Karina Biruykova, NC Pharm: «Always smile when you are talking on the phone»

Karina Biruykova, personal assistant in NC Pharm, is speaking about the advantages of working with AMEX, good mood chain reaction and the benefits of not just a good, but a warm attitude.

I do not use social networks in my work. I prefer working with several suppliers directly. I book tickets through them, because there is an opportunity to book different variants for one person and to keep this order quite long. In this case all airlines have their own policy. But usually business rates, and notably the most expensive of them (class J by Aeroflot) may have the status «booked» (that is not «issued») including the date of departure. This is confirmed by the client’s gold card and a large flying time.

I book the rest, i.e. hotels, transfers, concerts, yachts, business aviation myself or with the help of AMEX, because when you are their client, you may enjoy various benefits. But the main thing is, and it is no secret, that many events are planned literally in a few days. It is next to impossible to buy tickets to the Vienna Opera, La Scala, or the Vienna Ball one day before the event unless you are almost weeping when you call the ticket office and say that your career of a personal assistant is now hanging by a thread and your fate is literally in the booking manager’s hands. The situation is funny at first sight, but actually situations like that happen quite frequently. So in such cases AMEХ and hotel concierge services are almost irreplaceable. But I should note, that AMEX failed to solve the problem several times and I had to settle everything myself.

If you are lucky enough to meet an intelligent, a competent, and a cheerful concierge service manager, it’s as good as done. I have made friends with some of them and we write to each other in off- hours, which is pleasant, of course.

I have one more piece of advice for all personal assistants and those who have similar job duties — be not only polite, but smile when you are speaking on the phone, and especially when you ask someone to meet a person, to find a better car, to arrange an entertainment program for your director in another country.

Those on the line can hear very well that you are speaking and smiling. There is a chain reaction: your good mood is as contagious as the bad one! And if you bring in the big guns and say that the person you are talking to has a pleasant voice, it will be the first step towards an absolute victory.

Do not take everything for granted, even if your company pays for the services, because the main thing is the attitude, and you can not buy it. And let Antoine de Saint-Exup?ry`s words be always with you: «The greatest luxury in the world is the luxury of human communication».

You can save a considerable amount of your main resource, time, is you find two or three professional travel service providers without using social networks.