These are questions we ask of ourselves daily and i think its important for any business to have a full regular assessment of services or products that are supplied.
Our online catalogue is growing daily but is it full of products needed by you guys ?
Our service is the best we can provide on any given day we are always striving to beat EDDs and get orders out faster.
The products we do sell for example sheet materials are the best on the market and we make sure of that. We are constantly on at suppliers for new colours to offer so that we can confidently say we have the largest range to buy online as retail customers not tradesmen.
Our cutting service is the best in the business with to the mm accuracy and faster handling times than most we are providing you with a time efficient and cost effective shortcut to get your DIY completed.
Our made to any size kitchen doors are our best seller right now and the range of colours just keeps growing. We supply great quality doors at very good prices and yes made to the mm of what you need so you can change doors and not the whole kitchen.
The biggie the most humbling question What have we got wrong ? or What could we have done better ?
When being honest there is always something that could have been done better for starters choosing the correct courier company is a massive one. Couriers are an outside force that have so much impact on our business so any failings by them reflect so badly on us. Not so long ago we had a courier company go into liquidation whilst having an obscene amount of our undelivered parcels in their possession, absolute nightmare!! Recently we have had couriers leaving parcels in the most random unacceptable places that we couldn't even justify this and it cost us not only money, but good will and our market place ratings took a hit for this. We had to address it and so we did, all parcels require a proof of delivery and we always input customers numbers in to receive the tracking updates on the day of delivery. We monitor deliveries much closer than we ever have.
Lastly keeping our handling times up to date its a massive one and we had been guilty of not adjusting these for holidays or staff shortages in the past. Being a family run independent business there are 3 of us and that's it so if 1 of us is off work for any reason obviously the baton gets passed and we work in a way that missing 1 person doesn't affect things BUT it does sometimes and that's where we got it wrong. Now we know to either adjust handling times or simply advise customers of a slight delay as now we understand that customers appreciate honesty even if its "your order will be 2 days later than expected" because honesty means they can plan for such a slight delay and just being aware means they aren't chasing us daily for a late parcel. These have been very rare occasions but they have been lessons.
Thank you for reading my little bit of self reflection i hope you see that behind the amazing website, the attention seeking social media posts and the brilliant marketplace listings 😎 we are human beings trying our very best daily to provide a service you can trust and shout about and products that outshine all other DIY retailers ... small expectations really 🤣