'Please Do Not Hesitate to Contact Me'

Quality of water and quality of service
In an age of unparalleled communication, disatisfied customers can really get their complaint out where it can receive alot of attention. With email, Twitter, Blogs and so on, the ripples in the water can rapidly become a tidal wave of opinion. The recent blog titled as above about a particular water cooler company has been so widely circulated, it has become a major source of embarrassment and unfortunately can unfairly taint all companies in the same industry.

The water cooler industry has been hard-hit by the recession, as customers turned away from bottled water and went back to tap water. The bottle-fed cooler has been designated a 'luxury' and so has been a particular victim of cost-cutting exercises. Mains-fed water coolers have not suffered so much, but new business was slow for most of the year. The positive signs of economic upturn in the UK will generate new business for the industry, but bad publicity lingers for long afterwards. A reputation for good/bad customer service is going to affect business. A good point to make here regarding a key difference between bottle-fed coolers and main-fed systems is: mains-fed coolers require far less maintenance than bottle-fed coolers and of course no deliveries. There is therefore less reliance on the supplier and less pressure on the fewer business operations required, so hopefully less opportunity for customer service to go awry.

Most businesses wouldn't operate without customers and even the best of organisations can get it wrong occassionally. So providing customers with a prompt and effective service is essential. But how to stand out from the crowd? How can a business prove that its customer service is superior? Or even that it has a functioning service that can deal with problems?

At Just Water Now, we have taken a pro-active approach to quality: we do care and do strive to improve every aspect of our services, not just complaints. How? By developing our Quality Management Policy and then putting in place systems that effectively monitor and improve quality throughout all our business operations. The whole process is under constant review to ensure that our operations actually match our policy! Every one of our operations is reported on and additional spot-checks are made from time to time. The two sets of data are then regularly audited and the results discussed at team meetings. We have found that this is the only way forward for improvement to be quantified rather than just guessed at. Customer feedback is essential for our policy to function and maintain our standards. We appreciate all feedback, both positive and negative, and we remain proactive in soliciting opinion on our service through our questionnaires and occassional follow-up phone calls. It's all a delicate balancing act, but essential to keep our customers and staff happy.