Rewarding Experience

The time has gone by really fast! I just finished my internship with The Marketing Spot, and it was a rewarding experience. It really opened my eyes to see the marketing perspective of businesses. Ever since my internship began, I see everything as a potential marketing experience (for examples, see my chipotle and flea market blog).

I can see how word-of-mouth advertising is important. I have been working at Pier 1 Imports for a year; it helps to have a job as a college student! My co-workers and I had to go to a meeting one night to talk about the customer experience. It was interesting to hear the fact that the customers are 7 times more likely to talk about a bad experience than a good experience.

That fact is so true. I went to a pharmacy on Valley Mills recently. I could have gone to a closer pharmacy in this chain, but I liked this one because it looks better inside. I went to print digital pictures from my camera, and I needed help with printing. However, a manager was extremely rude to me. I simply asked her if the photo machine was working, but she would not help me or anything. Of course, I got upset and told my friends about it. I did not go back to that store until a few months later. I figured that she would not be there anymore. I was dead wrong. She was there and SO RUDE to me again. Unbelievable! I did not know what I did wrong, but all I did was ask her a question. Of course, I made a comment to her that I am a customer and that she does not need to be rude. I do not plan to patronize that store again.

No one wants to have a bad experience. If they hear a negative report from someone, surely they would not go to that particular business. If you want to read more about it, read Managing the Customer Experience by Shaun Smith and Joe Wheeler.

I want to thank Jay Ehret for a great experience in my internship. I look forward to my steps ahead in the business world.

Did You Know?

Did you know that there are new rules for marketing and public relations? Well, there are some! My boss, Jay Ehret, from The Marketing Spot recommended for me to read The New Rules of Marketing & PR by David Meerman Scott.

David Meerman Scott explained in his book about the new rules and how things have changed in the marketing and public relations world. The best way to get customers is by building relationships with them without direct-selling our product or business. For example, customers tend to search for answers on the website to solve their problems. To provide an answer is the beginning of what is hopefully a long-lasting and profitable relationship. Scott also talked about the importance of and gave advice for websites, blogs, podcasts, videos and search engines. My favorite part of this book is that Scott listed the web addresses in footnotes as references. It allows the readers to look online for more information fast and easy.

I believe that this book was a great lesson for me. I just started my blog about two months ago, and it has been interesting. It seems to have gone really slowly since I have yet to network with other bloggers. I was not sure where to go or what topics to write about. I was pretty discouraged. Scott gave great advice to use for blogging. After reading his book, I felt more confident with my blog.

Read this book when you can!

Face-to-face Drive-Thru

People may think marketing is all about advertising and surveys. Well, that is not always the case. Marketing is also building a relationship with customers. This is how businesses get loyal customers.

My family and I were about to make an out-of-state trip to my grandparents’ house. We decided to stop by Chick-fil-A’s drive-thru in Arlington, Texas, to order lunch. Of course, a drive-thru is usually where a customer drives his/her car up to the speaker and orders a meal, but this time it was different. We did not order through a speaker, but through a person. I thought that was fantastic. It created a personal relationship between us and an employee. Obviously, Chick-fil-A is focusing on building relationships through a drive-thru. A speaker is such an impersonal device; the customer does not know what the person looks like on the other side of a speaker—it is just an impersonal and sometimes hard-to-understand voice. If an order is complicated, it is hard to explain to the speaker. It creates the bigger chance it will come out wrong. Instead, ordering to a person makes things easier and creates good will. However, not every Chick-fil-A does a face-to-face drive-thru. After we made our order, we drove up to wait in the line for our food. While waiting in line, we drove up to a sauce stand. An employee asked us if we need any sauces such as barbeque or ketchup, and how many do we need.

It was great to see how convenient and easy it was in the drive-thru. Bush’s Chicken in Waco, Texas is another great example of personal relationships. They do face-to-face drive-thru all the time. It was wonderful to get a personal connection from Chick-fil-A!