The Importance of Being Honest… 17. October 2012 paul.bentham@robinsons-uk.com Behind the Scenes (0) …or ‘Who on Earth are Feefo and Why are they Emailing Me?’ If you’ve placed an order from Robinsons this year, it’s likely you’ll have received an email from a company called Feefo in the days and weeks that followed to ask you to rate the items and the service you received. Of course, I expect many of those who received this email chose not to respond. Let’s be real for a moment, there’s no way we should expect otherwise - we’ve all done that, haven’t we? With that in mind, I extend my sincere thanks to anyone who did take the time to complete the short survey, however you chose to rate us and whatever you said about us, good or bad. Without your honesty, we wouldn’t have the same ability to grade the quality of our service – and we wouldn’t have the chance to put things right if they’ve gone wrong here and there. In the past, I’ve blogged about improving our commitment to transparent behaviour and since then, I’m pleased to say that we’ve been far better able to react to occasional problems and we now have much more confidence in our ability to consistently provide the level of service we expect of ourselves. We’ve also (touch wood) not encountered any instances of severe chat room criticism since the one in June last year that made us change the way we think about this subject. Please let me know if you know different, though! I don’t want you to think that all this makes us complacent, that we can consider the job is done and just concentrate on something else now. Transparency is an all-or-nothing commitment and it’s now something we look at every day, to measure not just the usual performance stuff, like how many orders we sent out but how well we’ve done impressing the people who received them. And so, before I finish this post, I must ensure you know how we are now more honest with you, as a result of our kind Feefo respondents. To quote Jack Byrnes (Robert de Niro’s character) in ‘Meet The Parents’, I need to complete the “circle of trust”. The performance data from the Feefo emails is freely available at any time on the Robinsons Review page on the Feefo website for anyone to view. It’s also used to add details to our Google listing, to indicate that our service levels might make us a better choice for anyone searching for the things we offer. In the old days, Marketing Managers tended to be cautious of such measures because the rating might go down. Today, we accept that we have to ensure that it remains as high as we can be because we’re aware (and we’re also very happy) that everyone can see it. As I type, the proportion of people who rated us as ‘Good’ or ‘Very Good’ is 93% - which is about the same level as M&M Direct, Joe Brown’s and other large mail order companies that most people have heard of. It’s reassuring to know that our customers rate us so highly but of course, we shouldn’t be really happy until it’s trending at 100%. I honestly hope you feel this is as important as we do. Thanks, as ever, for reading, Paul Email me at any time at: paul.bentham@robinsonsequestrian.com Tweet