Author: DealDash community

Congratulations to James Rodgers, the Head of Customer Support at DealDash.com, and his outstanding Team of customer support agents.

James and his team were recently recognized by Pasi Lohi, CEO of DealDash, for providing “legendary” customer service. To honor the DealDash Customer Support team I decided to interview James to find out what it takes to provide such awesome support. Let’s find out.

“Listening is definitely a prerequisite to do any customer service,” said James, who joined the DealDash team in 2015. “Customer Service is a skill for life. Don’t be tricked into thinking it is temporary or you will ever somehow be above it, because you simply will not. Never stop putting customers first and striving to make your level of support even stronger!”

Based on many amazing DealDash Support Team reviews on social media, James and his team not only “talk the talk”, but they also “walk the walk.” As a long-time DealDash customer myself, I can personally attest to the fact that James and his team do, in fact, go above and beyond to put customers first.

For example, I once won a high-dollar, high-end ladies bag (purse) that was made out of the highest grade leather. I had never owned such an expensive bag in my life and I was very happy with it except for one thing — It did not come with a long shoulder strap. I did not file a formal complaint because it was my fault. All I did was mention my disappointment to James and let him know why a shoulder strap for such a large bag is so important. I tried to find a shoulder strap myself  but I was not able to find one with a wide enough band to work with such a large bag. Some weeks later James notified me that he managed to find a shoulder strap for my bag and he shipped it to me. I thought he had probably forgotten all about it so I was super surprised and happy. I was jumping with joy!  

“We can always find new ways to delight and inspire our customers,” James said. “Somewhere along the way I may have become addicted to providing experiences to people that I could only dream of having myself. People will always remember how we’ve made them feel and we can’t afford to miss an opportunity.”

James certainly did not miss the opportunity to help me in an unexpected way.

Rewarding Work

I asked James what he likes most about his job at DealDash as the head of customer service.

“I have been so lucky to create meaningful relationships with our customers, and my favorite part is learning about them on a personal level,” he said. “It’s so nice to know where people come from, about their families and who they are as people. They make our job so fun.”

I also asked James to name one characteristic that is most important to providing high-quality customer service and he guessed that universally most people would simply say, “Empathy.”  

“I believe this is true but overly simplistic,” James said. “I will take it a step further and reframe it as ‘empathetic grit’ to encapsulate three things in one –empathy, grit and resilience. We need to have empathy and always be on the same side as our customer no matter what. We love getting ‘slam-dunks’ with our customers. We are on the same team.

“But it doesn’t stop there,” James continued. “We need courage and mental strength to dig deep and question the obvious. Not all solutions will be easy so we need to be strong, self-sacrificing and even creative in how we approach things to make sure we are able to satisfy a customer’s unique set of needs. We also need grit to stay focused on being fast. Last, but not least, we need resilience. We need to put the reps in over and over and stay committed to the mission.”

Amazingly, the average first reply time for James and his Customer Support team is only 10 minutes. I doubt other businesses could beat that.

“Customer Service is an equalizer and extremely important in any company,” James said. “At the highest level it is much nuanced and brings practitioners humility. I’ve smiled, laughed and even cried with customers.

“We have such a wonderful, high-performing team here at DealDash Customer Support,” James said. “Things might not always work out perfectly … but we must never give up. The pursuit of legendary support is continuous!”

I can honestly say the customer service I have received since 2012 is the best I have ever experienced anywhere else, so please help me thank James and his “Legendary” Customer Support team by saying a few kind words to them or letting them know what you think about DealDash’s customer support the next time you talk with them!

This sponsored blog post was submitted by: Barbara L. Sellers. Barbara was compensated by DealDash for this blog post. Blog posts are written by real DealDash customers. The opinions and advice here represent our customers’ views and not those of the company.

What does timing have to do with bid counting when shopping on DealDash.com? Perhaps a lot more than we might think it does. If we have an idea how many bids our strongest competitors have already used in the auctions we might be able to come up with an educated guess whether it would be wise for us to continue or move on to another auction.

For example, most shoppers (who are looking for a good deal) will not invest more than the BIN value of the auction product. Therefore, if we are shopping in an auction with a BIN price tag of $300.00 most shoppers will stop bidding before going over that amount.

If we want to place some bids on our home computer on DealDash and then leave to go grocery shopping, we might want to know how many bids we would have to place to keep the auction running until we return home. If we plan to be gone for one hour, we might want to estimate how many bids we could use up in the one hour we would be gone.

Ballpark Figures

Of course, there is probably no way to know this at the beginning of an auction when we might see 30 to 80 shoppers place bids, or when shoppers are jumping in and out of the auction. By watching the three final players near the end (who usually let the clock run), however, it’s a lot easier to come up with an educated ballpark figure just by watching. We can also run our mouse over the final bidder’s icon to see at what point each player first joined the auction. If the player joined the auction in the very beginning they might have used a lot more bids than a shopper who joined the auction right before it hit $5.00.

With three active players, I figured it would take about 15 minutes to use 30 bids. That would mean all three players would stay in the game that long and no additional players would join in. Of course, if a player dropped out or additional players joined in, that would all change. But to cover myself for an hour away from my computer, I figured I would need to place at least 120 bids but to be more on the safe side I would need to place about 200 bids before leaving.

Counting

Am I kidding? No, I’m not. Some truly serious shoppers on DealDash have indicated that they actually “count” the exact number of bids their competitors place. I would never have the patience to do that myself, but some players might actually get a pen and paper, write down the screen names of other players in an auction and make a mark for each player each time they place a bid so they know exactly how many bids each player has already used. Then they use that information to decide at what point in the auction they should play the rest of their bids. These players wait until they believe all of their top competitors might be running out of bids and then they “pounce” on the other shoppers near the end and go in for the win.

The “Count” might tick off other players when he or she wins with just a few bids at the end, but we cannot be too upset with them. After all, it’s not against the rules and any of us could do the same thing if we wanted to go through all that work.

Leaderboard Features

Whenever DealDash has a Leaderboard Feature they make it a lot easier for us to figure out how many bids other players might have invested. The more bids we place the higher we go up on the Leaderboard. Therefore, we automatically know the shoppers at the top of the Leaderboard have placed the most bids.

We must also understand that the shoppers at the top of the Leaderboard might not want to lose their place to win the free bids when the auction closes, so they could be all the more determined to stay to the bitter end.

Bottom Line

Are you a bid counter? It might be worth thinking about because it could make a winning difference.

This sponsored blog post was submitted by: Barbara L. Sellers. Barbara was compensated by DealDash for this blog post. Blog posts are written by real DealDash customers. The opinions and advice here represent our customers’ views and not those of the company.

If you like using DealDash now, odds are you will like it even more in the future. Why? Because the DealDash Team frequently makes updates to the website and apps, and also they introduce new promotions and auction types.

DealDash constantly looks for ways to improve the shopping experience for its customers and, at the same time, keep the site running as smoothly as possible. I’m sure every platform change is made with both of these things in mind.

We live in a world that is constantly changing. Not all changes are always good, but whenever changes are made to various products or businesses it’s usually an improvement over the past products or practices. When we get used to something being one way and then it suddenly does not work that way anymore, it might be normal to feel frustrated at first. However, if we just give it a little time, we often find that everything works better for everyone. Such is the case with new changes on DealDash. At first you might wish for how things used to be, but after a bit of time you will see why the DealDash Team decided to change things up.

What Changed

One of the first changes I noticed is on the BidBuddy automated bidder page. The former BidBuddy had an up and down arrow next to the space where we place our bids. The arrows made it very fast and easy to add or delete bids during the auctions. However, those arrows are no longer there. Now bids are entered manually. The DealDash made this change to eliminate bids accidentally being placed or adjusted while you browse the auctions. Reducing bidding mistakes is always a good thing and it makes sense why DealDash made this change.

I noticed a few changes I liked as soon as I saw them. For example, in the past I couldn’t always remember if I had won the auction within the last 30 days or not and I could not tell if I was blocked from bidding in that auction without opening it. However, now it’s easy to tell at a glance because the auction will be dark (not lighted up) if I am now blocked from bidding in that auction.

The previous winner information that appears under the auctions has also been improved to make it easier to read and understand. During the bidding itself the changes that have been made makes it easier to see how many shoppers are actively participating and the screen names of the bidders are also much more visible.

What information moved

A few resources I always referred to a lot whenever I shopped on DealDash used to be listed under the Dashboard – Account information and Won Auctions.

It’s important to review information about your account, like when you joined, and I also love reviewing my list of won auctions, and I am sure a lot of you do, too.

I found the auctions I won by clicking on “Bidding History” and “My Orders.” “Bidding History” is very detailed, and contains a list of every auction that you placed a bid in. To find a list of previous wins, “My Orders” would be the best place to go because it lists all of the won auctions and also includes the auction products exchanged for bids and a list of all Buy It Now orders, as well.

I hope that you like the new changes that DealDash made. One great thing that will always remain the same is the first-class customer support. If you have any comments, questions or feedback for them, we can click on “Contact Support” which is now listed on our Dashboard.

Bottom Line

If you have not been shopping on DealDash since all of these changes have been made, perhaps you should check it out so you can keep yourself up-to-date on what’s happening. When it comes to online shopping, just like everything else in life, if we stop actively participating we can quickly find ourselves left behind.

Happy bidding everyone!

This sponsored blog post was submitted by: Barbara L. Sellers. Barbara was compensated by DealDash for this blog post. Blog posts are written by real DealDash customers. The opinions and advice here represent our customers’ views and not those of the company.

Jessica, a senior Customer Support agent at DealDash, has a YouTube video chat where she answers questions customers send in.  One frequent question she gets is customers wanting to know how to win auctions when competing with other shoppers who appear to have more bidding power. One suggestion Jess made was shopping on different days and at different times of the day. Of course, any change a shopper makes could help.

However, from a long-time customer’s point of view, I think I know the best path to winning. Whenever I practice enough self-discipline to follow these procedures I usually win more auctions, so I decided to share them with you.

Rule No. 1

If you want to win more auctions, watch other customers who are winning the most auctions. You can go to the Winners’ list and see who is winning multiple auctions. You can also open various high-dollar auctions and see a list of screen names of shoppers who have already won those auctions. Write those screen names down. Then just watch them for a while. This is probably the best thing you can do because winners often learn from other winners what works and what doesn’t work.

When I watched frequent winners, some things I learned they have in common are:

• They often are willing to stay in an auction for a long time
• They develop a reputation of being tough competitors who seldom, if ever, stop;
• They diversify and often place bids in more than one identical auction.

Rule No. 2

Winning auctions on DealDash rarely happens by accident. Winning on a regular basis is more like a science. It is possible, however, to win auctions with a limited number of bids if we follow these procedures:

• Look for auctions that have the lowest number of active bidders and the least amount of competition;
• Become familiar with the screen names of tough competitors who frequently have an endless supply of bids. Avoid bidding in the same auctions. Look to see if these competitors have already won and are now blocked from competing. If their screen names show up in your auction later on, cancel your bids and look for another auction.
• When the auction gets down to the last three players, check the Winners’ List to see if any of them won a large bid pack within the last three hours. If we have 500 bids but another player just won 1,000 or more bids we cannot possibly win with that kind of competition. Therefore cancel your bids and find another auction.

Rule No. 3

When new bid packs are being high-lighted with offers of bonus bids that’s when the regular bid packs are most often ignored, and therefore, are easiest to win.

Bottom Line

It can be a challenge to win all the time if you are on a bid budget. Therefore, you must rely on skill. That takes a lot more effort, but it pays off.

If you follow these rules, you just might find the best path to winning, too.

Have a great day and I’ll see you in the auctions!

This sponsored blog post was submitted by: Barbara L. Sellers. Barbara was compensated by DealDash for this blog post. Blog posts are written by real DealDash customers. The opinions and advice here represent our customers’ views and not those of the company.