Customer Service or Customer Interference?

How is your Customer Service?

Over the years people have many causes for complaint, and thanks, for customer service.  Generally I find myself feeling sorry for the front line staff on the telephone taking the brunt of peoples frustrations with little thanks.  Of course a lot of that might be down to the 100's of questions (I may be exaggerating) you have to answer on your touch tone phone before actually speaking to someone!

In recent dealings with a reputable organisation the staff I speak to are friendly and helpful; but completely at the mercy of the industry or company they work within.  They try to help but the system set up does not allow them the freedom to help unless the computer lets them, for example.....

1. An on line bank call me, on my own phone but can't tell me anything because I fail the second security question.  Does anyone know sort codes and credit limits off the top of their heads whilst doing the weekly shop?  The call was only to check some unusual activity on the account (and no not that i was spending on it!).  I know the transactions and amounts but they wouldn't accept this as proof it was me.......result card blocked, so much for the shop I was half way through.  Sorry to the big supermarket with an orange colouration for the full but abandoned shopping trolley!
2. A large professional body who charge for every step of progression.  However I discover a route open to me which was never mentioned, so I progress along the route then complain about the fees retrospectively.  After getting agreement that a refund was due which took a month, I spent the next month chasing the refund. Turn the tables on that one, if my fees were late I'd be facing late fees, interest, expulsion?  You might want to read an earlier blog on that subject before I divert off on a tangent.

Our Customer Service.......

First rate but I suspect you will all think I am somewhat biased in this area.  It might be the size of the organisation but at R L Surveys we pride ourselves on a fast efficient personal service.  All calls returned within three hours, all quotes responded to within 24 hours (if not quoted), and a general job turn around of 1-2 weeks (unless there is a sudden up turn in the economic climate as we are currently seeing).  This service is something we feel all companies should aspire to, and as a result we have won jobs without being the lowest tenderer.

Courtesy costs nothing, but happy clients are priceless (thank you MasterCard an excellent tag line!)

No doubt there are areas we could improve, and part of the ISO9001:2008 accreditation involves looking at these processes and highlighting areas for improvement.  The problem now is that these processes have been set up by the staff assessing them, so are obviously practically perfect in every way!  Change and improvements occur most rapidly when there are reasons to change.  Whilst I am all for the 'if it ain't broke don't fix it' philosophy, within business if it's not being fixed your competitors are moving ahead of you.

As usual you can follow our progress through Facebook & Twitter, or with a growing number of people on Linkedin.  But as always best place to find us is at www.rlsurveys.co.uk

Land Surveyor Toys - a Must Have

Here we are.

2014.

Its the first Monday back at work after the Christmas and New Year festivities.  Not that we really had a break.  That's one of the disadvantages of running your own business - you never really stop.

There are still phone calls to take, although admittedly far less, emails to reply to and bills to pay.

Our children are now back at school, Mike is working in London on a Monitoring project and I am left to bring you the first intellectual business blog of the year.

So.

Land Surveyors - you have your own toy!!!

C'mon - I bet there isn't one of you who doesn't want this right now!!

What I LOVE about this Playmobil set is that according to the description on Amazon:

Playmobil - Surveyor with equipment

The set consists of a Surveyor with all the equipment that he needs

Includes:

Figure

Tachometer

3 Cones

Did you read that?  ALL the equipment he needs!!  I don't know why we have an office full of big red boxes with Laser Scanners, GPS equipment, poles and tripods, stakes and nails etc etc.

All you need for this profession is 1 surveyor, a tachometer and 3 - yes 3 - cones!  Brilliant.

So then I got to looking on good old Google for other Surveyor toys - of which are there are not many!

How about this Lego creation?

Picture from http://www.mocpages.com/moc.php/354290

Or a GI-Joe Surveyor?

Now what I want to see is Barbie Surveyor!  C'mon - one for the girls!

Happy New Year Everyone.  I hope 2014 is a good one.

Beccy

2014 - Looking towards new pastures?

Looks like we're here to stay after two full calendar years on the Surveying map we are still going strong and looking to the future, but what will the future hold?

2013 - Green shoots of growth in the economy

Surveyors see it coming first in the construction industry, but we also see the end of the tunnel before anyone else does.  This year has seen the industry starting to recover from the dark years of 2010 -2012, I would show a graph of our progress but imagine a straight line increasing equally in X & Y and you're there!!

Clearly there has been improvement, but as a company this is probably masked by the fact that our name is gradually getting out there, so a percentage of the growth is organic growth anyway but far beyond the expectations we had hoped for.  I have to give some credit to this years improvement to our dabblings in the employment market providing the ability to carry out 50% more jobs at any one time than previously, so this proves employing is the right route - we just have to find the right person for the role!

The Milestones

Whoops, didn't see that ditch!

MBS by an open fire

2013 also marks our first full year as an ISO9001 accredited firm, and as a little treat for the first week of 2014 we have our first external audit review - this won't be a case of sleepless nights beforehand preparing because amazingly all of our internal audits are up to date, and we have kept on top of any outstanding issues.  Hopefully the audit will be a time to hone the system, and spot any points for improvement and streamlining!

Scanning the lifeboat station

Early start to Southampton rewarded

Our overall tenders for the year have surpassed the magical 200 figure (I may be high on Christmas cheer, not sure magical is really the best description!), in fact we have almost hit that mark using just our Topographical Surveys.  Invoicing has broken through it's own barrier, now the challenge moving forward will be to consolidate this position, and improve further but this won't be possible without the investment in staff and possibly even more equipment!

Damp day in Rye

This year our staff have covered the miles again going out west as far as Southampton, spreading our wings north into Essex more (no point mentioning south and east giving our location expanding that way would make us very wet or international!!)

A few memories of the year (good & bad), showing the work we have completed scattered around.  But by far our largest investment in time and resources was the 'Mission Impossible' work carried out Trekking across the Swanscombe marshes through reeds, water, brambles, mud flats, quarry faces - never before have we felt our age so much!  Hopefully this job will be tied up early in the new year, and the fruits of our labours will start appearing in the coming years so watch this space!

A little break from normality on the blog, just so some of you can appreciate the fine messes we get ourselves into whilst working.  Both 360 films come from the same site within hours of each other - nothing if not diverse!  Please excuse the filming - not my strong suit, the the ground was a little unstable.  Moments before I was in a ditch!!

2014 - where to now?

Clearly more staff and more kit are high on the agenda.  Laser Scanning is starting to prove to be a growth area but is still very much in its infancy.  By far the largest growth area has been Measured Building Surveys this year, and will no doubt continue into 2014.

There are no plans to move offices into a more suitable location as this would incur unnecessary overheads, so this means our prices will remain consistent into the start of the year.

A second office - still on the horizon, but until we can establish more permanent staff at head office I think that would be running before we can walk.

We also have a number of blogs on the back burner you can look forward too (I say optimistically!), I've currently got these planned:-

• Then & Now, what happens after the Surveyor has gone
• Know Your Boundaries 
• Customer Service or Customer Interference

Fingers crossed I won't have the time to finish them because I'll be too busy on fee earning work but realistically I think they'll trickle through over the coming months.

As always our progress can be followed on Facebook (99 Likes - please lets crack a 100 in 2014!!), Twitter, LinkedIn, and who knows we might even get into Google+ & YouTube.  As always our website is there to contact us, and will be updated throughout the year.

Hope you all have a successful 2014.