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Bedroom BlindsTrustpilot 5 Stars - What Our Customers Say | 247 blog
News
Posted 07/10/2021
So, a bit little about us, 247 blinds, we're a small Yorkshire-based company, that helped revolutionise blind ordering in the early 2000s. Our made to measure service has always been online, with aims to make decorating your windows easy as pie. Free samples, a friendly customer care team, which we refuse to move out of our West-Yorkshire hometown, and an amazing team of developers and marketers work around the clock to bring you the best and brightest blinds to your fingertips. The trusted experts at all things blinds and curtains, our brand has grown each year, alongside our eclectic consumer base.
Though we had the “If it ain't broke don't fix it” attitude found in most northerners, during the pandemic of 2020 we saw a massive increase of buyers going online, some for the first time. As such we found our services and products under the microscope more than ever, and it wasn't all good news. Admittedly we found ourselves struggling to meet demand, and found that our usual high standards faltered.
So we decided to gut our old systems, processes and attitudes, ensuring that our amazing UK customers would see our brand as trustworthy, helpful and genuinely happy to help. We, like many companies, use an independent review collector — Trustpilot. Using this tool as a measurable indication of how our customers felt about our brand, we then started making changes to be the best we possibly can.
“Lockdown in 2020 forced 247 blinds to change our methodology. Putting ourselves in our customer's shoes, providing empathetic responses & meeting individual needs became the priority over arguing to save a buck. Consumers can no longer be thought of as a number on a chart. They are your neighbour, your relative, and your friends, and should be treated as such.” — Glenn Parkin, Ecommerce Manager
Changing for the better during a world-wide pandemic.
During 2020 as an online retailer, we faced a few interesting challenges. We saw the manufacturing industry grind to a halt during April, with manufacturing as a whole struggle as everyone got used to social distancing and this brand-new viral threat. We then faced issues importing fabrics and components from Turkey, Israel, China, Sweden, and even Ireland and parts of the UK. Various orders became delayed more and more, with manufacturers unable to provide updates and frustration felt all around. Orders that should tax a max few months (for example made to measure Shutters), faced delays of over 9+ months, and whole countries closed their borders.
On top of supply issues, some team members struggled adjusting to home working, especially those in rural areas where the internet is a mythical being where you'd more likely be able to train sheep to juggle* than get wifi.
*no sheep were harmed in the making of this blog.
There was a huge DIY boom in 2020 — with people confined to their homes, it seems all at once the nation collectively decided to re-decorate. The home and garden sector, especially DIY sub-sectors, saw demand soar. On average there was a 50% increase in the homeware industry(ⁱ), and we saw our own demand rise by over 39% May 2020 vs the previous month of April 2020.
Though this was fantastic news, it also meant we really did find it difficult to cope to meet that surge in demand. However, so did every other retailer...
“We modernised how we worked, bringing in new team structures, increased and improved support for our agents, and most importantly scrapped archaic processes. All of this created an immediate and positive U-turn in the feedback we were getting from our customers. We also saw improvements with our staffs' wellbeing and overall performance.” — Sarah Cairns, Head of Customer Care.
Due to our own shortcomings we dropped to 4.5 stars and became dangerously close to plummeting even more into the review abyss. However, small companies like ours have some benefits in that we can act quickly.
So we started by bringing in experts, then got to work changing our company ethos and processes. By effectively kicking the old processes into to the dust, introducing new systems and restructuring every level in the business, meant we were more or less starting from scratch. A fresh start and a few new pairs of eyes on our inner workings meant new training schemes for current team members, better packages for choosing to join and stay with our blindingly refreshed company, and dragging everything else into 2021. Not only did we renew the old, we also expanded our numbers to meet the DIY-craze sweeping the nation. This saw a 50% increase in customer services agents, a 75% increase in our IT department, 40% increase in our account team and much more.
Creating a positive work environment became a huge part of our aims; with employee well-being coming to the forefront of our minds; we improved pay, increased paid break times, added more holidays and added more social events. There are now support packages in place to safeguard mental health; and gone are the older, KPI-obsessed goals.
As we did this before other retailers realised what was happening, we were able to turn-around the downward review trend we saw in May and June, and quickly. By September 2020 we saw huge improvements on negative reviews — and the climb back to 5 stars started.
Back to five star - The best in the industry
We hit 5 stars again in September 2021 — Over a year since we resolved to fix our ways. Though that may seem slow-going, we're the 1st company in the 'big-four' that have hit this mark; this includes other names such as Blinds2go, Blindsdirect and Makemyblinds.
As such, Trustpilot themselves sent us a lovely surprise shortly after we hit the mark — Some amazing buns that were quickly devoured amongst the teams. We're so pleased to have hit 5 stars, and we hope we can continue to provide the best standards possible. We don't intend to be anything other than amazing!
Some of our latest reviews
We are so proud of how far we come in a few short months. U-turning our customers perceptions in 2020, we've seen positive responses each month, and we've managed to climb all the way back to 5 stars — The best in our industry for a company our size. Easily beating our competition, we're not slowing down, and we will never go back to how we were.
