Photos of Christmas Past VIII

To be honest, I don't remember the Christmas with the Nose. I'm including more of the photo with Nod, just to show that it was indeed a Christmas - see the tree to the right? (Get a load of the sweater! Straight out of The Santa Clause or The Cosby Show!)

























Here I am ... what a pout.


And now, an update from the Call Center:
On Monday we took alot of calls from one of the other catalogs that our parent company owns (there are eight - we cover every room in the house). The Call Center that normally takes these calls had too many to handle on their own. (There are three call centers, each handles certain catalogs, but we are always prepared for "rollovers".) This is a little tough for us, as we don't get product training for any of those items, and the information screens aren't always up to what we'd like them to be. But we do our best. This year I didn't have anyone asking questions that I couldn't answer.

In this particular catalog, there are alot of party foods that people want to have delivered by the weekend. Unfortunately, most of what they were calling for were perishables made to order from the vendors, so they weren't going to get there until Tuesday the 27th. Normally our delivery dates are one week for most things, but UPS is delivering this Saturday, so they're going to be closed on Monday. I've seen them delivering locally past 8:30 pm.

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Tuesday we got Winter Product Training for the catalog that I normally take calls for. Normally we're all excited to see the new lines. However, three different versions of the catalog were created, and the pages are all mixed up. This is all for targeted mailings. Studies show that if there is a particular thing on the cover, then people who relate to that thing will buy more.

The problem is that they gave us only one version, not all three. They did give us a conversion chart, but - man, oh, man what a hassle. "Ah, if you have the A cover and I've got the C cover in front of me ... that means you're on page 11 and I need to be on page 90. Oh, you have the B cover catalog? Then that' page 53 ..."

All three versions did make it to the Call Center - and so if we asked each other who had which version, we could conceivably have access to each version. You can just imagine how that might work out. NOT. I know that it's expensive to give each of us (or even each station) all three catalogs. However, if we're expected to give good service, then we need to be provided the tools to do so.

ANYWAY ... we all had our panties in a wad about this. Then the buyers who came from the home office said "Oh, you don't each have all three? Then we'll have to get them to you..." THAT will make things MUCH better, THANK you VERY much!

As it turned out, Cover C had a whole different photograph of a particular item than the other two. Yours truly was the one discover it ... the home-office folks didn't know!

Your truly also had already gone into the back room some days ago, found a copy of each of the other two versions and had helped myself to them. Shhh - don't tell anybody.