Overview

The following article, taken from Inform - HomeForm's internal staff magazine - gives you an insight into to Customer First! initiative.

Without customers, HomeForm would have no business. A new initiative seeks to make sure the group takes care of its biggest asset

The Customer First! Programme started in July as a result of a two-day workshop held with the senior management team and experts from around the business, with the aim of using customer services to differentiate each brand within its market sector.

It is focused initially around the kitchen and bathroom areas. Brian Veale, Customer First! Programme Director, explains: “At present, the Sharps brand is more advanced with regard to process and service levels. The early stages of the programme concentrate on bringing MKD and Dolphin to the level of Sharps, at which point Sharps will be integrated.”

The process started by discussing the identity of HomeForm customers in each brand, established from profiling work that had recently been completed. This information combined demographic, geographic and historical database records to form a clear picture of the customer identity in each brand.

Jonathan Payne, Marketing Director for Dolphin, explains: “By identifying our audience for each brand, we’ve been able to refine our marketing strategy. Going forward our advertising product range and service communication will be tailored around the specific needs of customers in each brand.”

Colleagues from each area have been recruited to form the Ambassador Team. They will be involved in workshops to shape and evaluate the progress of Customer First! and were initially involved in identifying the Customer Journey, to assess at what points the customer and the business interacted.

What can you do to help?

The Customer First! Programme is designed to include every single colleague at HomeForm. The first objective is to deliver the basic levels of service consistently at every stage of the Customer Journey to ensure the group meets customer expectations.

All colleagues can contact their Customer First! Ambassadors via email with ideas for how to improve customer service. The best ideas will be rewarded with Customer First! merchandise.

National Customer Service Week

HomeForm participated in this event for the first time at the beginning of October and the team decided to use this as an opportunity to communicate to colleagues about the Customer First! Programme.

Management Development Manager Malcolm Hewitt says: “Having such a large and diverse workforce provides us with a major communication challenge. Currently we use a mix of post, email, telephone and inform to reach our teams around the country.”

During NCSW the ambassador team journeyed around the UK holding a series of presentations and talks aimed at including further-flung colleagues in an up-to-date picture of the business.

Brian says: “The spotlight on a different stage of the Customer Journey each day that week not only made us all focus on improving things for the obvious customer that buys our goods and services, but also appreciate each other as internal customers and show that we really can make a difference when we work together as a team.

The week was a huge success, with so much activity that we continued events throughout the month of October. Now we must strive to make this organisation a place where we want to work and where others want to come and work with us.”