Sponsored by 26 CatEx DCA


Diary of events 8th May


Networking Event Meet Your Peers from Germany Newport, Wales


15th May Training Day


Complete Catalogue Design & Functionality Newport, Wales


16th May Training Day


Complete Catalogue Design & Functionality Newport, Wales


29th May Conference


Annual Summit 2012 London


12th June Training Day


Complete Customer Recruitment and Retention Teddington, Middx


21st June Training Day


Complete Catalogue Design & Functionality Southend, Essex


26th June Training Day


Ecommerce and Online Marketing Oxford


5th July Training Day Complete Web Design & Usability London


To book, or to find out more, call 08718 555 545 or visit www.catexdca.org.uk.


Meet the members: Hayloft Plants


Future looks blooming good for the Worcestershire- based plant nursery


T


customers helps reduce barriers and enables businesses to react instantly and build rapport. It doesn’t matter if that feedback is good or bad; retailers can learn from it all. Here are his top tips for getting the best out of customer reviews.


A


Interact with customers: When we all bought from shops, we could


If you’re a CatEx Associate member and have some best- practice ideas to share with our readers, we’d love to hear from you—email your top tips to jamesd@catalog-biz.com


examine the goods, try them out, ask the assistant questions. We could make suggestions, talk to the manager, and knew where to return to complain if our goods were faulty. That all vanished when we purchased online. But there is a way back. Enable customers to get in touch. Talk to them as if they were standing in front of you and make them realise that their feedback is important.


Be honest:


A rumour that spreads on Facebook or Twitter about your business cannot be stopped by legal mean—shops do not make friends by suing their customers—and any response will be


Direct Commerce | Catalogue e-business | www.catalog-biz.com


he abolition of Low Value Consignment Relief (LVCR) for goods produced in and


circular shipped via the Channel Islands as from 1st April 2012 should lead to a doubling in turnover to £5 million within the next two years,


forecasts Derek Jarman, director at Hayloft Plants. The failure of the states of Jersey and Guernsey in the recent judicial review should “put the unfair competition to bed once and for all”, Jarman went on to say. It was the increase in VAT to 20 percent on 4th


January 2011 that began to make competing against LVCR goods from the Channel Islands, of what was then £18 plus shipping, almost impossible and this single item put any expansion on hold at Hayloft Plants. Fifteen months later and the directors’ revised plans are already producing results for the Worcestershire- based plant nursery. Office space has doubled and land from a neighbouring farmer has been purchased


Making the most of reviews


ll retailers should make more of customer service reviews, says Andy Mabbutt, managing director of online feedback service Feefo. Encouraging feedback from


greeted with the thought that “they would say that, wouldn’t they...”. There is only one way to respond to this, which is to be entirely open about any genuine mistake you have made, and be prepared to take action and make amends. Then, when a false accusation is made, you can point to your record and maintain the dialogue.


Deal with it:


People are much more interested in the customer service than they are the product. Products are generally good across most of the big-name retailers but it’s the service that can be defining, especially if the product is exactly the same. A poor customer interaction may not necessarily leave someone fuming but he may not return. On the flip side, if something goes wrong and it’s corrected by great customer service then that person may return again and again. Don’t sweep bad reviews under the carpet, deal with them.


Bad reviews can be good: Most businesses are realistic enough to know an


operation will not run seamlessly all the time. But they also know that a business is measured as much by how it deals with those problems as it is by the services it provides.


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