Active Parrots

With the advent of active selling we finally get away from the repetition that had become our byword for upselling, “ coffee? Tea?hot chocolate?doughnuts? Repeat repeat repeat....customers were leaving the tills looking shell shocked and confused, some of them were leaving the forecourt having forgotten they'd come by car.

Now we have licence...and official passports.....to upsell according to the customer in front of us. Hurrah....you'd think! Sadly this has confused some of our csa's considerably, they liked repetition they were comfortable with it, like Hari Krishna with a whole new mantra they trotted out their chants, now here we were asking them to decide what to upsale.

We're trying to get them to recognise and act on link purchases, to emphasise this we of course used cigarettes linked to a lighter as an example. Unfortunately the former parrots among our crew have clung to this like a life raft in the sea of upselling, they now ask anyone and everyone if they'd like a lighter with every purchase, seriously confusing non smoking customers. “no no ” I hear young Liam exclaiming in desperate exasperation (he'd be tearing his hair out if he had assurance it would definitely grow back) “you have to link things with other things that make sense, you can't link lighters to toilet tissue, they're not trying to set fire to their *****s...”

The confusion is further compounded on lottery day when they're told to upsell lottery then link in scratchcards ….. “lottery, scratchcards, lighters?” I hear them chant, it cant be long before they've once again begun offering a complete inventory of the shop to each and every poor bemused customer.

On a side note a few of our overseas staff were delighted at the prospect of being issued passports until it was explained they were merely for star collection and wouldn't render them suddenly available for 40 hours..... one lad even tried to leave the country using his, he still thinks he only failed due to not having enough stars....As I said to him “yes Liam I know I said it is a passport but it doesn't even have your photograph in it ….oh I see you've stapled one in....”