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Customer Service from an Esso Store Manager

Posted in Entrepreneurialism on July 5th 2010 | No Comments

Bad Esso Customer Service

Esso - Home of Customer Care

To get a true feeling of the whole situation you need to first know some history, so the wife and I had just been in EuroDisney for 3 days with our our two children. The time was circa. 10:30pm and we still had over two hours left to drive from Ashford in Kent to Northampton. It had been a long few days and it still wasn’t over, so we were pretty tired and fed up. Nonetheless we needed petrol and some energy food so we stopped off at the M20 services just outside of Ashford, on route to London.

I started to fill the car up whilst my wife went in to pay, I pulled the nozzle out of the pump and the counter reset to 14p and not to zero. So I waited a moment and nothing happened, in the end deciding to place the fuel nozzel back on the pump and pull it off again. This time I setarted to fill up with petrol. After a short while my wife came out of the shop and asked what drink I wanted, so I took the opportunity to tell her about the incident with the pump and that we only need to pay for the actual fuel delivery.

Once the car was full I waited whilst the children slept in the back, and waited, and kept watching her in discussion at the till and waited some more. Eventually I saw who was clearly a manager come over from the main services, and I waited some more. In the end I thought this coudl not all be over 14p, so I went in to see what was going on. It turned out that a cashier had accidently charged someone else for our fuel and they were trying to rectify the mistake. After some 20 minutes they had that resolved and were ready to serve us, with our petrol and small banquet of food to get us through the journey home.

The Esso store manager then demonstrated his highly atuned customer service skills, in a rather sarcastic voice, “For the sake of just 14p to mind if I just charge you it?”. So I replied stating we had been standing around now for almost half an hour and have another two hours drive home, why not throw in a £7 pillow for our daughter to help her sleep on the journey home and call it quits, to which he replied “No, but I will sell you one.” “In that case no it is not alright if you overcharge me 14p for my petrol.”

To get this right, we were left waiting whilst they tried to correct a mistake they had made on another customer, and we were then asked if they could overcharge us for our petrol? If the tables were turned I would have apologised for keeping our customer waiting (lesson #1) and if it was a pain to try and amend the charge in the till for the 14p would have offered to push a couple of bars of chocolate through for free as guesture to make up for the inconvenience (lesson #2). I wouldn’t have had the audaity to ask if the customer would mind if I overcharged them, it just isn’t right!

This has to be Customer Service at it’s absolute best surely?

Young Enterprise Golf Day – June 16th 2010

Posted in Young Enterprise on April 9th 2010 | 1 Comment

  • Do you like playing Golf?
  • Would you like to play golf and help support the Entrepreneurs of tomorrow through Young Enterprise?

We are hosting a charity golf day in support of Young Enterprise at Overstone Park on the 16th June 2010 and everyone is welcome! To find out more please download the attached flyer for booking details.

Young Enterprise Golf Day 2010 Flyer

In a nutshell the cost for tea/coffee and bacon roll on arrival, followed by a full round of golf and then a buffet meal is only £32.50!

For businesses who would like some additional exposure on the day can show their support by having their branding displayed on a hole for only £40. I would say the words “Sponsor a hole” but for VAT reasons we are not allowed to sell it as sponsorship, so it is “showing your support and in return we’ll put a sign at a hole with your company details on it” ;o).

Should you have any questions either contact me, or Dawn Porch who’s details are on the flyer.

Be Proud of your Price and Service

Posted in Entrepreneurialism on April 9th 2010 | 1 Comment

As I come into work this morning I had an email reply from a proposal I’d prepared for a prospective customer of one of my businesses. The business itself isn’t important, but the prospects approach to me says a lot of things about their approach to business.

The proposal I had drafted clearly demonstrated some time savings we could give to their business, and based on some figures they had supplied me I could also demonstrate a small cost saving too. Not a lot but still a cost saving. The time savings for their business though would be potentially very significant, which to me can be worth more than money itself!

This morning I opened my email and, edited to protect the innocent, stated along the lines of “Your proposal is not viable for our business, but if you half your monthly charges and we will not pay any setup charges we’ll give it a go.”

I was rather shocked by this, even with my bias opinion and complete and utter belief in the service of my company, our solution was a no-brainer for them. Nonetheless, I feel I have something to share about this experience, and one thing that I have previous spoken about regards Getting your Prices Right.

Firstly, how does this person value their time in their business? I’ll give you two examples, the first being an employee scenario of a manager I employ had trouble delegating their work out instead holding onto everything. My response was that for as long as you don’t train someone else up to do your job I cannot promote you any higher in the organisation! What about with the business owner, if you don’t value your time and take steps to allow you to work on your business instead of in your business (same-old same-old) then you are not going anywhere and you’ll always be a lifestyle business. That is fine if that is what you want, but when the time comes to retire if your business completely relies on you then you are not getting much of a retirement fund from the sale of your business. Again, I have covered this in the past regarding Whether Your Business Needs You.

I naturally decided to decline the kind offer to supply the service for half price, because I’m proud of our service and I’m proud of our price. I have researched our competition and I know our position and share of the market. I know the SWOT of what we provide and take that into account, and so long as you know where your business stands don’t let yourself be beaten up on price. At the end of the day you need to make a profit to be in business, and you should be proud of that.

If all you have to compete on is price in your business then you potentially have a problem, don’t let yourself get into that situation.

Young Enterprise Awards are a Success

Posted in Young Enterprise on March 24th 2010 | 2 Comments

So there was I was, due to leave for the Northampton and Daventry Area Final for the Young Enterprise awards and I was probably as nervous as hell, because I felt I had a lot resting on them being a success.

Marion Gould meets The Saints

Marion Gould of YE meeting The Saints

One of the challenges we faced was that there has a been a big decline in the number of schools taking part in Young Enterprise, for reasons I think are misguided and wrong, but that’s a discussion for another post. We needed to drum up interest and excitement for the project, so I railroaded through the area board a few things that had to happen for this event.

Firstly I felt the venue needed to be exciting, so what could be more exciting for student that the home of the Northampton Saints rugby team, Franklins Gardens. More than that that, fellow board member was able to arrange for a couple of the Saints players to meet the students and chat with them, and about the students projects.

Historically the trophies had always been those tacky tin cups, I pushed the budget and insisted we use glass engraved trophies which are must more impressive for the students to look at and hold.

We needed a speaker who would engage with the students, someone who is not your normal business speaker, and for that another fellow board member arranged for Brad Burton to volunteer his time to entertain the students.

The Chief Executive of Young Enterprise East Midlands arrived to come and see what all the fuss was about, so nothing like a bit of extra pressure there.

At the last minute a judge had to pull out meaning I spent most of the night before doing last minute judging of the entrants, meaning someone else had to step into my role of MC’ing the event. It’s partly a shame that I spent almost the whole event in a back room and missed the rugby players, the newspaper reporter, the visitors, mingling with the guests, but do you know what .. the rest of our team from the area board did fantastic and this is a thank you to everyone who helped make our first awards night organised by us, the new Northampton & Daventry Area Board for Young Enterprise, a success.

In particular I’d like to thank  Julia Watson, she runs an event organising company called W17 Limited and is on the area board. She pretty much pulled everything together using her skills of event organising.

Not forgetting everyone else on the day being;

  • Peter Douglas, runs a corporate finance company called Business Finance Services and is our treasurer and arranger of getting the Saints players to attend.
  • Julia Doherty, runs a recruitment company called Ethos Recruitment and our secretary, and for arranging Brad Burton to attend.
  • Chris Conway, fellow board member from Ford Motors who was running around looking after everyone on the night!
  • Richard Mawby, our youngest board member and ex-Young Enterprise student who looked after the students on the night.

…and I’d never forget the other two judges, Julian Winch from Snap-On Tools and Julie Furnival from Northamptonshire Enterprise.

Finally, this would not have happened at all without the financial support from our supporters on the night, who were;

We were also very lucky to have the support of some photography graduates from the University of Northampton who attended to photograph the event, which coupled with having a newspaper local reporter there, other cameras flashing and one of the YE student companies being a photography company we have lots of photo’s to upload!

If you would like to be involved in Young Enterprise, whether to help financial support projects such as the Company Program or to volunteer your time as a business mentor to students please get in touch!

Why Can’t BusinessLink Keep Good Advisers?

Posted in Entrepreneurialism on March 19th 2010 | 1 Comment

This is a question that has been on my mind for a while, but I’m not alone. It’s also a different question to ask because I know a few people who work for BusinessLink and as an organisation they provide a lot of very valuable services but they fail to follow one of the most fundamental rules they preach. They don’t just stick to what they are good at, they try and do everything!

Have you ever spent time looking through the BusinessLink website? If not, do so, it contains a huge wealth of information and resources that is great for any business of any size. Whether you have questions on employment, some statutory compliance issues, how to raise finance, you name it and if it is related to running a business you’re likely to find some help on their website.

What about grants and other funding options, if you are looking for matched funding for capital expenditure or staff training, BusinessLink should be the first place to look as they usually have their finger on the pulse of what money is being handed out to help business by the Government.
That’s it guys, you should stop there! Do yourselves a favour and stick to what you are good at. Providing practical business support in the workplace is not your strong point because as an organisation you simply do not provide an attractive enough proposition to attract and keep really good business advisors. The problem is that these really good ones are either already running their own successful businesses, or have setup their own consultancy firms providing business advice after either selling their successful business or putting a management structure in to keep a residual income.

This isn’t just my opinion I’m afraid to say, it’s a common perception and it is one that BusinessLink are aware of and have tried many times to resolve without success. A conversation with a senior manager asked me what I would suggest to recruit a better calibre of advisor and I couldn’t answer the question, because I couldn’t think of one good reason why a really successful Entrepreneur would want to become employed by an organisation that is pulled from left to right by changing Government policies and budgets, which has a bad reputation for offering out of date advice, when if the Entrepreneur wanted to become a business advisor they could run their own business doing it themselves and be in control of their own destiny.

@NigelAdams on Twitter was the first one to correctly respond to my own comment asking the question whether retired business people were out of touch with business today, and the answer is no they are not. Many are I’m afraid, because the business environment today is a million miles different from what it was 20 or so years ago. In my own working live I have seen the introduction of e-mail, Internet, mobile phones and now social network marketing. A conversation I had yesterday with a very successful Entrepreneur touched the subject of my own fear of falling out of date with current business trends as I get older, and business starts to move faster than I may be able to keep up with. However, as Nigel implies, its not the age of the person but their ability to keep up with what is happening in the world and adapting with it. After all, my Nan bless her, who is in her eighties, is more than happy to be doing her banking online, sending e-cards, using intant messaging and webcams, and even Facebook!

So where does this leave BusinessLink as an entity, and the hugely discussed topic of should it stay or going being discussed on many forums and heavily on the IoD group on LinkedIn. My opinion is that they should close it down as a separate entity and consolidate it’s offering more directly into the Regional Development Agencies, producing with it many cost savings as well and a more central place offering business advice. As an onsite business advice service it fails dismally because very few, if any at all, energetic, up-to-date and motivated business advisers will want to work for an organisation they have no control over and have their goal posts moved for no logical reason by a disconnect bureaucrat in Whitehall. Retired bank managers are used to this sort of management system and fit in with it nicely, but sadly have no real world experience of running their own businesses.

Here is some related topic’s I’ve found online about this too;

http://www.businesszone.co.uk/blogs/robertcraven/robert-craven039s-business-blog/business-link-should-it-stay-or-should-it-go

http://realbusiness.co.uk/finance_and_banking/the_axe_hangs_over_business_link

http://www.shell-livewire.org/forums/showthread.php?threadid=24450

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