rlb-publishing.co.uk

Hello everyone,

well we’re back from our family holiday to Rhodes island in Greece.

First of all many thanks to everyone who wished us a good holiday, we certainly had one!

Luckily there were no aftershocks (they had a 6.3 earthquake the day before we left the UK) and the bush fires they are now having were nowhere near Ixia where we stayed. We did hear a huge procession of fire engines flying down the main road through Ixia on Tuesday though and wondered what had happened.

The apartment we had was fine even though we read a couple of dodgy reviews just before we left and the kids enjoyed the big (and very deep) pool while we enjoyed the sunbeds (grin).

The food as always in Greece was just fantastic, huge portions of great tasting dishes. Greek salad to die for and great local beer and wine!

We went on a trip to Falaraki’s Water Park which was fantastic. They have a great selection of water slides and pools plus plenty of places to keep cool in the shade. The pic below shows both me and Joshua flying down a huge slide (Josh is nearly at the bottom and I’m halfway down).

They also had a great kids pool with Pirate ship, water cannons and more. The pic below shows a huge bucket that took 15 miuntes to fill up before tipping over on top of everyone below (absolutely hilarious!). Click the image below for a larger version.

We ate out every evening about 8pm when the sun had dropped a bit and the temperature was cooler. We went to a fabulous restaurant called ‘Alexandros’ more times than any of the other restaurants.

Why?

Well for a start off the Greek gentleman on the door (Michael) was a great host. Funny and charming he knew exactly what to say to entice people into the restaurant. The waiters were also a great bunch who really made us feel welcome and the food was excellent. They also had a Playstation and a Nintendo Wii in the kids area which pleased our two no end!

Watching Michael ‘work the door’ was hugely entertaining and a great lesson in marketing too. He knew 5 different languages so no matter whether you were English, Greek, French, German or Spanish he could talk to you and entice you inside. He always brought people into the restaurant, pulled back the chairs for each person to sit down and called a waiter over to bring you the menus.

None of the other restaurants we visited even compared to the hospitality shown at Alexandros. And theirin lies the marketing lesson. Everyone knew what to do to make you feel individual, special and comfortable. As such you really wanted to go back there time and time again.

Do you make your customers feel like that? Is there anything you can improve in your customer service?

Customer service on Ebay is even more important today. Have you noticed lately when you search for an item it lists things as ‘Best Match’ rather than ‘Ending Soonest’?

To save this post being huge here is a very valuable link to a page all about Ebay’s Best Match feature and what you can do to improve your listings and make sure you appear near the top:

http://www.auctioninsights.info/ebays-best-match-made-simple.html

I’ll finish of this post with a picture of the view from the Water Park looking out to sea and also Alexandros’ best asset, Michael! When I’ve uploaded all the video footage I took I’ll post about our boat trip to Lindos village plus show you some of the HUGE bugs out there!

Cheers, Richard