How to get the Best Customer Service
We’re proud of our customer service here at the Fool. Even though we’re not a huge company, we have a dedicated Customer Care Fool who is charged with keeping customers happy throughout the entire purchase process. We’re also in the process of building out our SUPPORT page as we implement new technologies to keep up with your queries.
(cc) Flickr user Somewhat Frank
Our central challenge to providing the best customer service is our seasonal rhythm. Because we sell a lot of textbooks, 90% of our sales happen in 3 months every year. We get slammed with orders (and customer service requests) in January and June/August and then are relatively less busy for the rest of the year.
This is part of why we have expanded our definition of customer service. Our Customer Care Fool goes way beyond just answering phones and replying to emails. She is responsible for ensuring customers are served throughout the entire shipping process: Picking, packing, labeling, shipping, and more!
With all of that in mind, here are some tricks to getting the most out of our Customer Service:
- Email us. Don’t call. Though we do list our phone number on the site, email is much, much faster when we’re slammed with requests. Sounds crazy, but it’s true.
- Details, details, details. Give us all the info you can in your email: Order numbers, dates, purchase venue, ISBNs, titles. It’s ALL helpful in finding your order and getting you a quick response.
- Be cool. I know you’ve been given the runaround by other companies, but we WILL get back with you soon and will do what we can. If you start off with threats and recriminations, it may actually delay our response as we take a walk around the block to clear our head before responding.
- Returns are Quick and Painless if you read the Return Instructions. Before sending anything back, let’s discuss it by email. We may know a quicker, cheaper solution to solving your problem than the standard return procedure. Drop us an email to keep us in the loop.
Customer Service exists because nobody’s perfect. Everybody makes mistakes. The BookFool difference is that we want to make it right. Drop us an email today!
Casey: Tech Fool
Just when you thought we couldn’t grow any more, we’re adding our fifth full-time Fool! Casey developed and maintains BookFool.com and will be leading our tech dept. into the 21st Century. In his own words:
I’m thrilled to be the latest Fool! It’s really exciting for me to be able to join a team like this knowing that I’ll be able to have an impact from day one. I don’t think I could ever say that at any of my other jobs.
So, who am I? Well, I’d like to think of myself as an undercover nerd. At first glance, I might not look like a hardcore code jockey, but when caught off guard, one can often find me with my headphones on, listening to some of my favorite tunes, and coding up a storm in Notepad++ or Visual Studio. I consider myself multi-lingual when it comes to software development; whether it’s coding with open-source languages such as PHP or even (dare I say it?) Microsoft’s ASP.NET, I just like to use the right tool for the job.
More important than all of that is the fact that I’m a husband to my beautiful wife, Mary Beth, and a father to my two sweet boys, Caleb and Josiah. I take my roles as their husband/father very seriously, as I believe they are the most important jobs I will ever undertake.
I’m also passionate about adoption. My wife and I recently returned from Ethiopia, where we adopted our youngest son. Faith is a huge part of my life, and I believe there is no better physical metaphor for the gospel of Jesus Christ than adoption. When I look at my youngest son and think of how much I love him, I am overwhelmed to know that my Father loves me even more and has brought me into His family as His own son through the sacrifice of Jesus. You can read more about our adoption journey on our family’s blog.
Finally, following in the footsteps of a recent BookFool blog post, I’d also like to share my top 5 movies of all time:
- Bottle Rocket – The Wilson brothers before they were popular.
- The Lord of the Rings Trilogy – I told you I’m a nerd.
- Braveheart – FREEDOM!
- Amazing Grace – William Wilberforce was an amazing man.
- O Brother, Where Art Thou? – The most quotable movie of all time. “We thought . . . you was . . . a toad.”
Want to know more about me? If so, follow me on Twitter!
Welcome, Pickers, to the BookFool.com family!
Advice on Surviving the October Crunch
[Ed. note: In this post David shares some advice on surviving college.]
It’s now October, which for us collegiates means midterms, an influx of papers, and a dramatic rise in the ever increasing workload. For those of you in this position, I feel your pain. In light of the stressful season, I’d like to impart a bit of wisdom that was passed on to me during my freshman year.
(cc) Flickr user John Althouse Cohen
For my first year of college, I lived in a place called Maddox hall, quite likely the worst dorm on campus. The rooms were cramped and—prior to the furniture upgrade of 2007—there was no way to remedy this. So October rolled around and I began my late-night caffeine sessions, sitting in my tiny room cramming statistics or biology or some other off-major subject that I had no real interest in.
One such night I fumbled down the hall to a friend’s room at 1 a.m. to brew another pot of coffee. On my way down the hall, I ran into my RA, Jason. He asked how school was treating me and I gave him the stress-induced rundown:
“Well I have two papers due tomorrow and a test on Wednesday and I’m supposed to have read some book that I haven’t even bought yet and I slept through my nine o’clock class yesterday which made me miss a quiz and so I don’t even know. Know what I mean?”
Jason chuckled in a knowing way.
“Oh yeah man, we’ve all been there. But listen, there are more important things than school. One of my professors once told me never to let school get in the way of learning. So don’t sweat it man. You’ll be fine.”
That one bit of advice completely changed the rest of my college experience. So if I can offer any bit of comfort to those of you whose hearts are near explosion from caffeine overdose, whose brains are turning to oatmeal, and who have had a total of three hours of sleep in the past four days, it is this:
Don’t let school get in the way of learning.
Project Management: Cynical Optimism
BookFool is in the process of planning for our upcoming textbook buybacks, which means lots and lots of cooperation and coordination among the Fools. This semester, we appointed a Buyback Traffic Cop (yours truly) whose job is to manage the calendar, make assignments, and update Basecamp and our internal wiki with our progress. It’s project management on steroids.
I was a project/account manager in a past life, so this process brings back memories. Because BookFool is a tight team, I’m not worried about us hitting deadlines. My #1 focus this semester is efficiency and not duplicating effort. An efficient process means we can buy more of your books, which is good for everybody!
(cc) Flickr user Geodog
To me, Project Management is an expression of Cynical Optimism. In theory, project management is inherently optimistic because it assumes you can organize your team to achieve more. But it’s also inherently cynical because you have to be ultra-realistic about setting deadlines, realizing that something always comes up.
For example, if you need to have 150,000 bookmarks printed in time for your manager training, you have to get them to the printer a week before, which means getting 50 PDFs back from the designer a few days before that, which means getting the design brief TO the designer at least a week or two before that, which means compiling the brief before sending to the designer, which means nailing down all details before… (and so on).
When you’ve got a chain of events that complex, the optimist knows it’s possible, but the cynic gets antsy when it’s time to set all those deadlines. The incurable optimist says, “My team is on point. If I need it on Friday, I’ll set the deadline for Friday and all will be well.” The optimist is often disappointed because, as the cynic understands, Something always comes up.
The true cynic says, “Something always comes up. If I need it on Friday, I’ll make it due Wednesday so there’s time for tweaks.” Now, this gradual deadline creep creates problems if you try to do it in secret. People know when something is really due, and if they think you’re padding the deadlines without telling them, they’ll simply readjust the deadlines in their head to accommodate reality.
I prefer the path of Cynical Optimism that gathers the team together and says, “We can do this, guys! However, we know things come up and deadlines need a little room to move, so let’s all decide to set deadlines a few days before we really need things done. But let’s also decide to hit those earlier deadlines because something always comes up.”
Project Management in a big team is one of the hardest things you’ll ever do. However, with a good team and a touch of Cynical Optimism, you’ll have everything running smoothly in no time.
Top 5 Favorite Movies
I asked the Fools to share their Top 5 favorite movies. I can’t believe we didn’t have any overlap, but heeeeeeere they are.
Kris
- Shawshank Redemption
- Tombstone
- The Princess Bride
- Death at a Funeral
- Silence of the Lambs
Lou
- Stripes — Classic lines and he goes from zero to hero in a hilarious fashion!
- A Fish Called Wanda — Cleese, Kline, and Lee Curtis (before the Activia days). Enough said!
- Raiders of the Lost Ark — A history lesson with guns, knives, swords, and snakes.
- Star Wars — As a 13-year-old walking out of the theater, all I wanted to be was Luke Skywalker.
- Zombie Movies — Dawn of the Dead, Return of the Living Dead, Day of the Dead. Classic scary movies. Great to see with your girl.
Nicole
- Strangers on a Train — Hitchcock’s brilliant thriller with an amazing and death-defying ending!
- A Clockwork Orange — With their own language and a love for lashings – these boys are insane!
- Uncle Buck — My father & I’s ultimate family comedy with the amazing John Candy.
- The Shining — Kubrick’s beautiful thriller that I watch repeatedly. HERE’S JOHNNY!
- The Squid & The Whale — Excellent acting & a first-rate story about the despondent realities of divorce.
Luke
- Die Hard — Perfect action movie, the right mix of ridiculous and plausible with a great villain (Snape!).
- Dumb & Dumber — More laughs per minute than any other movie. And max quotable.
- The Dark Knight — Finally the Joker is menacing again.
- Pee-wee’s Big Adventure — Probably darker than you remember. And funnier too!
- Apocalypse Now — A unique adaptation of the source material that becomes its own crazy thing.
Do we have good taste? What did you learn about the Fool crew from our favorite selections? And what are your favorite movies?
Snape as Hans Gruber in Die Hard
