Well another year, another Reach Out With A Smile (ROWAS) event – where we intend to visit as many merchants as possible, and refresh the POP and Decals and give the opportunity to re-enforce our Value Prop, obtain any merchant feedback and identify any new merchant leads or issues with merchant suppression.
This year, we meat at the Mapletree Business Centre, and then we registered – mine was at the Marina Square complex, so by 1pm, I made my way there with 2 other peoples, and we blasted the mall with decals, POPs and materials etc.
After finishing, I met up with a colleague and the g/f at the Black Swan – and we enjoyed the Friday evening at this quite pleasant establishment.
Each year, the American Express Singapore team go out on a merchant event to say hello to them and thanks for accepting the card. This year, it was scheduled for Friday, 25th October and we were based at the Fullerton Hotel. This is a great way to speak to our merchant customers, something that the majority of the Amex team will unlikely do on a daily basis.
At the start of the event, there was some general quiz questions and I jumped to the chance to answer. I knew the MC that was on stage, and he knew it was my birthday, so he managed to get 400 odd Amex Singapore employees to sing Happy Birthday to me – what a nice treat 🙂
We separated into various teams, and the GNP teams were based around Orchard and Somerset. My particular location was the Concorde Hotel – I initially was given 3 sheets of merchants (about 75-80 locations), but then 2 of the sheet were taken back, so I only had 30 merchants to visit, phew!
Halloween ROWAS Special
ROWAS 2013
Aaron at ROWAS 2013
My Merchant visit list – some surprising locations
Beer and Amex – a good combination!
Another success
Some of the merchants were ‘interesting’ – especially as this place had a House of Condom and a few bars/clubs – the latter would be difficult to visit, as most would have been closed. It is strange why these are still added to the merchant list, when we can’t “see them” during the business day. Anyway, I did the majority, gave all of my gifts out and actually enjoyed the visits and speaking with the merchants.
I took special attention to visit the House of Condom location – an ‘interesting’ shop…haha! I managed to speak with the sales agent/owner, and she agreed to put an open/close sign on the door – which she kindly put up on the spot. Lovely juvly – job done! 🙂
