Beginning Week Seven

It has been a very busy past two weeks - therefore I have not had time to write anything. We just finished our most recent "goal" - our spikes game promotion. It was a wild ride! To summarize: We sponsored a group called "You Are Beautiful" and this group, YAB, was sponsoring a spikes game this past Sunday night. We paid them to get a table and some space in the food court area at the game. We got about 150 surveys completed, passed out 1,000 glowing necklaces, gave away 1,000 magnets for our new, free, online software, and we got to talk to a lot of interesting people. It was a really good event ( a few stumbling blocks ), but overall a really positive experience.

At first I felt extremely shy asking people to fill out surveys and trying to explain what we do and who we were. By the end of the game I was wandering around with clipboards with surveys attached asking people if they would like to participate in our IPod giveaway. It was really awesome getting to look around the game and see hundreds of people wearing our promotional glowing necklaces (As of last night - Monday night - mine was still glowing!).

We basically just wanted to have this experience to get us comfortable talking about our new software, and have a chance to find some people that will help us test it out. There were a lot of confused faces when we talked about energy tracking and analysis... It was really cool getting to figure out how to word it so that the every day person could understand. By the end of the night my explaination turned into something like this...

"Our software is called GreenQuest, it is a free online tool that helps you track your energy use. You take your utility bills like electic, water, and heat bills, and you can enter all of the data they give you into this tool. GreenQuest helps you figure out how much energy your using, how the weather affects your energy use, your impact on the environment, and how much energy similar buildings of your size are using so you can find out if your above or below the average household of your size. Also, if you use energy efficiency lightbulbs, get new windows or applicances, you can find out if they are actually saving energy or not. You will get to see charts and graphs that can plot out your usage, and you can find out if your bill is going up because of rates or because your using more electricty, or water, or gas.. etc.."

Pretty interesting, right?

If you are still reading and interested check it out at www.mygreenquest.com

Well, that's the summary of our latest project! I will write more another day.

One Hundred and Forty-Two Point Five Hours

Today is Friday, and I am finishing up my fourth week! I have learned a lot this week about advertising and promotions. I learned it takes an incredible amount of time brain storming, designing, researching, and finally putting an order for a promotional item. This process is especially long when there are many parties involved that need to have input into the final decision.

My company is sponsoring a baseball game coming up, and we are going to have a booth where we will be promoting our newest product line and asking for testers for our software. It is pretty exciting seeing all of the pieces come together the past week. It is also scary to see how many pieces have yet to be completed.

I have had a lot of customer interaction the past couple of weeks, one story of which is interesting enough to tell on here. When customers call our business line they are given many options to choose from to direct them to the right department. Right now most of those options go to me. This can be a somewhat confusing situation when customers call and they are upset about something and need to talk to tech support, but they clicked the tech support option and reached me (clueless). I then go to apologize for the inconvenience and I transfer them to tech support. I feel so bad for the customers because I know exactly how this feels... I can hear myself saying to someone "I could have sworn I clicked the tech support option"... and following, the frustration of explaining the entire problem all over again to a new voice.

Another interesting phone situation was Wednesday. I give validation codes to customers over the phone when there's is expired or is going to expire within the next month. Validation codes are the combination of letters and numbers you receive on software packages that you have to enter to prove that you've paid for your software, and it allows the program to give you full access to all of the features. So here I am giving out validation codes... 4.. 5... 8... A as in Apple, D as in Dog, F as in... (what the heck does F stand for?) Fire! Flamingo! Frank!..... Awkwardly I give my validation codes, usually with a different word for the letter every time. This time was different. After I gave the validation code to our customer he chuckled a little bit and told me "Because you work with a large group of military, you should know the military alphabet code." I felt very nervous and embarrassed thinking back to what I had just said.. F as in Fire.. Q as in Queen.. T as in Tiger... I had no idea what I was actually supposed to say so I nervously responded that I was new to the position and I would be learning the correct code as soon as possible.

After that phone call I looked up the code and all my guesses apparently were very wrong.

A: Alpha
B: Bravo
C: Charlie
D: Delta
E: Echo
F: Foxtrot
G: Golf
H: Hotel
I: India
J: Juliet
K: Kilo
L: Lima
M: Mike
N: November
O: Oscar
P: Papa
Q: Quebec
R: Romeo
S: Sierra
T: Tango
U: Uniform
V: Victor
W: Whiskey
X: X-Ray
Y: Yankee
Z: Zulu

W as in Whiskey?? P as in Papa?? How am I supposed to say that without laughing? Anyway.. later on that day I was giving a validation code to a customer and I tried the new system..." F as in Foxtrot... " The manager of administration was reading the paper right in front of my desk, and he fell to the floor trying to mask his laughing. It was very difficult to finish this phone conversation with the customer while he was laughing at my awkward situation.... but at least now I know that F isn't for fire or flamingo or frank....