way to go so I hand wrote thank you notes to everyone.  Every high school graduation gift, every wedding gift, every baby shower gift and every college graduation gift was followed up by a hand written thank you note.

My strategy today as a working professional is no different.  People need hand written thank you notes.  It doesn't matter what industry you're in.  Non-profits should thank their donors for giving money.  Salesmen should thank customers for spending money with them.  Employees should thank their bosses for the opportunity to work and serve people.  Bosses should thank their employees for faithfully serving the company or organization.

Everyone needs a thank you note. 

I write two different kinds of thank you notes to our donors, supporters and team members.  The majority of notes I write are simple, hand written thank you notes.  Some people (like the 18 year old version of me) thinks that this is an inefficient way of spending time, other people hate the way their hand writing looks, and still others simply think that the person on the receiving end doesn't really care whether the note is hand written or not.

In my experience:

• Hand written notes are warm and personal not cold and corporate.  Who would you rather do business with?  Would you prefer a salesmen that talks to you by name and seeks out ways to take care of your needs or a vague, one-size fits all on-line order form?
• Hand written notes don't take a lot of time.  My notes are typically three to four sentences conveying my appreciation for the gift, how I intend to use the gift, and an offer to be of service to the donor in the future.  I don't write a novel, I keep it short and sweet.  I typically do not include the size or value of the gift (i.e. thanks for your $50 donation).  These cards do not suffice for purposes of tax write offs.  They are specifically to convey appreciation.
• Hand written notes are not expensive.  I usually buy about 250, custom printed cards each year.  It runs me about $100.  My cards are simple.  They are on white card-stock paper with our logo on the front.  Inside they are blank and thus a canvas for me to express my appreciation.  They measure about 5.5" wide and 4.25" tall when folded. 
• Your handwriting makes it unique.  Obviously you'll need to write legibly.  Outside of that, by your handwriting you have communicated to the donor that you personally sat down and took the time to hand write a card of thanks.  That shows appreciation.    

So does that mean that I never use canned form letter thank you notes?  No.  I do use them.  Occasionally I receive a gift from a company or an estate.  Those types of donors need something from our agency that they can use for a tax write off.  They would rather have that than the warm and fuzzy feelings that accompany my hand written cards.  I get that and I'm okay with it. 

Here's a copy of the form letter that I use (click the image to enlarge it):

 

 

I included the line numbers for this blog post so that you can see how I space everything.  I don't print a document with line numbers.

 

You'll notice that it is on company letter head with contact information.

 

I have the date of the letter.

 

 

I include the mailing address of the donor.

 

I use a simple "To whom it may concern" salutation.

 

I keep it short.  I thank the company for their donation and I'm specific to list the monetary value of the gift. 

 

I offer to be of further assistance to the agency and then I close by listing my name and position with the agency.  I print this and sign it in blue ink and mail it to the donor. 

 

Is it cold and impersonal, yes.  Does the IRS care?  No. 

 

I fit the thank you note to the need of the donor.  90% of my notes are hand written.  10% of our gifts are corporate or from an estate that require a letter like this. 

 

 

So there you go! A quick guide to professional thank you notes!

Dinosaurs

We don't always have awesome discussions at our team meetings, but when we do, it is because we talked about dinosaurs.

Today we had quite a few things to discuss.  After we finished all of our procedural and training items, we had a discussion about having a dinosaur mentality. 

Having a dinosaur mentality leads us to the same fate as the dinosaurs--extinction.

We posed the question this morning, "What can we start doing today to make our organization viable 5 years from now?"

We could, in all reality, sit back and rest and keep doing what we've been doing and be in good shape for the short term.  However, we realize that for every second we're sitting idle, we're getting lapped by technology and culture.  What we're doing today can't be good enough 5 years from now. 

Here's some qualities of dinosaur thinking that could potentially kill your organization:

1.  Dinosaurs say, "This is how we've always done it."  That's just foolish.  I certainly don't advocate changing just for change sake but thinking that there is safety in history is flawed logic. 

2.  Dinosaurs shake their fists and tell the kids to "Get off my lawn!"  Dinosaurs don't embrace advances in technology and communication and marketing strategies.  They ignore the value of Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn because they don't understand it. Instead, you have to communicate in ways and in places that your audience can hear you.  My name is Adam and I get all my news from my Twitter feed and Facebook.  I follow news channels, government officials and news personalities and organizations via my preferred social media outlets.  If you want to convey a message to me or market a product or service to me, your high priced newspaper ad or your expensive radio spot isn't going to catch me.  I will see you in my Twitter feed though.  That doesn't cost a dime.  We HAVE to embrace advances in technology and communication and marketing strategies.

3.  Dinosaurs don't like it when you say that they have ugly kids.  Okay, no one likes that.  What I mean is that leaders put years of expertise and experience into building an organization, product line, etc.  What they don't like is when someone comes in, looks at what they've built and says, "I think we can do this better."  The dinosaur takes that statement way too personally.  The dinosaur hears the person say, "you've got an ugly kid."  Instead, we've got to acknowledge that as a leader, sometimes we can't see the forest for all the trees because we're too close and too emotionally invested in the project or organization.  It is helpful to have someone come in and help you get refocused and suggest ways to improve what you've built.  I know it's difficult, but don't take it personally.  See it for what it is--an opinion. 

Dinosaurs go extinct.  As leaders we can't become dinosaurs and we can't be okay with thinking like dinosaurs. 

How have you caught yourself having a dinosaur mentality?

You Forgot the "Customer" Part of Customer Service

I run a call center.  Teaching and reinforcing outstanding customer service skills to my team is one of the most important things that I do.  If I ever forget to teach and reinforce customer service skills to my team, all I need to remind me is having to be a victim of poor customer service.

The phrase "poor customer service" is an oxymoron in its own right.  When someone "serves their customer," the fact that the service is high-quality is implied.  Without outstanding service, you're not being "served," you're being "interacted with." 

When I spend my money (valuable) or my time (extremely valuable) with you and your company, I expect that I will be served and not merely interacted with. 

You want two examples of this from last week?  You got it!

At the office, I have a Chase Visa Credit Card.  I don't use it often but I do have it and use it when necessary.  Every single time I have to call Chase's customer service department to make a payment, dispute a charge, ask a question, etc. I always am greeting with outstanding customer service. 

It is worth noting that I don't even like having to use a credit card.  I don't like credit cards and don't have one personally.  It is simply an agency policy that I use one.  That being said, I adore Chase's customer service department.  Simply outstanding.  Every single time.

On the other end of the spectrum, I have had poor dealings with Verizon.  Our office used Verizon as our telephone and internet company for years.  However, after a string of poor interactions that I had with their technical support office over the summer, they eventually lost my business and now we spend our money with Suddenlink.  Suddenlink has proven to be the anti-Verizon and we love doing business with (i.e. giving our money to) them. 

When we closed our accounts with Verizon, I continued to be billed.  For months.  The first month I called their billing department and was placed on 30+ minutes of hold on different occasions and was often disconnected.  The next month I wrote a note on my bill explaining the situation and mailed it back.  No response.  The next month I went online to their e-mail contact form.  It wasn't working that day, I was told by an automated message.  I tried the online, live chat.  The virtual, automated agent was no help.

I was sick of it. 

I took to Twitter.

 

As you can tell, I received a human response to my tweet within a few minutes.  Within an hour, I had the entire situation resolved.  And, to give credit where it is due, I had a great experience with the three people that, because of a tweet, got my problem rectified. 

 

 

All that being said, I want to tell you what makes for an outstanding customer service experience like I have with companies like Chase and Suddenlink and this one interaction with Verizon.

 

1.  Treat me like I'm the only person in the room.  I know your day is full.  I know that you have a lot more people to see besides me.  I know the line is getting long behind me--but you don't have to let me know that.  I love it when the person I am talking to gives me all the time necessary to resolve whatever my issue is.  When the customer service associate gives time and attention to solve my issue, I can leave that conversation confident that I've been taken care of and I really appreciate that.

 

2.  Use my name.  I love it when people call me by my name.  The second that you use my name, I feel the conversation become a little more personal.  When you use my name (and I will typically use yours as well) you separate yourself from your competitors.  When I say that you separate yourself, I mean that when given the choice of where I will spend my money, I will choose you instead of your competitor that treated my like a number rather than a person.  I will choose you even though your prices may be slightly higher.  I will choose you even though it takes a little longer to receive the service.  I will choose you because you use my name when we talk.

 

3.  Over deliver.  This is easy to do because your competitors have really lowered the bar for you.  Let me give you and example of over delivering:

 

A couple of weeks ago, I had to take a day off to stay home with my son.  Of course, that's the day that our internet service at the office went down.  Since our work is web-based, the office came to a stand still.  I talked my staff through some typical troubleshooting and when that didn't work I had to call Suddenlink (our internet provider).  I told the gentleman that we had an internet outage and that I was at home, not at the office.  Because of my previous internet provider, my expectation was that the technician would field my call and then after about 30 minutes of my begging would schedule another technician to come to my office sometime in the next week. 

 

Not this time.

 

Upon hearing that I was at home, he laughed and said, "that's about right, the problem waited for you to leave, huh?" Jokingly I agreed.  After about 5 seconds he said, "I think I know what's wrong.  May I have the phone number of one of your folks at the office?  I'll call them and I know that they can fix this on site."  Stunned, I agreed.  He was proactive.  He was sympathetic to my situation.  He took care of it for me.

 

He over delivered.  He blew away his competitors.  He gets my money.

 

I know that those are just three ways to deliver awesome customer service and obviously there are so many more.  But in just one week's time, those are the three that have come up big for me!

 

In what ways have you received outstanding customer service?