Thursday, May 6, 2010

Thanks is always appreciated isn't it?

Those of you who know me well also know that I really get a kick out of helping others and, like most people, I feel good if someone thanks me for it too.

Working in business networking circles it's just part of life that you would sincerely thank someone for giving them a referral, great advice or some old fashioned help. I wouldn't even dream of doing anything else and most of the business people I know work in the same way.

It's a shame everyone doesn't think like that.

Here's three situations that have arisen over the last six months. I'm sure you won't have been guilty of these but it's easy to let them pass by without realising the effect on the other party.

> I changed my car towards the end of last year and it had previously been fitted with a bluetooth mobile phone device that tapped into the radio. When I changed my mobile phone in February I just couldn't get it link despite internet searches and re-reading the manual.

The next day I saw a van in the traffic queue next to me advertising the system fitted to my car, so I jotted down the phone number. I called them and spoke to a guy out on a job. He was obviously busy but within just a minute or two was able to tell me how to fix it. I thanked him, apologised for disturbing him and told him how appreciative I was.

I was delighted when the fix worked and I'm connected up now. So I found them on the web and sent them a message telling them how helpful their man had been and how grateful I was. In return I offered to find a way of promoting his business within my networking contacts with no charge simply to repay their kindness.

And the result? Nothing, zilch, zero. Not even a 'Sorry we're out' message. My positive feelings towards that business have all but drained away now.

> I have an offline spam filtering system that sends me a message each morning with a list of, and a link to, all of the trapped emails from the previous day. Most of it is of course rubbish but one came through early in the week that looked like it was genuine but was markered as having a virus.

Now this is important to know if you are the sender as you don't want to be either sending out a mail with a virus in it or having most of your mails binned before it reaches the recipient. So I took the trouble to investigate the mail without jeopardising my own security and sent all the details to the sender (a genuine company with a good product to sell). There were some other issues with the email that would potentially stop it working for them and offered some sound advice to overcome them.

And the result? Nothing, zilch, zero. Not even a 'Sorry we're out' message.

The third example I'm not going to go into detail as it involves me helping a member of my extended family who I helped with a business opportunity. Don't really see or speak that often, but I was happy to help and use my contacts to make things happen.

And the result? Nothing, zilch, zero. Not even a 'Thanks for helping' message.

It doesn't take much to maintain contact and you never know what it might lead to.

1 comment:

markbnorwich said...

I am surprised that people especially businesses do not say thank you. As you say by not saying anything is bad business. Referrals are very important to keeping business flowing.

Saying thank you is as important as saying sorry when you get things wrong. Sometimes events happen but by saying sorry it shows that you care about the people that you do business with.