Month: September 2012

Since entering the job market for the first time this summer as a barista, I’ve learned valuable lessons on dealing with customers, maintaining their satisfaction and the product quality while ensuring efficiency. However, I think it also goes without saying that the whole “#1 customer satisfaction guaranteed” shebang is no easy feat and requires time and dedication. While my current job initially seems peripherally unaligned with my future career aspirations, I’m certain that the customer interaction I’m dealing with today will be applicable to my future.

That’s why Sunday Steinkirchner’s blog post on improving one’s customer service skills has given me much to reflect on. These are the tips that I found particularly useful:

3. Special Services/VIP

As Steinkirchner writes, “Offering special treatment to your customers will help them to feel taken care of and it’s also something they might be willing to pay more for.” It simply makes sense to reward those who have been with the company the longest and by doing so, their loyalty is strengthened.

5. Offer Community

Creating a special community for customers not only helps establish their satisfaction but also makes them want to come back. When a company truly takes the time to engage their customers as friends, they are rewarded with loyalty. Furthermore, this helps catalyze word-of-mouth marketing, one of the most powerful forms of promotion.

Image via: http://www.mycustomer.com/blogs/colin-shaw/colin-shaw/excellent-customer-experience-starts-smile

How guilty do you feel eating a chocolate bar? Or, to reword the question, how guilty do you now feel eating a chocolate bar heavily based on forced child labour in harsh working conditions? The answer’s a no-brainer.

Since 2010, advocates from Raise the Bar campaign and their partners against the exploitation of children on chocolate farms have been calling on Hershey’s—the largest chocolate manufacturer in North America—to meet the standards of ethically sourced cocoa. In August 2012, Hershey’s finally made a big announcement following the International Labour Rights Forum’s threat to air an ad about Hershey’s child labour conditions on a Jumbotron screen during a Super Bowl game, along with pressure from 41 independent food and natural grocery stores through Raise the Bar’s letter campaign.

The company has pledged that all the cocoa for its Bliss line of chocolates would be Rainforest Alliance Certified by 2013, meaning the chocolates would meet the three pillars of sustainability: Environmental protection, social equity and economic viability. Hershey’s also plans to invest $10 million in West Africa by 2017 to encourage economic initiatives, reduce child labour and improve cocoa supply and launched CocoaLink in Ghana and the Ivory Coast, a communications project which delivers information via mobile phone to improve yields, incomes and standards of living for farmers and ultimately reduce the need for child labour and increase the opportunity for their children to attend school.

For more information on child trafficking and chocolate farms, see BBC’s documentary Chocolate: The Bitter Truth.

Information from: http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2012/08/post_397.html and http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/01/hersheys-child-labor_n_1247111.html

Image via: http://www.gleniswillmott.eu/the-darker-side-of-chocolate/young-boy-rakes-cocoa-beans-on-a-drying-rack/