I was quite ambitious in 2024 and set myself 3 new year’s resolutions! (I seem to like a challenge, don’t I?!)
For a couple of years now, rather than making resolutions about things I want to stop doing, I’ve been making them so that I bring more of something I enjoy into my life. That’ll be a good post for another time.
2024 consisted of a mixture of things;
- Entering 52 competitions – who doesn’t enjoy winning a competition?
- Sending 52 thank you emails, – who doesn’t enjoy spreading a bit of positivity?
- Be able to do at least 10 sit ups, 10 push ups and 10 chin ups – yeah, I’ll admit that one doesn’t sound quite as enjoyable!
2024 New Year’s Resolutions - Enter 52 Competitions
I hoped that by entering 52 competitions, (considerably more than I usually enter), my chances of winning would increase and hopefully I’d have something to show for it by the end of the year. After all, you’ve got to be in it to win it!
I entered competitions in magazines, newspapers, from the radio, some on social media, and a couple from the TV. The possible prizes were an eclectic mix, from money to holidays, meals to flowers, to gifts and a menagerie of odd bits and bobs.
The only rule that I gave myself was that it had to be free to enter. On the whole it was really easy to do, didn’t cost me a penny, and the questions hadn’t been too taxing either.
Well, I didn’t win a blooming thing!! It was a little disappointing as I thought the odds were in my favour to win at least one competition. However, I might give this another go and see if I have better luck another year.
2024 New Year’s Resolutions - Send 52 Thank You Emails
For the second of my new year’s resolutions, I decided I was going to send a thank you email each week for good customer service. At the time I said ‘it’s easy to take the time to complain, but it’s even easier and nicer to recognise the good stuff.’.
I only said thank you to businesses and organisations that I genuinely thought had done a good job. It didn’t particularly have to be above and beyond service, just genuinely good.
I didn’t really know what to expect from this resolution. I hoped I’d bring a bit of joy to the recipients, and maybe get some nice responses back.
Being the nerd I am, I kept a spreadsheet of the responses so I can share how I got on.
Remember how I said this was going to be easy? Well, it was NOT easy. In fact, it was fascinatingly frustrating.
Initial Frustrations
Thinking it would be easy to visit a website and find an email address to get in touch with an organisation, I’d not expected it would be so hard to find how to contact some businesses in the first place! Many of them did NOT make it easy.
Looking on websites, a lot of them tried to pre-empt what I wanted to contact them about. As I clicked through to try and find how to get in touch to send a compliment, it funnelled me through to other information.
I’m sure they think they are being helpful, and in most cases I imagine it’s great at helping people to find answers without having to actually communicate with anyone. However, I didn’t want to find out about exchanges, I didn’t need to know opening hours, and no, I didn’t want to complain.
There were a few instances where I couldn’t find a single way to contact the organisation – no email address, no online web form, and one business needed me to sign up as a member in order to leave them some feedback!
Unhelpful Chat Bots - Sending 52 Thank You Emails
Some websites had a chat bot, and I gave it a go thinking it might be useful in helping me to find contact details. A majority of them were pre-loaded with topics, so if your query doesn’t fit within one of those nice boxes, then you’re scuppered. Guess what? Compliments wasn’t an option. Neither was feedback.
I had a conversation with one chat bot that went around in circles, I could have lost hours in that chat loop! Again it tried to direct me to existing information, and didn’t actually help me find a way to send a thank you.
Mostly Negative Language
When I did find a section on a website about feedback, the language used was often really negative. If there was a way to share my thoughts it was often under the heading ‘complaint’.
Occasionally a site would have somewhere to send ’feedback’ but it was regularly accompanied by text suggesting if things aren’t quite right, they’ll do what they can to resolve it.
From the places I contacted, I never once saw anything online that encouraged me to let them know when they were getting it right, or that they invited positive feedback.
Responses To Sending 52 Thank You Emails
83% of the businesses and organisations I contacted replied.
Now I didn’t really have any idea whether I’d get any responses when I started this, but I hoped I’d get some sort of acknowledgement.
Perhaps the 22% that didn’t respond were too overwhelmed by a nice email or didn’t know how to respond.
Admittedly, my thank you’s didn’t ask a question, or need a reply. There was no actual reason that anyone needed to respond to me. But it was really nice when I did get an email back and it was obvious that my words had been read.
Personalised Responses - 2024 New Year’s Resolutions, Sending 52 Thank You Emails
61% of the businesses who responded made it a personal reply,
and they really made my day!
When I say personal, I don’t just mean using my name, I mean they referenced things I’d mentioned in my message. It made me feel as though my words had been read by a human and that they cared that I’d taken the time to get in touch.
Some of the responses I received didn’t acknowledge anything I’d mentioned, but simply said “thank you, we’re glad you liked our service’ or “that’s amazing to hear.”
Asking For More - Sending 52 Thank You Emails
38% of the businesses who responded asked me to do something else.
Whilst I totally understand how important reviews are, (we all look at them don’t we?), I couldn’t help but feel a little sad when a response asked me to leave a review on Google or Trip Advisor. I’d taken the time to contact them directly with some personal and positive feedback, and I felt as though it wasn’t appreciated as much as a public appraisal.
Put it this way, if my email had been a complaint, I doubt I’d have been asked to leave my comments on a public review site.
Follow Up Questionnaires
Several times I received a response to my thank you, and then I got a follow up email with some sort of survey asking me to rate how well I felt my enquiry had been dealt with.
My email had already been positive feedback. Surely that was feedback about their service in the first place? However, these follow up surveys could have been an opportunity for me to let them know how well they were doing at responding to compliments.
Unfortunately, the questionnaires rarely had free text. Instead I had to answer questions such as ‘were we able to resolve your primary question or concern?’. Well, it wasn’t really a ‘concern’.
The only available options to select were ‘Yes, and I only needed to contact your once’. ‘Yes, but I had to contact you more than once‘ or, ‘No, my issue has not been resolved.‘ Neither the question or the responses really related to the reason I had contacted them in the first place. It seemed a bit of a pointless exercise.
Disappointing Replies
I was excited to see one of the first responses sitting in my inbox. I was disappointed when I opened it, for a variety of reasons.
Firstly, I had sent an email to ‘customer services’. The response came from ‘complaints’. It wasn’t a complaint! I had praised them for the service we had received, and said how much we appreciated what they offer.
Secondly, the text in the body of the email varied in size and font. I am pretty certain they had copied and pasted elements of it from elsewhere. If they had bothered to format it so all of the text looked the same, I wouldn’t have noticed.
Instead, this made me feel a little sad that it seemed as though the person responding to my message didn’t have the autonomy to be able to use their own initiative to reply. Why does everything need to be ‘scripted’.
The Best Replies To Sending 52 Thank You Emails
Some replies stood out as having been responded to by a real person, and they were the ones that absolutely made my day. They made me feel like it was worth taking the time to contact the businesses and organisations to say thank you.
“Thank you sooooo much Sally and what a refreshing change it was to get such a lovely email other than a Invoice or Queries. It does mean a lot to us all and I will make sure everyone sees it. Just the Boost we all need,”
“Thank you so, so much for getting in touch. In this age, most folk only reach out to complain, so it’s especially lovely for you to take time out of your day to say ‘thank you’! Making peoples’ days is why we get out of bed in the morning, so thank you for letting me know we made yours, too!”
“We cannot thank you enough for your lovely words, it really has made our day, week, year! We are beaming with pride that all our hard work is recognised.”
“Thank you so much for taking the time to tell us this. It means a lot. We never take our customers for granted and appreciate everyone who makes the choice to shop with us.”
These are just a few of the replies that made it feel as though it had all been worth while. Aren’t they lovely?!
This Had Been An Interesting New Year's Resolution
As new year’s resolutions go, this had certainly been different. Some businesses take compliments really well, others could definitely do with a bit of work, and others just need to make it easier for us to let them know when we think they’re doing good stuff!
It’s interesting how complaints are often met with refunds, or gifts, to try and keep our business, or perhaps smooth over any grievance in the hope that we’ll dilute our stories if we’re telling others about it.
Whereas what do happy customers get? Less time spent crafting a personal reply to a compliment, and a request to either share the feedback on a review site or to fill in a follow up survey that doesn’t feel very relevant, it would seem.
It’s a shame it’s easier to get in touch with people when we’re not happy, than it is to let people know when we think they’ve done good stuff. That said, it was such a brilliant feeling to think I’d made someone smile who received my thank you.
2024 New Year’s Resolutions - be able to do at least 10 sit ups, 10 push ups and 10 chin ups
As for the last of my 2024 new year’s resolutions, well, it started off fairly well. I had 12 months to work on this one. I was enjoying the challenge of building up a bit of strength. It was tough going, but it felt like I was on the right track.
That is, until I dislocated my thumb! Having to be in a cast for two weeks meant I lost momentum. So that new year’s resolution has rolled over to 2025. We’ll see how it goes!
Want To Try Some New Year's Resolutions Yourself?
- If you’ve ever set yourself any new year’s resolutions and not stuck with them, was it because it was about stopping something? Can you reframe it so that it helps you to do something more positive.
- For further reading on setting and sticking to new year’s resolutions, have a look at this article from Katy Milkman – “can science help with your new year’s resolutions?”
- The British Psychological Society has some useful tips in their article “The psychology behind making New Year’s resolutions stick.”
- Find out about some of my previous new year’s resolutions:
Cost Of Experience
- All three of my 2024 new year’s resolutions were free!
Recommendations For New Year's Resolutions
- Let me know how you get on if you decide to try any of the three resolutions I did.
- If you’re setting yourself new year’s resolutions, try to make them specific. It’s easy to say ‘I want to get fit’, but what does that actually mean?
- New year’s resolutions don’t have to be serious. Have a think about what you enjoy doing, and see if you can get creative and come up with a challenge that can last you the year.