Friday, March 8, 2013

Improving Customer Service Part 2 by Timothy D. Brady - Freight Bill ...

One thing more important than the cost of your hauling service to any shipper is the perceived and actual value they receive. Quality service is what will establish the highest value to the customer.

Here?s the list of actions which need to be part of your Customer Service Strategy:

  • Treat?your employees and drivers as you want your customers treated. Human?nature is such that the greater respect and consideration given to a?person, the more likely they will reciprocate to others. It?s very important you create a ?do as I do, not just as I say,? approach to?working with your employees and drivers.
  • Create a seamless communication link between all departments in your trucking?company and your shippers. Be sure everyone with a ?need to know? is in?the information loop. This means the dispatcher, the salesperson who sold?the hauling services, the truck driver, the safety director and the motor carrier owner are all in the loop.
  • Always?ensure if a customer has a problem?that isn?t resolved by the employee?handling it, the customer is directed to an executive in the company who?has the final word. This executive should be no more than the third person?with who your customer speaks. Don?t set up customer service ?brick?walls,? as this will create a dissatisfied shipper. Think how frustrating?it is when you call to resolve an issue with a company if you have to?repeat the same problem to each person up the customer service ladder.?Each one is apologetic; ?feels your pain,? but tells you it?s company?policy preventing resolution, or you should write a letter to a PO Box?without a specific person to whom to address it. Or you spend an?inordinate amount of time listening to scripted responses and apologies,?but your issue is in the same place it was when you started. Or when you ask the ?Customer?Service Representative? you?re speaking with if you could talk to a?manager or director, you?re informed the manager will tell you the same?thing. That?s a ?Customer Service Brick Wall,? and as a small motor?carrier, you can?t afford to build this wall in your business.
  • Regularly?contact your list of shippers who?ve used your motor carrier and ask them?whether they?ve had any unresolved issues. While you could do this in an?e-mail survey, calling those shippers directly will make a big impression?on them. And person-to-person communication is always the winning hand.
  • Place?the calmest, most cool-headed person in your office in charge of customer?service. We all know there will be a shipper that can?t be pleased, no?matter if you had his cargo transported by the driver in his sleeper?s?bunk. But if you have someone in your office who can deal with that?shipper if he or she becomes obnoxious, rude or threatening without becoming?the same in return, you?ll have superior customer service, even if it?s?only that one person.

What are the steps to building a solid customer service routine? Like any workable plan, you begin with a solid strategy for communication:

Don?t let the unexpected surprise the customer. There are always situations and events over which your company and the driver have no control. When one of these occurs and affects a load, immediately contact all parties. They may not be happy with what?s happened, but it gives them opportunity and time to make necessary adjustments to their plan.

Anticipate potential problems and have solutions for these problems to be presented to your shipper if they should occur. Not much else can sour a shipper?s attitude towards a motor carrier more than an avoidable, preventable mishap. Although the shipper may never see the driver doing all the activities required for operating safely, the net result is the safe delivery of his shipment.

Establishing solid customer service communication and being sure everyone within your company follows through in a consistent manner will help ensure your success. Unhappy customers will tell everyone what a lousy experience they had; satisfied customers will tell you what a great job you did, Raving Fans will tell everyone what a great operation you have. And this is what keeps your trailers filled to capacity with excellent-paying tonnage. Improving customer service with clear communication adds value to your company; value adds revenue to the bottom line.

Drive long and prosper, and remember: It?s not what you charge a customer, but the value you provide for the price.

Timothy Brady ?2013

To contact Brady go to www.timothybrady.com

For more information on Trucking Business Courses go to: www.truckersu.com

Source: http://www.cash4truckers.com/blog4truckers/2013/03/improving-customer-service-part-2-by-timothy-d-brady/

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Coulter Bashes Liberals Over Immigration On Fox: They're Back To ...

Ann Coulter sat down with Sean Hannity tonight to talk about new Republican proposals on immigration reform, especially in the wake of comments made by Jeb Bush this week. Coulter and Hannity agreed that any GOP plan needs to prioritize border enforcement first before getting around to the millions of illegal immigrants already in the United States. Coulter said that liberals who want to start with legalization are going back to their ?old tricks and trying to release criminals.?

Hannity said that the borders need to be secure and once they get secured they should get a ?seal of approval? by Republicans. Coulter hit the media for convincing Americans that building a wall is crazy, like ?sending a man to Mars.? She explained that any plan needs to be enforcement first, and liberals wanting to deal with legalization first are going back to their ?old tricks and trying to release criminals.?

RELATED: Tour? On GOP?s Immigration Debate: ?Just Lining Up For Who?s Going to Lose To Hillary?

Hannity asked Coulter if the Democrats are viewing this from a prism of electoral politics and hoping fighting for immigration reform will get them more support. Coulter agreed, and briefly tussled with Hannity over whether the proposal offered by Marco Rubio puts legalization before enforcement. Hannity insisted it does not, while Coulter said ?step one is illegal immigrants are legal,? and they can?t start from that.

Coulter continued to say that illegal immigrants don?t actually want citizenship, they want to continue living here illegally. She added that the United States also needs to fix its legal immigration system too, arguing that too many legal immigrants are on government assistance and that the United States needs to prioritize taking care of its ?native-born.?

Hannity highlighted how Obama has continued to demagogue the GOP, though he did acknowledge the Republican party currently lacks some degree of ?message discipline.? Coulter said that every time a Democrat says that a policy or law is ?common-sense,? Republicans need to ?nail the Democrats down? and call them out on exactly what they mean by that.

Watch the video below, courtesy of Fox News:

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Follow Josh Feldman on Twitter: @feldmaniac

Source: http://www.mediaite.com/tv/coulter-bashes-liberals-over-immigration-on-hannity-theyre-back-to-old-tricks-and-trying-to-release-criminals/

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Thursday, March 7, 2013

Key developmental mechanism in plants explained for first time

Mar. 6, 2013 ? When a stem cell commits to becoming a leaf cell, how does a polycomb gene-repressing protein complex know where in the genome to go, and when? The normal development of an animal or plant can be compared in at least two ways with the successful performance of a great symphony. The whole is the product of a great number of events involving contributions by many different "players"; and these contributions must occur in a precise and almost perfectly coordinated temporal and spatial sequence.

In simple animals like the fruit fly and more recently in plants and mammals, scientists have been able to identify some of the principal players in the developmental symphony. Today, a team of researchers from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) explains for the first time the operation of a mechanism in plants that controls a class of key developmental regulatory genes, called homeobox genes.

The homeobox genes under study, called BREVIPEDICELLUS (BP) and KNAT2, need to be active in plant stem cells in order for the cells to maintain their non-specialized character. Stem cells are totipotent: they can develop, or "differentiate," into any plant cell type, depending on signals they receive which send them down the developmental path. When the moment is just right for plant organs such as leaves to begin to grow, BP and KNAT2 are switched off so that development can proceed.

"We were already familiar with the players in this regulatory mechanism, which have been conserved, or preserved, by evolution across species from flies to plants to animals," says CSHL Professor Marja Timmermans, who led the research team. "What we have not understood until now is how, in plants, the action of the players is very precisely coordinated in time and space."

It turns out that a highly conserved assembly of polycomb proteins, called Polycomb-repressive complex2 (PRC2), spurs a process called epigenetic regulation that physically marks targeted genes -- in this case, BP and KNAT2 -- for repression. But how do these protein complexes know where along the plant cell's genome to go, and when, in order to induce this gene-repressing effect?

The key discovery by the Timmermans team, which appears online today in the journal Genes & Development, is the identification of the mechanism that brings PRC2 to specific sites along the genome precisely in those cells committed to become a leaf.

Timmermans' team showed that PRC2 physically interacts with DNA binding proteins that attach to plant DNA in specific genome regions just ahead of where the homeobox genes are situated. In the plant they studied, Arabidopsis, those DNA binding proteins are ASYMMETRIC LEAVES1 (AS1) and AS2. When a stem cell commits to becoming a leaf cell, AS1 and AS2 become active, attach at the DNA sites near BP and KNAT2, and recruit PRC2 to repress these homeobox genes. The epigenetic mark made by PRC2, which acts like a cellular memory, is heritable, and is essential in order for leaves and other plant organs to develop.

In other locations along the genome, other analogous mechanisms are surely at work, says Timmermans, whose broad interest in this research concerns its implications for patterning in development.

Timmermans is intrigued to learn the effects of tweaking with the timing of regulatory gene expression and repression. She suspects small adjustments to expression of master regulators during development are one of the means by which evolution proceeds over vast stretches of time.

She also notes that by tweaking these developmental regulatory systems, it might be possible to beneficially affect plant regeneration -- the process in which a new plant is generated from the leaf of an existing one. This process involves de-differentiating a mature cell and returning it to a primitive developmental state before once again allowing it to proceed down a developmental path -- a process akin to that employed in the making of human IPS (induced pluripotent stem) cells.

This work was supported by grants from the New York State Department of Health (C024308) and the National Science Foundation (MCB-0616114).

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.


Journal Reference:

  1. M. Lodha, C. F. Marco, M. C. P. Timmermans. The ASYMMETRIC LEAVES complex maintains repression of KNOX homeobox genes via direct recruitment of Polycomb-repressive complex2. Genes & Development, 2013; DOI: 10.1101/gad.211425.112

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/UQYgIqfXs6k/130307124758.htm

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