August 4, 2012

►    Customer Feedback:  John M. sent us an email about his experience with Seasonal:  “I can’t say enough nice things about Seasonal’s pool parts and chemicals departments.  The staff is incredibly knowledgeable and are more than willing to take the time to figure out the cause of a problem.  I’m a first-time pool owner and my pool had significant issues.  I was forced to repair every piece of the system, including all of the piping.  Patrick came out to my house and gave me a run down of things that would need to be fixed immediately and the things that could wait.  When I went into the store after fixing one problem which showed that there was a problem with a different piece of hardware, Mia, Stephanie, and Patrick were exceptional at helping rebuild the system and diagnose the other problems, both in person and over the phone.  They genuinely cared about helping me fix the problem as if they had a vested interest themselves.  The guys in the lab who helped get the water clear were equally great.  I think it was Josh and Michael were friendly, easy-going and very approachable in repeatedly testing my water samples to help me get it right.  Even the problems that were less common (pool water turning purple) didn’t phase them.  To the owners: you’re definitely getting the customer service part of owning a business right.  You have some of the best, most helpful and caring employees any customer would want to work with and they deserve all of the accolades I can give.  The rewards program is another big perk of Seasonal.  The more you wind up spending at Seasonal, the more you receive in a rebate at the end of the year. It’s a great system designed to keep customers, but with the incredible customer service and top-of-the-line products, why would you go anywhere else anyways?  Thank you all again for all of your help.”                  

►    August clearance sale is now under way in every department. 

       1. This is it.  We are not planning Any additional mark-downs.

       2. Limited quantities, no rainchecks.  The floor model will not be cheaper.

       3. Prices can go up when we get too low – not necessarily when we run out.  Note that we have to pay a lot more for products we take in now. 

►    If you get our Seasonal News at home, please write the date you got it, and give it to me.  You can replace it with a new one from the store.  I need to track delivery dates, plus print and addressing quality; which I can not tell from the samples.  They are smart enough to give me the good ones. 

►    Saturday, August 11, is Customer Appreciation Day.  Show them you appreciate them and care for them with Seasonal All-Natural Hand Sanitizer.  Made in USA, with all-natural ingredients. 

►    Good luck to Pat with his knee surgery Friday. 

►    There were 22 One-of-These Awards in July; 6 for customer service.  Finalists were Mia, Josh, Stephanie (twice) and Joe.  Owner’s Choice was Stephanie, and she also won the drawing.  The odds of that were pretty good – she also had 18.18% of all the awards in the drawing!  Thank you to all. 

►    Reminder:  You have a form for missing or Non-Registered coupons.  It’s at the front counter, and in the Coupon Envelope.  I never see anyone use it. 

►    Why do all refunds more than $10 need to be by a check from the office if they were not purchased by credit card in the last 14 days?  And why do you have to fill out the whole thing?  Here’s one example:  Customer buys a $340 liner, waits two days to make sure we can’t pull their check out of the deposit, returns it, and is unhappy they have to wait.  Two weeks later, I get their check back – closed account.  So they knew the check was bad when they used it.  The phone number they gave us is disconnected.  The next day, we were going to mail their refund.  Checks do not clear in five days, they are just funded.  The bank actually has a long time to take the money out of an account.  If I did not catch it, the customer would have cashed our check at Triangle, so we couldn’t stop payment.  And why do I need the form completely filled out?  It helps me tell how long I will take to mail the refund.  

►    Remember, when you are replacing price signs or pages in the program book.  You always throw away the old sign except for one instance:  when you are putting out a Yellow Sale sign.  That can go over the old value price (white) or discount price (orange).  It’s just exactly like the price tags.  Yellow always means temporary, so we still want the long-term ones underneath.  Otherwise, we don’t need two years worth of the pages in every frame.  

►    It’s the end of the year.  Always check the inventory before you tell someone we have something, or send them to the pick-up door.  Especially because it may not be coming in!

►    Keep your eyes open in the warehouse for things that never got into the store.  Finding them while doing October inventory is not helpful.  Stephanie found several things just two weeks ago. 

►    Using Algae Bomb when treating Algae?  It’s my favorite solution.  Try rounding to even bottles, since they won’t be using it again.  You can under-dose by up to 20%, and over-dose up to 50% if needed to come out to even bottles. 

►    A Contract is a written 3-part form that the customer signs.  A Sales Order is a method of entering an order into Retail Pro when the customer is not taking the item on the spot.  A receipt is how you enter Retail Pro when the customer is taking the purchase right then.  So a Sales Order is not a Contract.  They have nothing to do with each other.  A Contract is needed for a salesperson to be paid commission.  Obviously, it is also needed for special orders, deposits, and more.  Putting an automatic pool cleaner on a Sales Order without a Contract does not help the salesperson.  Even worse, if you use a Sales Order without a Contract, Pat will never know that it has to be recorded; because he has no way of know you did it until the inventory is all wrong and he tries to figure out why. 

►    Remember, we carry Robelle 5% Algaecide in quarts and gallons.  So you can not tell if they have a concentrated algaecide just by asking if it was in a gallon.

►    We still have tip money available, so we will run make-your-own sundaes again.

►    I Wish I Said That!

       – Bill Clinton vs. Dan Quayle.  After Quayle revealed that he planned to be “a pit bull” in the 1992 campaign against Clintonand Gore.  “That’s got every fire hydrant in America worried.”

       – Niels Bohr vs. a reporter:  Reporter:  “Can it be that you, of all people, believe a horseshoe will bring you good luck?”   

         Bohr:  “Of course not, but I understand it brings you luck whether you believe it or not.”          

       – Reverend Edward Everett Hale vs. The U.S. Senate when asked if he prayed for the Senators.  “No.  I look at the Senators and pray for the country.”

       – Edna Ferber vs. Noel Coward.  Coward was remarking upon the fact that Ferber was wearing a tailored suit.   

          Coward:  “You look almost like a man.”  Ferber:  “So do you.”