After setting up feeds via the My Yahoo! page to save time in monitoring specific news and blog sources, I also tested RSS feeds in a personalized Google home page, which is the equivalent of My Yahoo!

Although I primarily use My Yahoo! as a time management tool, I found that the Google personalized home page includes many additional time-saving “gadgets,” which are small applications such as the weather, translators, and tips of the day that can easily be added to your page. If you monitor any news sources or blogs on a regular basis, adding RSS feeds and these gadgets via Google may save you time.

RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication.” It’s a format for distributing and gathering content from sources across the Web, including newspapers, magazines, and blogs.

Setting up feeds in a personalized Google page is simple:

First, go to Personalize Home Page on Google (also known as iGoogle). It’s located in the upper right-hand corner of the main Google page.

Second, sign in to your account. If you don’t have a Google account, you can sign up for one.

Third, click on “Add stuff,” which is on the right side, next to “Select Theme.”

Fourth, click on “Add by URL,” which is next to the search box at the top of the page.

Fifth, type in the RSS feed address of the site you’d like to add. For example, to add the feed from the AchieveMax^® blog, you would type in http://www.AchieveMax.com/blog/feed/ and then click on “Add.”

Google also has a feed reader if you want to track many different feeds and don’t want a personalized page with convenient gadgets, such as the weather, local gas prices, maps, and traffic alerts, among many other gadgets.

If you already have a personalized Google home page and would like to add the AchieveMax^® blog feed to your page, simply click on the button below:

About Melanie L. Drake

Melanie L. Drake focuses on the publishing and marketing sides of the AchieveMax® company. AchieveMax® professional, motivational speakers provide custom-designed keynote presentations, seminars, and consulting services on change management, creativity, customer service, leadership, project management, time management, teamwork, and more. For more information on AchieveMax® custom-designed seminars and keynote presentations, please call 800-886-2629 or fill out our contact form.

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Recently, I was in correspondence with a Yahoo! employee who was alerting me to a promotion related to one of my web sites. I thanked him for providing the information and said how little time I had to surf the net for information to update my web sites. He, in turn, suggested I add a news search to the My Yahoo! account or any other news reader as an RSS feed. I’m the one everyone comes to for technology information and advice, so I’m a bit embarrassed to admit that while I had heard of RSS before, I really had no clue what he was talking about.

RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication.” It’s a format for distributing and gathering content from sources across the Web, including newspapers, magazines, and blogs.

I monitor a number of blogs and news searches on a daily basis by going to my favorite bookmarks and clicking away. It turns out there’s an easier way.

First, you must have a Yahoo! account in order to set up your My Yahoo! page to retrieve RSS feeds. You can sign up for a free account here.

Second, go to My Yahoo! and sign into your account. Yahoo! is in the process of updating the My Yahoo! design so options discussed in this article may be in different positions than listed.

Third, click on “Add Content,” which is currently under the search box at the top of the page.

Fourth, click on “Add RSS by URL,” which is to the right of the Find button.

Fifth, type in the RSS feed address of the site you’d like to add to My Yahoo! For example, to add the feed from the AchieveMax^® blog, you would type in http://www.AchieveMax.com/blog/feed and then click on “Add.”
Last, click on “Add to My Yahoo!”

Unlike adding an RSS feed to Internet Explorer, adding an RSS feed to My Yahoo! allows you to see the most recent posts from all of your favorite RSS feeds and searches on one page, which makes it easy for you to skim for the most recent content. Moreover, you can edit your preferences to show anywhere from one to 30 links from each blog.  Also, you can set it to show posts from the last 24 hours, 2 days, 3 days, 4 days, 5 days, 6 days, the past week, or all posts.  If you keep track of a number of web sites on a daily basis, then adding the RSS feeds to My Yahoo! will definitely save you time while still keeping you up to date on the issues that affect your life.

About Melanie L. Drake

Melanie L. Drake focuses on the publishing and marketing sides of the AchieveMax® company. AchieveMax® professional, motivational speakers provide custom-designed keynote presentations, seminars, and consulting services on change management, creativity, customer service, leadership, project management, time management, teamwork, and more. For more information on AchieveMax® custom-designed seminars and keynote presentations, please call 800-886-2629 or fill out our contact form.

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What if I told you that your employee gave me the best customer service … by referring me to your competitor? You’d be more than a little unhappy, wouldn’t you?

Recently, while trying to buy paint at a national retail chain, my husband and I asked an employee what we needed to do to get our paint colors mixed. No one was at the paint mixer machine, and we had to hunt down someone in the appliance area.

The kind, gray-haired employee responded, “Oh, the paint mixer is down again. It would be like a real store if they had two mixers now, wouldn’t it?”

Hmmmm … was that sarcasm? Did he actually just slam his own employer?

“Uh, yeah,” I hesitantly nodded in agreement.

“So when will the mixer be working again?” my husband asked. We were set on buying the paint at this store because out of all the stores we had visited, this store had the color samples we most liked. It just made sense to us that we would continue to visit this store as we painted rooms in our house, we would pick out the new room colors from paint chips at this store, and then we would get the paint mixed here. Although I hadn’t visited this particular store location many times, I was a long-time, loyal customer of this retailer.

“Oh, the mixer is down all the time,” the customer-service representative responded. “I don’t know when it will be working again. You probably wanted the paint right now, didn’t you? It’s the weekend after all, and you wanted to paint this weekend.”

“Of course,” we nodded.

“You know, if I were you, I would go to Home Depot. That’s where I go. They can match any color you want.”

And you know what? Home Depot, which is right across the street, has two paint mixers as well as two employees who mixed the paint up to not quite the right color but close enough.

So, why would your employee refer a customer to the competitor? Let’s look at this example a little closer.

The employee both as an internal and external customer was frustrated that the paint mixer was repeatedly down. It was apparent that many people have asked him about the paint mixer in his role as a representative at the store and that he, as a customer, had encountered the same problems. It was also obvious that he or another employee had given management feedback about the mixer not working and the need for a second mixer. Management, for whatever reason, had decided that a second mixer was not needed.

To be honest, I no longer visit this particular store. From my perspective, they lost my purchase of at least $400 in paint supplies to Home Depot. And, unfortunately, they lost my purchase of new drapes, new clothes, new cookware, and new outdoor supplies to other retailers such as Kohls and JCPenney. So, while it might appear that this retailer only lost one purchase of less than $100, it easily lost thousands of dollars worth of purchases over my lifetime. If you multiply that number by the countless other frustrated customer trying to buy paint at this store, I’m sure this retailer could have easily bought ten paint mixers.

I will admit that I can be a fiercely loyal customer, or I can go out of my way to tell everyone how lousy of an experience I’ve had. Although I am not a customer-service expert, I have learned much about what it takes for any company to have good customer service, both internally and externally, as an employee of a company that presents seminars and keynote presentations on customer service and customer satisfaction. But then again, I don’t think it takes a customer-service expert to see that the management of this store should listen to its employees and ask them for feedback on issues they see on a daily basis. In this competitive market, it’s important to see problems like this before your customers see them … and before your employees tell your customers to go to the competitor.

About Melanie L. Drake

Melanie L. Drake focuses on the publishing and marketing sides of the AchieveMax® company. AchieveMax® professional, motivational speakers provide custom-designed keynote presentations, seminars, and consulting services on change management, creativity, customer service, leadership, project management, time management, teamwork, and more. For more information on AchieveMax® custom-designed seminars and keynote presentations, please call 800-886-2629 or fill out our contact form.

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