Our MD Paul has always been obsessed about the Customer Experience and here he tells us why:
Back as a teenager I had a troublesome relationship with a very unsupportive bullying father, after yet another bust up, I was kicked out of the family home and ended up living in a bedsit in a (not-so-nice) area of Birmingham.
I knew then my survival and income was down to me and me alone.
Starting my career in Retail in the early 90’s I quickly worked out that if you looked after customers, they would put their trust in you, purchase from you, and tell all their friends and relatives who would then do the same, so it went on.
This led to bonuses, pay rises, promotions and most importantly the ability to pay for bedsit and then some.
Moving to logistics and transport in 1996, I quickly realised that if I could bring the skills I had learnt in retail to this new arena, I would again have job security, what happened was that I became known for the Customer Experience I and my colleagues delivered.
In 2008 I started Proactive Despatch and have always put the Customer Experience as our differentiator.
I knew this would work and now we are nearly in our 15th year and our valued customers appear to like what we do.
Back in 2018 I entered Proactive in the St Helens Chamber of Commerce Awards in the category of “Customer Service Excellence”, we only went and won!!
As a result of that we were then entered into the same category in the awards for the North West Region, we only went and won that too!
Sadly we did not win the National award but to be recognised as the “best in class” for service experience across the whole North West region regardless of sector was a wonderful accolade.
I was delighted about this for two reasons:
It was recognition for our team, that worked tirelessly to literally deliver our promises.
Also, couriers get a bad press (and rightfully so in some cases), we knew we bucked the trend and these awards proved it.
If you work in an industry with a bad reputation, you have an opportunity to buck the trend and restore people’s faith.
The opportunity is there to be had