Meeting Your People ;)

I've been watching programmes about the Queen for her Diamond Jubilee, one of the things I've often noticed is that she always looks pleased meeting people and more so meeting members of the public than fellow dignitaries.

I just love this picture I found, via http://www.koconnellfish.com/news.

I've mentioned before that my parents were shopkeepers, whilst my mum was perfectly friendly my dad enjoyed nothing more than chatting with customers, he was friendly, nosy and cheeky all at once. He had an amazing ability to say things that would sound rude from anyone else and get a laugh. I still occasionally try it and usually end up with a dirty look! He also remembered names and if he didn't know them he'd make one up, again no one was ever bothered. My dad spent his first 8 years in the East End of London and then in Manchester and was always around market traders from being a small boy. When I say market traders, I mean the fun type that you rarely see nowadays, when I occasionally visit markets I often want to tell some of the sellers to smile a bit, they do seem lifeless places. Anyway I'd guess my dad's bonhomie (he wouldn't have known what that meant!) came from the markets and from a couple of his uncles, who were the funnest and warm people you could ever meet. Hopefully some of it rubbed off.

A lot of my trading has been online or when I had some interaction with the public I was in a role that kept me at a distance a lot of the time. There doesn't seem to be many environments now where there is a personal touch. In the massive supermarkets you will rarely see the same person checking you out, banks rarely have one manager you will see, if they ever allow you to see them, even most of our postmen (they are all men too) are lacking in any kind of interpersonal skills. The sad thing is a lot will have been trained in customer relations.

As I started writing these blogs to coincide with an attempt to add something personal to our Facebook page, I realised that this is interaction. It may be different and most of my customers are sadly nothing more than a name and address, but I can interact more if I like and if others like.

So I'll add a joke or two to the page, will gladly chat about anything you like and add a bit of fun to the proceedings, and if I try to be rude like my dad was I can just add a winky face ;) and get away with it!

Thanks for waiting

There was a recent programme on Channel 4 about how much help or not the automated world is to us. There was a focus on automated supermarket checkouts, the upshot was that they were more useless than a cashier, checkout times were slower ant that overall we don't like them. I consider myself quite intelligent, yet the amount of times a barcode has gained the upper hand on me is ludicrous. Also I recently purchased some sweet potatoes (I'm dead posh me!) and took them to an automated checkout, I had to look them up to weigh them. Obviously they'll be under s for sweet, oh no, they're under p, for potato sweet, surely it can't be beyond the remit of Sainsbury's (told you I was posh) programmers to have them under both. Other items to look up are even more difficult, I've still no idea what an apple and blackberry danish is under, I gave up and went to a human.

There seems to be a gulf between what people want and what the large retailers think we want. I personally don't want to be told "thanks for waiting", every time I shop in a certain store, if I have been waiting it often sounds insincere, especially as they say it when you get to the checkout with one item, with no one on front of you. They then make it more ludicrous when they ask if you need any help with your packing with your one item.

I can remember when staff in food stores had to remember the price of everything, those days before barcodes, I can't say this was a bygone age I remember with rose tinted specs, in fact I remember the staff being quite rude, throwing carrier bags at you (and there were always shops that charged for bags, back when only the Wombles did recycling!). Plenty of people get nostalgic for Woolworths, but in some parallel universe I'm probably still waiting to get the disc for an Oasis CD from the surly teenager that worked there.

So certain aspects of retail have changed and as I've previously mentioned customer service in internet times needs to really be stepped up, but personal customer service and not automated. Telephone support for major companies should not use numbers that most of us have to pay for, who else gets irked by having to pay to call an 0800 number on a mobile? I always use saynoto0870.com but it doesn't always come up with the goods, my last phone bill had a £1.20 charge for a 2 minute call registering a new debit card, great customer service, I didn't have any other way to register the charge, thanks bank. I've probably got a few hundred blogs on banks so I'll probably leave them there, except a new trend in banks to ask if they can "help you with anything else today?" when you have gone to a cashier, a weird attempt to be personable and friendly, as though you would have thought they could only help you with one thing if they didn't ask. Despite that though the face of banks is a whole lot friendlier than it used to be (whether they actually are is open to debate), old banks were sterile and stern looking environments.

My customer service number outside office hours gets diverted to my mobile at my expense and trust me, I'm not approaching Lord Sugar levels any time soon!

Ebay have recently stepped up their own customer service, ten years late, but they have finally learnt that employing people who answer questions is useful, and who knows, one day soon they may employ people who even give the right answers ALL the time.

Can you remember a better or worse service in days gone by?

Which automated services are better and quicker than using a human?

We've got someone in your area

No one likes cold callers, or at least I've never met anyone who does. I've learnt a way of getting some fun out of them as long as they get me at the right time. I should point out that I have added our number to never be called by cold callers but they always manage to find me.

Busby, the first cold caller

The worst are the automated ones, the most recent one asked me my name and then told me to press one if it was me, when I did the phone started to ring and then a human answered asking me my reference number, I pointed out that as they had called me I would have expected them to know the reference number, sheesh.

In the now forgotten soap Brookside there was a character who liked to wind up telesales people, putting them on hold was the main way and seeing how long they stay on the phone. I appreciate some people have a job to do but if that job involves being deceitful or trying to mislead someone into something they don't want then expect me to try and waste your time a bit.

A recent call informed me that they could save me money by having solar panels fitted on our property, the pleasant young lady informed me that they "were calling every home in the country", I asked if they would be taking on more staff as that would take them a long time, "just a minute" she replied "I'll put you on to my supervisor", I guess some questions are just too tough.

There's also a frequent caller that tells me that they would like to fit windows and doors free of charge in our property and that they have someone in our area, when I asked which area, the reply tends to be "your area", they don't actually know where I live.

I really don't understand the necessity of this type of selling, I'm not convinced it ever works, obviously they must have some success or they wouldn't keep doing it, but it seems to encourage dishonesty and even if I did want double glazing I wouldn't hang around waiting for a phone call, I'd check the companies available out and see what was on offer.

Despite having been selling stuff most of my adult life I've never really considered myself as a salesman, I prefer to let the items sell themselves, if enough people can see something and they still don't want it, I'm not going to push them into it. When I've watched the TV series The Apprentice, some of the selling techniques leave a lot to be desired, it's all about the sale, not the after sale or even the next sale, when the sale is done then they think that's it. I like to think that the sale is the beginning of a relationship, that the customer will be happy with the product (and if not be freely able to let me know and I'll sort it for them) and the price and want to buy from me again, if they don't I consider it a failure. I don't have a script to read from, I won't bend the truth and unless you show an interest in what I'm selling I won't even bother you, I doubt I'll even have anyone in your area!

I want my tweeting money back

One of the better side effects of the rise of the internet has been an increased awareness of customer service (I'm not quite sure that as a whole customer service itself has yet greatly improved).

Hoteliers have to up their customer service so their Tripadvisor ratings stay high. Zappos in the US has risen to the top simply by offering a policy where customers can try at home any shoes and return the ones they don't like free of charge. Love it or hate it one of the reasons Ebay took off so well was down to its feedback system, yet even that needed adjusting to fit with the changing demands of the consumer. Even in our supermarkets, the cashiers no longer throw carrier bags at you and leave you to get on with it, they ask you if you need any help. There are magazines that regularly survey readers and post their findings, banks, utility companies, shops, etc now know where they fit with their competitors regarding resolving problems and general customer service, the public can then decide which companies to use.

There are occasions though when no amount of phone calls, emails, letters will get you anywhere with a complaint. On a few occasions this has happened I managed to find a way of getting help and quick, via Twitter. It isn't even always the case that you have to contact the company direct, just a mention of them gets their attention. A bad word on Twitter can linger and the companies want to sort it out. The first time I did this was with a large multiple high street electrical retailer, I had a faulty item that had been exchanged three times, I was told all I could do was keep exchanging for the same product, there was no other way forward, I tried everything, even contacting Trading Standards who couldn't help, in desperation I tweeted about it, within a few minutes I had a tweet back asking for my contact details, within a few more minutes I had a call from the CEO's office offering me a choice of products in any store. The Twitter departments of  a lot of companies are quite high up in the organisation, where a phone call gets through to a low ranking member of staff, they need their Twitter to be someone well briefed. A badly answered phone call will rarely end up in the newspapers, a tweet can be viewed by millions in minutes so the top companies are keen to have a good, clean amd helpful Twitter presence.

I'm still working on my balance between Facebook and Twitter and now this blog, our Facebook page is linked to Twitter and this blog posts direct to Twitter (come on now, keep up!). I occasionally add stuff to Twitter and other stuff to Facebook, I'm working on some useful promotions and other items to make Twitter and Facebook more useful and interesting than just being adverts for stock, I like to think that I'm usually on top of customer service, so hopefully no one will be wanting to contact me on Twitter. Our phone number is on most things now too, just one word of advice, if you do have a problem and call, stop speaking long enough for me to get a word in, especially if I'm not the seller you wanted after all!

What did we do to charity shops?

The dwindling high streets I spoke of a few days ago seem to have benefitted charity shops as more and more seem to be appearing, especially in small towns and villages, some have moved into high streets and even occupy former Woolworths stores. An increasing professionalism seems like it may not be as good for them as they would like.

I must confess to never having been a big frequenter of charity shops. If it's a good cause I will wander in and have a look around every now and then. It's nice to buy a unique gift for someone special and believe you're doing some good at the same time.

In the early days of Ebay there were people boasting of how they had been buying up items in charity shops and reselling for massive profits, I'm all in favour of free enterprise but often felt that this was a step too far.

It seemed to become self regulating as the charities began to check more of what they have and some even started to employ people to check items and list the more valuable ones directly on Ebay, so appeared stories of charity shops selling items for thousands on Ebay when they would have previously just sold for pennies.

Having visited a few charity shops lately it seems they are now on the other side, with no bargains at all, one I recently went in didn't have anything priced under £3 when some of the items wouldn't sell for 10p on Ebay or a car boot sale. I actually suggested to my wife that it would make a good bargain hunt type programme to try and find something you could buy that could be sold for a profit, such was the steepness of prices.

Don't get me wrong I want the charity shops to take as much as possible, but it seems they are over pricing to the extent that they will lose customers. People like to help charities but they also like a bargain too, so be commercial but be aware of commercial limitations. Some help from high street gurus might help with their pricing, future plans and prosperity. Perhaps they could consult Sir Stuart Rose, retired supremo of M&S or even Mr. Fred Goodwin, see if he can't get his knighthood back by helping charities work to capitalise on their new found capitalism.

People are really quite nice

Pierre Omidyar who founded Ebay believed (and am sure still does) that people are honest and trustworthy.

Pierre Omidyar

Sadly we read more and more of those who aren't, stories of nice people don't sell newspapers or fill tv and radio airtime. We all encounter the odd nasty person, but they are in the minority. I don't get mugged every time I go out, people don't spit at me or shout at me, they smile, ask me how I am, some people I meet even tell me they'll "see me later", I do worry sometimes that these poor souls who I briefly met at a checkout in some shop spend their evenings hunting me down just so they can be true to their word.

It may not be a fashionable thing to say but people are nice, my customers are nice, I like to be nice.
Yesterday two customers paid me extra, one said I had undercharged postage and sent more, the other gave me extra when I agreed to drop off a parcel at their local address. Both of these took me by surprise, it was unexpected and not something that happens every day, two actions that made me stop and look at what I take for granted every day.

Every day grateful and nice people say nice things about me via Feedback, currently 99.9% appreciate me, that 0.1% tends to bother me in a much bigger ratio than the 99.9% pleases me. I really don't like getting things wrong, I like it less when people think I've wronged them.

That's probably the problem with the human race, we magnify the negative and minimise the positive. Pierre Omidyar was right, people are basically good, yet Ebay has had to spend more of its time focusing on the negative aspects, there will always be a negative, I often wish we let the power of the positive diminish it to the tiny part it is and keep making it smaller.

So thank you for being nice, I'll see you later.

The UK's closing high streets

Earlier this week I was feeling a little guilty, probably not for the reasons that many men of my age have. I heard a news story about the changing face of the high streets in towns and cities across the UK and that the worst was Stockport town centre.

Stockport town centre is almost a third unoccupied. So why do I feel guilty? Well for over 20 years my parents were shopkeepers, they had various shops with varying degrees of success, the shops were petering out as they were retiring, the final one closed in about 2000. So I do wonder if I should be fulfilling my destiny as a shopkeeper rather than relying on internet sales.

The world has changed radically in the last ten years, the internet is mostly responsible for that, I don't think that that is the main reason for high streets failing though, so I absolve my guilt and do so for several reasons.

The first is that I and many other people still shop in the real world, I go in big shops, little shops, multi nationals and family run stores, I always will, I like to see things, touch things, find something I didn't know I wanted, I can do most of that on the internet too, but there are glaring differences.

The second is that high streets are suffering in a recession yet the councils and property owners are increasing rates (or whatever they feel like calling it) and rent without giving anything back, if your expenses are £1000 per week before you've switched on a light or employed a member of staff then many businesses will struggle. Councils and landlords rarely offer incentives and when they do they aren't always good enough. The councils should be twisting the arm of landlords to rent out their properties and in turn the landlords should be persuading the councils that the only way they will be able to do so is if the councils help them out. New businesses should be encouraged to start on local markets and then encouraged to move up to a shop if/when they can. The more the councils enforce and increase rates then the more businesses will close down and the less the councils will get in revenue. Sadly councils aren't run like businesses, they're run by elected representatives and civil servants who have little or no experience in running a business and what that entails.Governments and councils can do so much to encourage businesses and so much that would actually earn them money rather than cost it.

Thirdly (and this is my business blog!) I do sell to small businesses and hopefully offer them a chance to buy well priced wholesale stock without massive outlay, I know that some are on high streets around the country, so I'm not all bad!

I also sell retail items to people who can't get to the high street, be they in remote parts of the country or house bound. It is often overlooked, and occasionally by me, that many people aren't as fortunate as some of us in being able to get to the high street, the internet has opened up (literally) a whole new world, where they can buy what they like, when they like, so much better than relying on one local shop or the help of friends and relatives.

So for now I'll be selling online and only online but if any councils or shop owners want to tempt me, I'm easily bought!