Written by hubspot

This is a guest post written by Samir Soriano, the director of marketing at ReTargeter who enjoys helping, learning, and doing.

Great customer service has your order ready for you when you walk in, greets you by your first name, and gives you a friendly smile when you leave. It makes previous, current, and potential customers feel good when they think about you. Unfortunately, the personal interaction necessary for great customer service is severely limited to ecommerce and web-based businesses that continue to grow. But although the web makes customer service harder to focus on, this doesn’t mean you should abandon it! The following five tactics will help you take your customer service, and your entire business, to the next level.

To understand why you should focus on customer service, it’s important to first understand its 3 key benefits. These benefits will effectively help your business achieve its marketing, customer volume, and revenue goals you’ve set:

3 Key Benefits of Great Customer Service

1. Earned Media: Providing a good customer experience will give you some presentable and potentially press-worthy testimonials. Step this up a notch! Providing a great customer experience will also give you press-worthy testimonials from respected people, unsolicited praise from people’s personal blogs and presentations, and inbound links.

2. Customer Retention: In the world of business, customers are kings and queens, and they should be treated accordingly. As a business, your customers are your most valuable assets. They are the ones taking a risk on your product or service, and they are the ones driving your revenue numbers. Focusing on customer service can greatly increase your resell, cross-sell, and up-sell opportunities. In fact, the Harvard Business Review even found that “when MBNA America, a Delaware-based credit card company, cut its 10% defection rate in half, profits rose a whopping 125%.”

3. Referral Business: When customers are publicly praising you and sticking around for a while, everyone in their network will start to notice you as well. This gives you the opportunity to earn new business from your current customers’ networks. The beauty here is that when you continue to deliver solid customer experiences, your entire customer base’s network will grow with it, driving potentially exponential customer growth to your business.

As every successful business person knows, theory is great, but action is better. Here are 5 tactical ways to improve your brand’s customer service…

5 Ways to Improve Customer Service

1. Open additional lines of communication to make you easily accessible.

Far too often, people become frustrated with their vendors due to a lack of communication channels. Email’s just one channel, but some people are more comfortable talking on the phone or through social channels.

A simple and easy way to start focusing on customer service is by opening additional lines of communication with your audience. This can be as simple as adding your phone number and address to your website or mentioning your Twitter username in your email signature. But more importantly, there should be a human at the end of each of these channels. Unanswered tweets and voicemails are not a good way to maintain your customers’ happiness. Providing high-touch, human-based contact options to all of your customers is just good customer service.

2. Nurture your audience to push helpful content directly to your leads and customers.

Sometimes, customers don’t want to talk to anyone at all – instead, they’d rather figure out how to use your platform or product by themselves. Google AdWords bets heavily on this, as they provide a ton of helpful content waiting for customers to find all by themselves. Here are some additional ways to push content directly to your audience:

• Nurture Drip/Flow Campaigns: With a good lead nurturing platform, you’re able to send emails to your prospects based on the actions they’ve taken on your site. Do you have a prospect spending more time than usual on your product’s pricing page? A lead nurturing platform can send an automated note to this person, offering your help or sending them more product-specific content.
• Retargeting: This technology, also known as remarketing, serves ads to everyone who leaves your website without converting. Incorporating this into a customer service initiative works by modifying your ad’s messaging to promote your latest piece of helpful content or more insight into a product or element on your website that your prospects may have bounced from.
• Newsletters/Content: Like AdWords does, having helpful content available for your customers is a good customer service tactic. But there are more ways to make your content available above and beyond lead nurturing and retargeting campaigns. Creating readily available whitepapers, having content newsletters, and making informational webinars available to your audience can further help you distribute your content to the right people.

3. Send handwritten notes to make you stand out to your customers.

Technology is constantly making improvements to the way people can communicate. From mail to fax machines, email to Twitter, communication is essential to any business’ survival. But with all of these communication channels open, it’s becoming increasingly harder to convey the impact you’d like to deliver. A handwritten note helps with this.

When was the last time you received a handwritten note? If you received a letter from a handwritten envelope, wouldn’t you open it? Handwritten letters work because they’re used much less today than ever before. Additionally, they let the recipient know that you care. I personally use handwritten notes to thank every single person who has provided any amount of help to me. I also don’t receive too many of them myself, but LinkedIn recently sent me one, and I was sure to open and read it.

4. Leave thankful voicemails as a quick way to let your customers know you care.

When you’re building a business, you tend to become way too busy for your own good. Handwritten notes seem like a good idea, but they can take a bit of time to write, and you can easily forget to write them. This is where the voicemail comes in handy. Like handwritten notes, most people check all of their voicemail, and leaving a quick voicemail just to thank someone is often appreciated.

Here’s a framework for a quick (fewer than 20 seconds) voicemail:

“Hi [name]. This is [my name] over at [my company]. I was just thinking about all of the great people I get to work with, and I wanted to thank you for all of your help. Don’t ever hesitate to reach out to me if I can ever be helpful to you.”

This is something I should do a bit more of. I’ll go leave a few right now, and you should too.

5. Refer complementary products to display your expertise and keep you top of mind.

As much as you’d like it to, your business sometimes won’t be able to provide all of the industry services needed to make it all-inclusive. With that said, sometimes your product isn’t the perfect fit for your prospects or customers, which can leave you in a hairy situation. If you know of another service that may be a better fit or can complement the products/services you provide, you’re better off referring these customers to it, even if the company is a competitor.

While it may sound crazy to give your competitors new business, the individuals you referred to them will remember what you did, and when someone in their network who is a good fit is looking for a service similar to yours, they’ll be more inclined to refer that person to you. Additionally, it’s always good to keep communication lines open with a prospect that you referred to a competitor. You’re the industry expert, so providing your additional expertise to a competitor’s customer could very much help you in the long run.

Businesses should be built around customer experience. But it’s easy to forget its importance as you build your brand’s web presence. These five tactics will help improve your customer experience and build a business generation engine around customer service.

Have you tried any of these tactics? How have they worked? What have you done to improve your customers’ experience?

Image Credit: D. Sharon Pruitt

Bonus: Tall, skinny people will understand!

Bonus: The Ultimate Trick

 

Bonus: AAAGGGHHH! F*CK THIS WHALE SH*T!

Written by Anna Brones

COLUMN20 unusual ways to use honey, from food to facials.

It was brought to my attention last week that September is in fact National Honey Month. Honey gets an entire month all to itself? Why yes, it certainly does.

Turns out that Americans consume 1.5 pounds of honey per person annually, and there are more than 300 types of honey in the United States alone. That’s impressive, and we figured that if honey gets to be honored all month long, the least we could do is give you 20 different uses for it. Enjoy!

1. Put it on your lips

Did you know that making your own lip balm is as easy as tracking down some almond oil, beeswax and honey? Sure is. Makes you feel a little guilty about that $10 version you picked up at the health food store yesterday, doesn’t it?

2. Make your own honey moisturizer

If you’ve got a handful of sweet smelling herbs – think lavender – laying around and ready to be used, why not use them for your own homemade honey lotion? Warm honey over a saucepan until it gets to a liquid consistency. Pour honey over herbs and cap tightly; the ratio you want to use is 1 tablespoon of herbs per 8 ounces of honey. Let sit for a week and then mix 1 teaspoon of liquid into an 8 ounce bottle of unscented lotion.

3. Eat it with goat cheese

In need of a classy hors d’oeuvre but lacking in the time department? Try this: put a round of goat cheese in a ramekin, sprinkle honey and chopped walnuts on top and place in oven at 350F until honey and cheese are both soft. Serve with baguette or crackers and you’ll be the life of the party.

4. Prepare for the end of the world

You never know what’s going to happen, so stock it. Now.

5. Drink it

We all know a drop of honey in tea is good for a sore throat, but you can add it to most drinks for an extra energy boost. And simply because it’s a whole lot better than tossing in a few Sweet ‘N Lows.

6. Make a salad

One of my favorite and easiest fruit salads uses just a touch of honey to enhance the sugars in the fruit, and it’s a perfect late summer dessert.

• 1 cantaloupe, chopped
• 3 nectarines, chopped
• 4 tablespoons chopped basil
• 2 tablespoons honey

Mix together and enjoy!

7. Give yourself a facial

Honey is a natural humectant with antimicrobial properties, which means your skin will be happy when you give it some sweet honey love. Try abasic honey wash by mixing a dollop of honey and two tablespoons of warm water and massaging the mixture into your skin. Or you can go all out and try the Cucumber Honey Facial.

8. Go the extra mile

Forget energy bars and shots, just pop a tablespoon of honey before your next workout. Seriously, it has been proven to boost athletic performance.

9. Remove parasites

Got a post-Southeast Asia backpacking trip bug that just won’t leave you alone? Mix up a good blend of honey, water and vinegar and you’ll quickly be on your way to being parasite free.

10. Clean your cuts and scrapes

Honey can actually be used as an antiseptic, like a natural Neosporin. Because of its many antimicrobial properties, it can be used to treat wounds and even burns.

11. Get rid of your hangover

Forget a morning of popping ibuprofen, spread some honey on your toast or add some to your tea. Because honey is loaded with fructose, it will help speed up the metabolism of alcohol.

12. Clear up your dry elbows

Nothing’s worse than scratchy elbows (no really) so next time, after you’ve washed and scrubbed, rub some honey on to soften the skin. Leave on for 30 minutes then wash off.

13. Soften your skin

Honey is an excellent exfoliant. You can pair it with ground almonds and lemon juice for a killer homemade facial scrub.

14. Mix a drink

After you’ve been busy reaping all the health benefits that honey has to offer, it’s time to celebrate, and what better way than with a good ole cocktail. Honey Gin Cocktail? Bring it.

15. Eat the honeycomb. No really, just do it.

Yes, it can be done! One of our fave food bloggers Clotilde Dusoulier, of Chocolate & Zucchini, put the ingredient to her readers and got some fun responses. The best sounding one? Mix it with crunchy peanut butter on toast.

16. Get an energy boost

Feeling a tad lethargic? Skip the coffee and go for the honey instead. Mix a tablespoon into a cup of tea and you’ll be feeling better in no time.

17. Beautify your hair

In the shower, after you wash your, coat the ends with a bit of honey. Let it sit for a few minutes before rinsing out and you’ll find that your hair is less frizzy and extra conditioned. Or make your hair shiny and bright by adding one teaspoon honey to one quart of water, and after washing your hair, pouring the mixture over your head. Let dry and enjoy your new-found shiny do.

18. Preserve fruit

Jam is so five years ago; show you’re truly cutting edge by preserving your fruits in a honey sauce. All it takes is one part honey to ten parts water and then covering your berries. Pretty much the closest you’re ever going to get to bottling up a little bit of summer.

19. Relax in the tub

Add a few tablespoons of honey to your bath, for sweeter smelling, softer feeling water. Pure bliss.

20. Lose weight

Well, what were you expecting? With a list this long it had to be pretty apparent that honey is in fact a wonder food, and as it turns out, you can even make it part of your next weight loss plan. Honey is an excellent substitute for sugar and it also helps speed up metabolism. Just remember: all things in moderation.

Bonus: I must find this place and replace that lightbulb.

Collected from AskReddit

• Coffee grounds are magic. They are a great fertilizer, and a systemic pesticide that is non-toxic to humans and pets. Let them cool and sprinkle around your plants and windows. If you need to do a big fertilizing job in the spring, call your local Starbucks and offer to take their grounds away for a day or two.
• If the air quality in your house sucks, you may need to run the AC less and open the windows more. Most homes with central AC have a “split system.” This cools or heats the air, but does not bring in fresh air. It just recirculates the air in your house at a different temperature.
• Keep a small Tupperware container filled with your interior paint color. That way when you need to do periodic touch ups, you can just pull it out, stir with a brush, and fix them. Breaking out the 5-gallon bucket is usually a production.

Chemist and homeowner here:

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White vinegar is a good substitute for many household cleaners (so called ‘General Purpose Cleaners’). Buy a cheap spray bottle and fill it with vinegar undiluted. It is perfect for quick clean ups around the kitchen and bathroom as it is both a disinfectant AND completely volatile (it will smell for a while but evaporate to leave no residues). It is also good at cleaning glass and hundreds of other things if you google it. It is surprisingly good at repelling pests (flies, cockroaches etc) as they seem to be very sensitive to it. Spray some vinegar into your kitchen bin(s) before you put the bin liner in it. It costs about $1/liter ! It is perfectly safe around young children.

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To clean drain pipes of smells and blockages:

(Don’t try these if you have a septic tank system!)

• To keep drains unblocked in the long run: Buy some sodium hydroxide, lye, (in bulk – say 2 or 3 kg size – it’s cheaper) at hardware stores. Use a tablespoon full each week in your drains/sinks around the house. Rinse with cold water. This should prevent all future blockages unless you are putting some crazy shit down your drains. It will also dissolve hair in your shower drain (however for a quick fix, the sulfuric acid based drain ‘unblockers’ are even better at this).
• To remove smells from drains/sinks, first put hot water down the drain. Then, add concentrated (‘premium’) chlorine bleach carefully so that it pours into all sides of the pipe. Cover/plug and then leave for 1 hour. Rinse with hot water. Repeat until the problem goes away (it will!).

Special note to the environmentally concerned among us: Chlorine bleach and even sulfuric acid are perfectly accommodated by any modern municipal waste water treatment plant and do not directly affect the environment. A very big exception is if you have drains which flow directly to a creek or river etc, such as water runoff drains from your roof…

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Your grandma probably used bi-carb soda (sodium bicarbonate, sodium hydrogen carbonate, many other names) around the place. It is very cheap and ‘eats’ odors. Like the odors in your filthy fridge.

Also, put some in your washing machine, with your filthy shoes, you filthy individual!

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Hydrogen peroxide (sold often at pharmacies, but becoming harder to find?) is another multi-use substance. It has medical uses (cleaning cuts/scrapes), cleaning uses (removing strong stains), and even plant-growing uses. Learn its many uses and keep a small bottle in the fridge (it will last longer) for the right occasion. 5 to 10% concentration is usually sold. It eventually breaks down into water and oxygen gas.

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The cheapest dishwashing detergent is as good as the most expensive. Antibacterial varieties seem trivial since most bacteria can’t withstand being hit with surfactants, which is essentially all that any detergent is.

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Got mold? It’s hard to get rid of. (i.e, the following is a summary of a recent nightmare I’ve endured). It can take weeks to remove all visible mold and prevent it from coming back. First, solve the moisture problem; open windows more, install dehumidifiers or run aircon often, check plumbing / seals for leaks, check for entering rain water etc. Get a cheap temperature/humidity meter or two and place them around your house. I got two that are solar powered (they run off indoor lights) for $15/ea at a hardware store. The relative humidity should be <55% for as much of the time as possible but preferably lower. Then, clean away the visible mold with a HEPA filtered vacuum cleaner (on rough surfaces), or clean with chlorine bleach (hard surfaces, tiles etc) but this won’t KILL the mold spores. Now, kill the mold spores which are remaining by buying some distilled (‘pure’) clove oil from ebay or a health store. Put about 1/2 tablespoon of the oil into about half a cup of methylated spirits (or denatured spirits, different named in different places around the world) and stir. Dilute this to 1 liter with water and then wipe the moldy surface: WORKS AMAZING FOR MOLDY SHOWERS. Clove oil is an incredible thing! Lastly, some things are essentially ruined by mold in most cases and cannot be treated; leather and carpets are two examples. Throw them out.

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Know what you are buying: Learning about the substances in your cleaners can let you compare brands and prices and save you money in the long run.

A simple example: Laundry soaker. If you are just cleaning whites, there is very little difference between what’s in brands that cost $20/kg and the cheapest at about $5/kg. (It’s more complicated if you are washing colors.) They’re all based on sodium percarbonate – which breaks down in water and especially HOT water to give hydrogen peroxide – aka ‘oxygen bleach’. This substance is a bit like vinegar in that you will find many websites advocating its use for many cleaning tasks around the home, however, I find it’s a pain in the ass because if you get any on your clothes they will be ruined (bleached). I suppose it is exceptionally environmentally friendly since it breaks down to give oxygen gas and water. The other components in laundry soaker are less important.

While we’re roughly on the topic of washing machines: front loaders don’t really require much washing powder (I’m not necessarily referring to soaking powder anymore) at all. The bulk of the powder consists of Zeolite A which mostly just changes the water hardness. Most people don’t have a water hardness problem and so don’t need to use much laundry powder. Random fact: The most common repair done on modern washing machines is replacing the control circuit boards. People use far too much washing powder – or the wrong type – causing bubbles to fill the entire machine and damage the board.

Furthermore, unless you are cleaning stains and seriously soiled clothing, you don’t need to wash on the longest wash cycles your machine has. For day to day clothes washing, even the 30 minute setting on a front loader is sufficient, and your clothes will last longer before they start to pill and fade. You’ll have saved both water and power too.

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These static dusters (and all the similar products from various brands) make dusting 10,000,000x easier and despite being ‘disposable’ you can just wash them in your washing machine on the fastest cycle and then put them in a tumble dryer on low heat, they come out brand new and seemingly last forever.

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Titanium razor blades also last seemingly forever without becoming blunt or causing irritation. But others on reddit will recommend double-edged safety razors. Sadly I’m not that fancy.

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Buy a Kill-o-watt or similar electricity metering device that can measure power consumption of appliances, they’re about $30 or less. Learn what appliances use how much power, work out running costs, yearly costs etc. If you put some effort in, you can save alot of money by changing your habits. You can take it to another level by installing a power meter that is fitted to the mains wiring to your property which can measure your overall power consumption. 487 watts as I type this.

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A $5 portable AM radio can easily find devices causing interference with your wifi in your home. For example, I had a faulty or poorly designed AC power pack that was causing so much EMI that it was disconnecting my ADSL modem some 2 meters away and causing wifi dropouts. Easily found with the AM radio and resolved by moving that equipment to another room.

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Depending on where you live, you can buy brands of CFL light bulbs that come with warranties (not ‘guarantees’ – which are different and usually not binding). Look for the ones which have 2 or 3 year warranties. Keep the receipt and and packaging, so that when they burn out in <3 years you can return them to the seller or the manufacturer for new ones. Endless free light bulbs!

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Allergic to dust mites? After years of suffering I solved my allergy problem by: removing carpets and getting tiles layed, using a foam pillow instead of down/feather, allergen and water proof mattress protector, microfiber quilt (cheap, replaceable, harder for mites to live in), washing bedding and towels at 95 degrees Celsius with about 1 milliliter (or about 1/2 table spoon) of eucalyptus oil in the wash (kills mites very effectively).

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If you own a car or a property and you don’t have a high pressure cleaner then you are doing it wrong. Even a cheap (<$150) pressure cleaner will make your life so much easier and your car so much shinier. (As pointed out in the comments below, be careful with your cars paint and spraying too close. My pressure cleaner has a car cleaning attachment nozzle thing.

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Home organization / space saving:

• If you haven’t used it in 2 years, throw it out. If you haven’t worn it in the last 4 seasons, throw it out or donate it to charity. To arrange your clothes by how they are used in your wardrobe, always put things into the wardrobe hanging them on the same side (left or right). The clothes that accumulate on the opposite side after 1 year are the things you dont wear and can be thrown out or donated to charity.
• No space? Small unit? Think vertically! I spent ~$2000 at Ikea and have about 4x the volume of ‘stuff’ which some of my friends have, yet my stuff occupies a quarter of the overall floorspace.
• If you read reddit long enough, you will see the “throw out all your socks – buy all identical pairs” thing. This changed my life and cannot recommend it enough!
• For the love of science, don’t buy anything made out of chipboard that is going to be used near water (kitchens, bathrooms): it will probably not last 10 years.
• (more to come later?)

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Heating and cooling tips (may not be applicable to you, I live in a subtropical region, 5 deg C min in winter, typically up to 35 deg C days in summer):

• Insulation is a really good investment for your short term comfort but more importantly your long term finances
• Heaters which directly heat air are relatively expensive to run and often not much more effective than if you just put on more clothes. If you are just heating a small area, for example your couch or study desk area, then radiant heaters with quartz halogen bulbs are a far cheaper and more effective option.
• If you want to heat the air in winter, use a reverse cycle air conditioner. Because air conditioners are heat pumps, their overall efficiency is far greater than conventional heaters which directly heat the air using hot elements (oil heaters, fan heaters, etc).
• For cooling, steer away from portable air conditioners. They are very inefficient by design unless they have BOTH a pipe for venting hot air and a pipe for bringing inside cooler air. Basically, the single vent designs are very inefficient because they create a negative pressure inside the home causing hot outside air to flow into the house nullifying the cooling effect of the machine.
• Depending on your climate, solar hot water is a really good option and pays for itself quite quickly. Solar photovoltaics is good in the very long run (10 years+) if you can afford the initial outlay.
• Saving energy by turning off standby devices is bullshit for most people most of the time. You are far more likely to save money from changing the way you heat/cool your rooms, the way you heat your hot water, and by changing the way and how often you use your larger appliances – and if you are like me – your computers.
• Random:? I saved what I have estimated to be at least $100/year in electricity by removing the metal plate covering the compressor and heatsink at the back of my new-ish (5 year old) LG fridge and cleaning dust from the heatsink.. The compressor now runs less. Most people never consider this. Not recommended if your fridge is under warranty. This could apply to apply to the heatsinks on your air-conditioners too.

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Finances and assets:

• Review your insurance coverage every year. Over-insure the value of your contents. Create a inventory of all your possessions with photos and/or video in detail, for the events of fire and theft. Store the inventory either online or at a family/friends place. Engrave your expensive possessions.
• Keep all receipts especially for electronic devices. Make a photocopy of the receipt since they often fade BEFORE the item’s warranty expires.
• Store important documents in a fireproof and waterproof safe or portable safe. There are good portable types available for <$200 and are a good investment. Keep in it: your most important financial documents, receipts, insurance inventories, and storage devices with full backups of all your computer data.
• Check the following at least once a year for cheaper deals with other companies: Car insurance (especially young drivers, where premiums rapidly change price with increasing age), house/contents insurance, health insurance, phone/internet/electricity/gas/etc suppliers, and anyone you have a debt with.
• If you own a car or a house or have lots of cash, don’t be a douch, and get a legal will. In most countries it’s an uphill or simply impossible battle for your family members to get possession of your assets if you die and you don’t have any will. This applies to EVERYONE not just the old and frail. If your family members are just generally hopeless, then send them a document stating where your will is kept, eg by XYZ solicitors. If you just tell them in conversation they will probably not remember and finalizing your estate/assets could be slowed.* This depends somewhat on your country too.

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Other:

• Get a Residual Current Device (RCD) installed if you don’t have one. Sometimes called an Earth Leakage Detector, or similar. While in most countries they are required by law in new buildings, in many older homes they are still not common. Mine possibly saved my life once when I was being impatient plugging an appliance into a powerstrip.
• Test your RCD every 6 months. It could save your life when you least expect it, as long as it is in working order. Very strongly recommended if you have children.
• As above, but for smoke detectors.

I have more and will type them as I think of them.

 

After putting a sheet set through the laundry, store the sheets (and one pillowcase) inside the other pillowcase. You’ll never search for the matching sheet/pillowcase again.

Wash just after you finish cooking, because you are really hungry for the food you just cooked you blast through those pots and pans like a madman.Also if you live with others don’t leave stuff in the sink, it means they have to move it to wash their stuff, increasing the chance they say ‘fuck it’ and don’t wash their stuff either.

Above All, Hire a maid.Never worry about any of this shit ever again.

Bonus: So I heard you guys like awkward family photos and pictures of pets… Well, check this out.

Collected by regretfulmorning

 

 

Bonus: What soldiers really do, not all of us pose with dead bodies, eat babies, and r*pe women

Local child

Spending some time with the local children at a humanitarian aid drop

Shoe day

Giving the local children new shoes.

Range day

Weapons training

First aid

Basic first aid training

Room clearing

Training to prevent fratricide when clearing a room

Sunset

Shoe day

more pictures from shoe day

Porkchop

This was after the first real meal she has eaten

Sunset

Local Child

another picture from shoe day

Puppies

Some puppies from our FOB

Porkchop

This is porkchop, she was underweight and had some bad cuts on her head, I stitched her up and we fed her to a healthy weight.

Feast

A local Afghan colonel gave us a feast for saving him and some of his soldiers

Shoe day

Watch on Youtube

After the jump is a startling infograph about the dangers associated with hospital stay. Hospitals improve far, far more lives than they harm, of course, and every system has its flaws, but the following stats are cause for concern:

Number of hospital-acquired infections that lead to death:
Europe: 1 in 122
United States: 1 in 7

Lopsided numbers like those lead to the US ranking last out of 19 developed countries in preventable deaths in hospitals. Here is the full ream of stats:

Created by: Medical Billing and Coding

Bonus: Mom Fixes the Printer