MERCHANT FOCUS: CMO STORES


Customer service is the bedrock on which the merchant industry is built and there are more ways than the traditional to deliver it as BMJ finds out.


ARE I


BEING SERVED?


YOU


f you offer the right service, the right products and the right attitude and you invest in all of those properly, you can bring something new to the market. That’s according to Sue Packer, the new managing director of CMOStores.com – the operating title of Construction Materials Online. Part of the Key Capital Partners (KCP) investment portfolio, the online builders’ merchant, has been one of the industry disruptors over the past few years. However, Packer believes that there is a place in the market for all kinds of channels and that a purely online offer is just one way for suppliers to reach customers and for customers to access products.


The umbrella brand – CMOStores.com covers roofingsuperstore.co.uk – where the company started, before adding drainagesuperstore.co.uk, insulationsuperstore. co.uk, doorsuperstore.co.uk and


tileandfloorsuperstore.co.uk and CMOTrade,co. uk as the need for those separate brands became apparent. “There has been a steady move over the past few years for customers to source more and more of their building materials online,” Packer says. “The Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown has accelerated this, but it was a trend that we were already taking advantage of.”


Much like more traditional bricks and mortar merchants, Packer believes that CMOStores. com customers want to deal with people. “Our


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customers are no different from any other merchant’s customers. They want to deal with someone who really wants to help them with their project. They want to feel as though their business really matters to the person they are dealing with, whether that be in person or, in our case, on the end of the telephone or a webchat bubble. Customer service is really what we are emphasising. We encourage our call centre staff to really care about their customer’s purchase.”


Online entry


The customer journey usually begins with the website, Packer admits, it’s how the customers find the company, but it’s what happens to them after that that makes the difference, she says. “We have an incredibly talented team of developers managed by our technical director and an equally talented team of e-Commerce specialists managed by our e-Commerce director whose job it is to make the customers’ website journey as smooth as possible. In fact, the term “user experience” is heard in the business almost as much as the word “customer”. Our platforms are all in-house, which allows us to plan our own continuous improvement as well as respond really quickly to emergency situations.”


It’s the customer service team that Packer says is the “beating heart” of the business and accounts for over 50 of the 130 staff. “These are the guys


with the product and supplier knowledge and the reason we have a 90% Trustpilot score. They know that the customer is king and that those relationships matter,” she says.


The company currently gets around 17,000 orders a month through the websites and the sales side of the customer service team. “Our logistics department decides whether the customer is best served with a back-to-back order, delivered direct from our suppliers, or one that comes from our own warehouse. The warehouse is run by a dedicated team which we use to deliver particularly time sensitive products or where it makes more commercial sense to do it that way,” she says. All post- sales enquiries are managed by the customer service team who will liaise with both customer and supplier until delivery is complete. Much of the CMOStores.com trade happens in the evenings, Packer says. “We really are dedicated to helping the customer achieve their goals, whether that’s someone deciding to replace their down-piping for themselves or working with their builder to achieve their dream extension. Self-builders are a big part


www.buildersmerchantsjournal.net December 2020


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