Hi all,
just a quickie to announce that I will shortly be opening a site to help spread the word about good service called www.nowthatswhatIcallservice.com or www.NTWICS.com.
It will be a place for users to swap stories of excellent customer service and thus help everyone find retailers of quality.
It won't be a site to slag off poor performers as I'm not keen on being sued for libel but it will be a resource for finding those elusive creatures we all need occaisionally, a good plumber, a reliable electrician and rarest of all a decent builder !
Once the site is built I'll let you all know and ask for some feedback but rest assured I'll carry on blogging as well.
Thursday, July 27, 2006
Monday, July 24, 2006
Refund or Replace?
Sorry it's been so long between blogs but I caught Chicken Pox and have been off for a while, however now spot free let me talk you through an experience I recently had with a tent.
Now those of you who know me personally and I guess at this point I should say Hi to Nick and Mandy who are getting married next Saturday :), will know that I am a little on the outside of enormous so squatting in a tent has never been my natural abode.
That said it's been so hot here recently that I decided to buy a 3 man tent for the garden, some time ago I bought a couple of air mattresses for when my nephews and nieces descend on me en-masse so I knew I wouldn't exactly be slumming it and I reckoned it had to be cooler in the garden than in my upstairs bedroom.
I purchased said tent from ASDA on Friday and duly set it up in the garden in 90 degree heat, it said on the packet that it would take 5 mins and as usual that's 5 mins for a team of expert tent erectors on holiday from tents-r-us, half an hour later however I did have it erected pegged down and ready for occupancy.
It was at that point I discovered that the air beds need a pump to blow up, I managed to get my mouth round the huge inlet valve, no smirking you lot, and blew them up, nearly fainted with the heat and effort but eventually I had two inflated beds in my tent.
Feeling rather pleased with myself I convinced my wife to sort out a couple of sheets and some pillows and our bedroom for the night was complete, approx 180 degrees inside but complete.
When night fell so did the temperature and eventually we spent a peaceful night asleep under the canvas.
Wow it's noisy outside !
The cats thought it was a huge toy and proceeded to jump up and down on it scaring the wife to bits, the foxes assumed it was some sort of trap and spent a good while telling each other all about it at the top of their lungs, our neighbours decided that that was the night to sit out talking till 3am and to top it all off it decided to thunderstorm on us, apart from that it was a cool and peaceful night.
The next morning I awoke with a wet foot, it's a good job the cats weren't around or we would have been playing Weeee, anyway it transpired that there was a hole in my tent dear reader, dear reader which at long last brings me to the point of the story.
I'll skip over the events of disassembling and trying to put it back in its bag, and my wife's ever so sympathetic attitude to the whole thing.
Today I took the offending tent back to ASDAs to negotiate a replacement, I walked in through the security barriers clutching my tent and my receipt straight past the non plussed security guard and headed for the Service Desk.
I queued up behind a very nice bloke who was collecting stickers for his kids presumably and was served toot suite buy a charming young lady called Marie, I explained the difficulty and she immediately offered me a refund or a replacement, no arguments, no witch hunt and with a smile.
I was surprised to say the least, I was expecting a real battle and was all ready to quote the sale of goods act 1994, essentially, the Act states that what you sell must fit its description, be fit for its purpose and be of satisfactory quality. If not the supplier is obliged to sort out the problem.
Instead of that I got a smile and a cheerful exchange of goods, why?
Well it makes excellent sense for a big retailer like ASDA to give this sort of service on many levels.
In short I've had excellent service as a method of self defence, now how clever is that?
John Anslow
http://www.ffriar.com/
Now those of you who know me personally and I guess at this point I should say Hi to Nick and Mandy who are getting married next Saturday :), will know that I am a little on the outside of enormous so squatting in a tent has never been my natural abode.
That said it's been so hot here recently that I decided to buy a 3 man tent for the garden, some time ago I bought a couple of air mattresses for when my nephews and nieces descend on me en-masse so I knew I wouldn't exactly be slumming it and I reckoned it had to be cooler in the garden than in my upstairs bedroom.
I purchased said tent from ASDA on Friday and duly set it up in the garden in 90 degree heat, it said on the packet that it would take 5 mins and as usual that's 5 mins for a team of expert tent erectors on holiday from tents-r-us, half an hour later however I did have it erected pegged down and ready for occupancy.
It was at that point I discovered that the air beds need a pump to blow up, I managed to get my mouth round the huge inlet valve, no smirking you lot, and blew them up, nearly fainted with the heat and effort but eventually I had two inflated beds in my tent.
Feeling rather pleased with myself I convinced my wife to sort out a couple of sheets and some pillows and our bedroom for the night was complete, approx 180 degrees inside but complete.
When night fell so did the temperature and eventually we spent a peaceful night asleep under the canvas.
Wow it's noisy outside !
The cats thought it was a huge toy and proceeded to jump up and down on it scaring the wife to bits, the foxes assumed it was some sort of trap and spent a good while telling each other all about it at the top of their lungs, our neighbours decided that that was the night to sit out talking till 3am and to top it all off it decided to thunderstorm on us, apart from that it was a cool and peaceful night.
The next morning I awoke with a wet foot, it's a good job the cats weren't around or we would have been playing Weeee, anyway it transpired that there was a hole in my tent dear reader, dear reader which at long last brings me to the point of the story.
I'll skip over the events of disassembling and trying to put it back in its bag, and my wife's ever so sympathetic attitude to the whole thing.
Today I took the offending tent back to ASDAs to negotiate a replacement, I walked in through the security barriers clutching my tent and my receipt straight past the non plussed security guard and headed for the Service Desk.
I queued up behind a very nice bloke who was collecting stickers for his kids presumably and was served toot suite buy a charming young lady called Marie, I explained the difficulty and she immediately offered me a refund or a replacement, no arguments, no witch hunt and with a smile.
I was surprised to say the least, I was expecting a real battle and was all ready to quote the sale of goods act 1994, essentially, the Act states that what you sell must fit its description, be fit for its purpose and be of satisfactory quality. If not the supplier is obliged to sort out the problem.
Instead of that I got a smile and a cheerful exchange of goods, why?
Well it makes excellent sense for a big retailer like ASDA to give this sort of service on many levels.
- Customers go away happy
- Less time is spent sorting issues out
- Customers who have a serious issue are more likely to let the matter drop
- companies can be fined £5000 per offence for selling out of date food for instance
- that's £5000 per item so 10 out of date items on a shelf =£50000 fine
- Companies get punitive fines for having foreign objects in things like ready meals and store cooked bread, so anything that encourages people to take a refund or replacement and let the matter drop is obviously of value.
- The marketing people can use it in their advertising
- The lawyers can use it as evidence of the company's efforts to be fair in defending cases of breach of the sale of goods act
In short I've had excellent service as a method of self defence, now how clever is that?
John Anslow
http://www.ffriar.com/
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
Self Service is No Service
Ok at long last and without making a single reference to the football I write this week on Self Service.
At my local ASDA they recently replaced 2 express tills and one low level till with 4 self service tills, a brave move I hear you say, a sad one I say.
Now the economics of self service tills are fairly easy, by losing 3 tills and replacing them with 4 self service tills they have lost two salaries at approx £5:58ph x 24hrs x 6.5 days x 2 = £1740.96 x 52 weeks = £90529.92
Ok I know that those two tills would not necessarily have been manned 24hrs 6.5 days a week 52 weeks a year but you can see how the savings add up.
It's two salaries by the way not three because you need a supervising cashier to keep these self service tills going, I'll explain why in a bit.
If you've never been through a self service till I'll give you a quick run through.
Ok 1st of all you don't know where to queue because there are 4 tills and no logical queuing lanes so you sort of mill about in the middle waiting for one to become free and hoping that the aggressive bloke at the back doesn't push in.
Eventually and I choose that word advisedly, you secure a free till and start processing your shopping, you pull a bag from the dispenser assuming there is one and hang it on the convenient arms which double as scales by the way to check that you aren't stealing.
You are faced with a touch screen which gives you clear instructions and also reads them out to you, press here to start etc.
You scan your goods slowly, after all you're not a cashier are you? and place each item into the bag on its scale arms. if you are lucky you won't have any mis-scans or reduced priced goods which require the intervention of the supervising cashier.
When you have finished scanning and bagging you feed either your money or your card into the machine and away you go.
Sounds simple huh?
Of course things are never that simple, a mis-scan or reduced item will require the attendance of the supervising cashier as will a mis-weigh lean on the arms and the scales will register a different weight than expected and pause your transaction.
Now these events are quite common as you can imagine with amateur cashiers trying to put their goods through and each event takes time to clear, have you spotted the problem yet?
1 supervising cashier, 4 tills, lots of problems means lots of frustrated customers waiting to get on one or waiting for a cashier to clear them.
Now I love progress me but I also love good service and this is not it.
Of course I can understand the fiscal imperative and I like low every day low prices like everyone else but the usual 15 minute wait at lunchtime has become a half hour drudge it won't take much more for me to vote with my feet and I've been shopping at ASDA for 15 years !
John Anslow
http://www.ffriar.com
At my local ASDA they recently replaced 2 express tills and one low level till with 4 self service tills, a brave move I hear you say, a sad one I say.
Now the economics of self service tills are fairly easy, by losing 3 tills and replacing them with 4 self service tills they have lost two salaries at approx £5:58ph x 24hrs x 6.5 days x 2 = £1740.96 x 52 weeks = £90529.92
Ok I know that those two tills would not necessarily have been manned 24hrs 6.5 days a week 52 weeks a year but you can see how the savings add up.
It's two salaries by the way not three because you need a supervising cashier to keep these self service tills going, I'll explain why in a bit.
If you've never been through a self service till I'll give you a quick run through.
Ok 1st of all you don't know where to queue because there are 4 tills and no logical queuing lanes so you sort of mill about in the middle waiting for one to become free and hoping that the aggressive bloke at the back doesn't push in.
Eventually and I choose that word advisedly, you secure a free till and start processing your shopping, you pull a bag from the dispenser assuming there is one and hang it on the convenient arms which double as scales by the way to check that you aren't stealing.
You are faced with a touch screen which gives you clear instructions and also reads them out to you, press here to start etc.
You scan your goods slowly, after all you're not a cashier are you? and place each item into the bag on its scale arms. if you are lucky you won't have any mis-scans or reduced priced goods which require the intervention of the supervising cashier.
When you have finished scanning and bagging you feed either your money or your card into the machine and away you go.
Sounds simple huh?
Of course things are never that simple, a mis-scan or reduced item will require the attendance of the supervising cashier as will a mis-weigh lean on the arms and the scales will register a different weight than expected and pause your transaction.
Now these events are quite common as you can imagine with amateur cashiers trying to put their goods through and each event takes time to clear, have you spotted the problem yet?
1 supervising cashier, 4 tills, lots of problems means lots of frustrated customers waiting to get on one or waiting for a cashier to clear them.
Now I love progress me but I also love good service and this is not it.
Of course I can understand the fiscal imperative and I like low every day low prices like everyone else but the usual 15 minute wait at lunchtime has become a half hour drudge it won't take much more for me to vote with my feet and I've been shopping at ASDA for 15 years !
John Anslow
http://www.ffriar.com
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