Yesterday, I blanket dropped my old catalogues one last time into a new area. It's a typical old-fashioned council estate, derogatively referred to as "Tin City" by residents who live in much nicer parts of my town. It's also the sort of area where you spend a lot of time getting your straggler catalogues back.
Whilst putting out around 230 catalogues, I had a couple of people hand them straight back, but no mention of an existing distributor. One passer-by asked if we'd deliver in their road soon - no surprises as to what my answer was. I also came across several catalogues that had been put out on the doorstep as soon as they'd been picked up off the doormat.
All told, my rejected catalogues allowed me to add a little close of 6 houses to my blanket drop and I am so glad they did.
This morning, a new customer phoned me, placed an order for £33 as she wasn't going to be around when I was due to collect the catalogues, and wanted to know if she could keep a permanent copy as a reference for future orders! She'll be getting a pack of the new catalogues with her order this weekend.
It just goes to show that it's worth doing a quick walk along your route immediately after you've done a blanket drop in an area - that 15 minutes extra earnt me £132 per hour pro rata, just by putting out the rejected catalogues straight away.
Every day that I spend retailing with Kleeneze, I am building up a group of dedicated customers who will, in time, refer their family and friends to me. Today, I added another customer to that group and I'm delighted.
Showing posts with label Repeat Customers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Repeat Customers. Show all posts
Monday, 24 January 2011
Tuesday, 18 January 2011
How Important is Good Customer Service?
Today, I got an object lesson in how not to promote customer satisfaction.
My day job is in the IT department of a large fashion retailer in the UK. I work at the headquarters in the Midlands, with a 90 minute round-trip commute each day. One of the benefits we head office staff get is the opportunity to order products sold by our company via the company website, so that they can be delivered to our office instead of our home address. As all deliveries have to be signed for, this is a useful perk and most of the head office staff make good use of this facility.
12 days ago, I ordered a digital camera from the company website, as it was on sale and therefore cheaper than buying it from Amazon (Panasonic Lumix FP1 Digital Camera - Pink (12.1MP, 4x Optical Zoom) 2.7 inch LCD
) or Argos. I'd ordered a number of items from our ecommerce website before and had always received the goods within 2 working days. I was not expecting any problems this time either.
I was wrong.
As always, I was notified the following morning that my order was on its way and due to be delivered that day. Wonderful? Not quite. Clicking on the tracking link gave the message "Item misrouted to wrong depot". That was where my journey through a 21st Century purgatory began.
I tried to contact customer services. It took 45 minutes of being rerouted from one department to another before I was told to email my query to an anonymous internal mailbox where I was assured that they looked at those emails "at least a couple of times a day"!
The email was duly sent and I waited. For 2 days. At that point I got an email telling me that "it appears that your item has been misrouted to another depot". You really could not make this up - the best solution they could offer was for me to reorder the item "if you need it urgently" and then return the original item whenever it arrived! They advised me to wait 7 working days before I contacted the department again regarding my missing order.
I waited for a week before reordering the camera. This time, I got a tracking message saying "Order generated." For 2 days. At that point, I gave up and emailed the anonymous internal mailbox and waited. For another 2 days.
Yet again, I got told "There seems to be a delay at the warehouse with your order." You think? Yet again, I they advised me to wait a further 7 working days before contacting them again.
This time, I answered the email straight away, telling them to cancel my order and arrange a credit to my account. No doubt it will take another 2 working days before I get a response to that as well.
All of this is a timely lesson on the importance of good customer service. Just as I now won't recommend shopping for electrical items via this retailer's website, my customers won't recommend me unless I deliver when I say I will, explain clearly and politely what the situation is regarding out of stock or delayed items, etc.
I know that I am being recommended to their neighbours by some of my repeat customers. That's very important to me as it means I'm building a long-term relationship with my customers that will help me build my business on solid foundations. Just as importantly, I can teach others how to retail using the same philosophy. Poor customer service would destroy that relationship and demolish my business. It's a pity I can't get that message across to a FTSE-listed fashion retailer.
My day job is in the IT department of a large fashion retailer in the UK. I work at the headquarters in the Midlands, with a 90 minute round-trip commute each day. One of the benefits we head office staff get is the opportunity to order products sold by our company via the company website, so that they can be delivered to our office instead of our home address. As all deliveries have to be signed for, this is a useful perk and most of the head office staff make good use of this facility.
12 days ago, I ordered a digital camera from the company website, as it was on sale and therefore cheaper than buying it from Amazon (Panasonic Lumix FP1 Digital Camera - Pink (12.1MP, 4x Optical Zoom) 2.7 inch LCD
) or Argos. I'd ordered a number of items from our ecommerce website before and had always received the goods within 2 working days. I was not expecting any problems this time either.I was wrong.
As always, I was notified the following morning that my order was on its way and due to be delivered that day. Wonderful? Not quite. Clicking on the tracking link gave the message "Item misrouted to wrong depot". That was where my journey through a 21st Century purgatory began.
I tried to contact customer services. It took 45 minutes of being rerouted from one department to another before I was told to email my query to an anonymous internal mailbox where I was assured that they looked at those emails "at least a couple of times a day"!
The email was duly sent and I waited. For 2 days. At that point I got an email telling me that "it appears that your item has been misrouted to another depot". You really could not make this up - the best solution they could offer was for me to reorder the item "if you need it urgently" and then return the original item whenever it arrived! They advised me to wait 7 working days before I contacted the department again regarding my missing order.
I waited for a week before reordering the camera. This time, I got a tracking message saying "Order generated." For 2 days. At that point, I gave up and emailed the anonymous internal mailbox and waited. For another 2 days.
Yet again, I got told "There seems to be a delay at the warehouse with your order." You think? Yet again, I they advised me to wait a further 7 working days before contacting them again.
This time, I answered the email straight away, telling them to cancel my order and arrange a credit to my account. No doubt it will take another 2 working days before I get a response to that as well.
All of this is a timely lesson on the importance of good customer service. Just as I now won't recommend shopping for electrical items via this retailer's website, my customers won't recommend me unless I deliver when I say I will, explain clearly and politely what the situation is regarding out of stock or delayed items, etc.
I know that I am being recommended to their neighbours by some of my repeat customers. That's very important to me as it means I'm building a long-term relationship with my customers that will help me build my business on solid foundations. Just as importantly, I can teach others how to retail using the same philosophy. Poor customer service would destroy that relationship and demolish my business. It's a pity I can't get that message across to a FTSE-listed fashion retailer.
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