What happens after 8:30 AM?

You may notice that our day begins at 6:00 AM, and seemingly ends at 8:30 AM, however that is not so. Essentially, during the first few hours of the day, you will want to take care of the following duties, which are very important:

• Customer Service
• Email
• Voice Mail
• Refunds
• Chargebacks
• Order Checking

Once you have completed the above noted, there will be much more to accomplish. Many of the remaining hours in the day will be filled with a repetition of the previously noted items, such as:

VOICE MAIL:

- The voice mail should be checked numerous times per day.

For instance, we use the following schedule:

7:00 AM - First mail check of the day

- The first mail check of the day allows us to gather any messages that were received, since leaving work the day before. Many people from other areas of the World, such as Australia, or the UK are online in the middle of the night, so you will receive quite a few voice mail messages during the night. Make sure that when you are returning their calls, that you don't call THEM during the middle of the night.

To find out what time it is, anywhere in the world, check out: http://www.worldtimeserver.com

World Time Server provides the most accurate current local times of any world clock on the Internet. It makes real time adjustments for Daylight Saving Time. No matter what time zone a country or city is located in, this site is your best resource for determining any time, anywhere.

12:00 PM - Second mail check of the day

- This leaves a five hour window for new calls to arrive. It's not unreasonable to have to wait this long for a callback, however, depending on how many voice mail calls you may receive in any given day you may want to do your 2nd check of the day at 10:30 or 11:00 AM.

4:00 PM - Last mail check of the day

- This leaves a four hour window for new afternoon calls to arrive, and be responded to prior to your leaving for the day. Of course not everyone asks to receive an immediate callback, so you must log those into the "Callback" book as discussed earlier.

EMAIL ACCOUNT DOWNLOADS:

Throughout the day, all email accounts are checked, up to ten or more times each. It may sound outrageous to check the mail that many times, however it really is necessary. You can set your email program to automatically check the mail for you every thirty minutes, or you can do it manually.

Some people prefer NOT to have it manually checked, because you may not be sitting there when a virus arrives in the email download. Each time a virus is found, your antivirus might ask you what you would like to do.

Apparently it's preferable to try and repair the virus, however, to date, that has never worked for any of the more common viruses I have ever received. The next best choices on how to deal with them are to either delete the attachment, or send it to quarantine. If you're not sure what to do, send it to the Quarantine.

You really don't want to leave any customers waiting for assistance, or support, therefore make sure to check your email accounts at least once per hour. The average amount of email received per day from all accounts combined can be quite high, depending on how busy you are. Naturally, a large majority of those letters may be spam, or junk mail.

Of course, if you do a special product promotion to any customer list you may have, be prepared to receive up to four times as much mail as you usually do, and be prepared to provide just as much extra customer service.

Not all of those letters will be customer questions regarding the new product, or from customers needing assistance placing their order.

For each time you send an email to your customer list, there will naturally be a lot of mail received for such things as:

• Lost passwords for previously purchased products
• Lost Reseller ID numbers, or requests for the Reseller Account Login URL
• Requests for refunds regarding previously purchased products
• General questions from past, and new customers related to all products
• Requests to be removed from the mailing list

Your previously set mail filters should help reduce the amount of "Mail Sorting" you need to do.

RETRIEVING OR CHANGING CUSTOMER PASSWORDS:

No matter what, each day you will receive requests from customers to find, or issue new passwords. If a customer is not able to login with the password they were issued, make sure to test it first, prior to issuing a new one. You definitely won't want to send the same password back to the customer even if it's working, however, if a system issued password does not work, you will at least be aware of it, and will be able to address the problem.

If a customer is not able to login with a difficult to use password, make sure to change it to something much easier for them to remember. That will help avoid additional future problems. Always try to forsee additional problems, and take care of them in your original reply. The customer will definitely appreciate it.

Some administration systems are set to issue passwords like: vg9T32mMx which are obviously difficult to use. If a customer has a problem logging in, change it for them right away, to something like: 934567

CHECKING BOUNCED EMAIL ADDRESSES:

This is a common problem that must not be overlooked. Each day, you will receive email with subject lines such as:

Some of those MAY contain usernames, and passwords for new customers that just placed their order, but entered their email address incorrectly on the order form. You MUST review each bounced email, and attempt to re-send it.

it's ideal to have two form fields on your order form, which both require the email address. That way, the customer is less likely to make a typo, however, even with both required fields, you will still get the odd "non deliverable" email.

If the email does contain a set of login information for a customer, you have to find a way to get that information to the customer, without delay.

If you can see an obvious error, such as the email address being entered as: customername@aol.co then fix the address, and send the letter out again, without delay. Obviously in this case, it should have been: customername@aol.com

Sometimes, people that are new online put the www. before their email address, which obviously isn't correct. If you received a non deliverable email, that starts out with www.joe@whatever.com then you have to remove the www. prefix, and re-send the message.

What if you can't fix the email address?

If the customer doesn't receive their login, don't assume they will come looking for it. They can just as easily request a chargeback, for non receipt of the product!

If you can't fix the address, then you must call them. Make SURE you have a REQUIRED form field on your order form, for their telephone number. Don't rely on the email address alone.

If they are not there when you call, leave a message if they have voice mail, and enter them into the customer callback book, so you can do a follow up call the next day. Don't give up on this until you hear back from them, indicating that the product was received. Use the "Return Receipt" function in your email program if you ARE able to email them, so you have confirmation they received your letter.