Frost free no more

By the end of the year B&Q the UK’s largest DIY retailer and patio heater sector supplier will have phased out all gas and electric patio heaters. In 2005 they sold 50,000 units, so stopping selling these heaters is going to have the effect of reducing turnover by a staggering £8m.

So why have they made this amazing decision, I hear you ask? Well, apparently it’s an environmental issue. For a long time people like Friends Of The Earth have been chastising the use of patio heaters because of the carbon they produce.

I must admit that until now I hadn’t quite realised just how much carbon they produce. A typical patio heater wastes as much energy in an hour as making 400 cups of tea, and if used fairly regularly across a year can produce as much carbon as a 4×4 doing average mileage.

I’m pretty glad that I’ve never felt the cold that much and never given into the whinges.

 

Tags: B&Q, patio heaters, carbon emissions, DIY, friends of the earth

Recycled and recyclable

I suppose as a small mail order company the company I work for uses quite a large amount of paper! We have to produce invoices, letters, catalogues and we do quarterly offers. Whilst I think everyone in the office has at least an interest in helping the environment, the suggestions we’ve been able to give our customers have been fairly limited. such as doing the usual recycling of letters and catalogues, proper disposal of our pots (due to food regulations we can’t take them back and reuse them!). Don’t forget that the best form of recycling is to pass things on to friends and family once you’ve finished with them.

Within the office we shred any unnecessary paper so we can use it as packing material, we use recyclable pots for our products and we all make a concious effort to reduce the amount of energy we use. We apply a lot of the principals I mention in my previous post about saving energy!

Well recently we’ve managed to make an amazing change to our paper source. We’ve recently been updating a small range within our normal range (Veganicity) and have had to print new catalogues, and working quite hard with our printers I am now pleased to say that our new catalogues will be printed on 55% recycled fibre, with the remainder of the fibre coming from FSC managed sources. We are now also using vegetable based inks. This makes our new catalogues more environmentally friendly as well as being completely recyclable!

The more other businesses start to use the environmental products available the more affordable they will become for everyone!

Tags: recycled, recycle, recyclable, FSC, energy saving

Customer Service – easier to get wrong than you think!

Recently our ISP at work went down for just over 30 hours, I suppose it’s inevitable when dealing with technology that at some point it will break! I won’t give the full details here as a colleague of mine has written up the whole experience on his blog. This post is more about customer service.

The customer service we received throughout this period was pretty dire. This started me thinking about how easy it is to get something that is in essence so simple, so incredibly wrong. Then yesterday when I was trying to catch up on some reading I came accross an article by Derek Williams, founder of the WOW! awards for outstanding customer service, giving ten very simple steps on how to get it right:

1. Think through the detail of every interaction that you have with your customers and how you might improve it.

2. Create little systems and processes to make things happen consistently. If it doesn’t work then try to improve it.

3. If you have people working for you, make sure that they have incentives that are in line with giving customers great service. This is so much more powerful than simply paying commission on sales.

4. Everyone needs regular training. And it doesn’t have to be expensive courses. Contact you local Chamber of Commerce or Business Link for great value-for-money programmes.

5. Communicate in words that customers will understand (or maybe even just communicate!). And remember that a chipped coffee cup might say more about you than any number of glossy brochures.

6. If something went wrong for one of your customers, would you move heaven and earth to put it right? If so, then simply guarantee what you do.

7. Always try and look at everthing your company says and does through the eyes of the customer.

8. Ask your customers for feedback at every possible opportunity – and make it easy for them to give it.

9. Create the vision of a happy customer! Set the goals, create the systems and recruit the right people to aim for keeping all of your customers happy all of the time. Aim for the stars and you might hit the sky!

10. Under-promise and over-deliver!

It seems so simple to do but so many businesses get it wrong. The other thing I would encourage people to do is complain, not ‘I wrote a letter’ type complaining, but straight forward ‘I thought you should know’ helpful constructive complaining. There are statistics available, that show if you can deal with a complaint correctly you will end up with a very loyal and reliable customer.

So, that’s it I’ve had my whinge, see you all soon.