Customer Street Improvements

One way Customer Street likes to bring a fresh perspective into the business is by getting in people who know nothing about what we do and immerse them in our culture and processes. This week is work experience week. We have two people in our Lancaster office doing work experience.

The first of our visitors is still at school and is getting some exposure to web design and the general office environment. In his time with us he will sit with Designers and Script Writers to get a sense of what is involved in building our Premium Design and Rapid Site products. he will also get the opportunity to spend some time with our Service Reception team to see how customer queries are quickly and effectively dealt with.

Our other visitor is more mature and is on track for a career change. Working with our Development Team he will spend time looking at how our applications support the business process.

We have been working on a tool at CustomerStreet.com to track where how the web sites we build for our customers, our directories; UFindUs, SmileLocal, MoreUK and trade specific directories get found on the major search engines.

Sharon Odom-Fling is a Local Internet Marketing Expert and has written an interesting article on Internet Based Moms about how the web works for local business.

For any business to be found on the web it needs a a presence. A Customer Street Package offers excellent value by giving the business a basic website that is designed to be found by the search engines, listings on UFindUs, SmileLocal, MoreUK and a trade specific directory which also get found by the search engines and a tool so that they can edit their website and add to it. Stuart Forrest my boss wrote about how much traffic we get our customers in his posting “Traffic Aggregation is what Customer Street is about”.

We have all been reading about the credit crunch and impending recession in the media. The stories of doom and gloom talk of an impending financial meltdown. So, what does it really mean to small businesses and how can Customer Street help?

Those of us that have been around to see the previous financial crisis of recent years know that whilst there is a general belt tightening, job losses for some and real personal tragedy for others the reality is that life goes on and people still need services and products. If your toilet gets blocked and it’s a recession you still need a plumber. If your car breaks down despite the credit crunch you will still need to get it fixed.

At CustomerStreet.com the vast majority of our customers are all micro, small and medium sized businesses. We are used to working with new starts and more more established business to get them exposure on the internet at affordable rates. The exposure we get them ensures that when someone is searching for the service or product they offer in their area we get them found. We get them found on the directories UFindUs, SmileLocal, MoreUK and Customer Street Trades.

At Customer Street I get all sorts of Google Alerts and this morning I was notified about a posting at thedailydairy.com which highlights a useful new product. Following the route of this post I got to Luke Anderson at ohgizmo.com who says:

When you were a kid, did your parents ever use a giant phone book as a booster seat? If you lived somewhere like New York, there’s a good chance that a single set of yellow pages was enough to help you reach the table. Of course if you’re from a small town like me, you were better off finding a large dictionary, as it took several phone books to do any good.

It just shows what people are really using their print directories for! If you have a suggestion for how to use Yellow Pages, Phonebooks or Thomson Directories drop me a mail.

Buy the booster seat here

Last week I arrived home from CustomerStreet.com to my apartment block to find that we had had a delivery of about 10 kilos of printed and bound paper in plastic wrappers. This huge block of yellow wrapped ink and paper will sit in our hallway for the next six months until the the slightly smaller block of blue wrapped paper and plastic arrives and the the yellow pile is thrown out. In my town you can see this doorstop directories littering the streets.

It struck me that the printed directories whilst trying to minimise their environmental impact still must have a massive impact. The energy involved in producing the paper, printing, glueing, wrapping and distributing their product must be immense. Crunchy Domestic Goddess in her blog recognises the environmental impact printed directories and the fact that on-line directories are readily available on-line.

Stop Yellow - I couldn’t find any information on the Yellow Pages web site about stopping getting copies of their printed directory. In desperation I rang their order line on 0800 671 444 and they took my details to stop delivery. Interestingly this number can also be used to find our where you can take your old directory for recycling.

It’s been a very busy year here at Customer Street. New product launches, major system changes and continuous improvement mean it is never a good time to go away. Last week I managed to get the week off to see family before Christmas.

Our directories have all been busy in the run up to the festivities with people searching for lots of different services and products in their local area. As we list every UK business on our directories we know that businesses get found through our products. The businesses that have the edge are the one with enhanced listings. I recently heard from our sales people a customer who had signed with us was already getting business in a competitive area just from their directory listing. We also build our customers a basic web site if they want one.

The year for me is finishing on a high note as I am project managing the opening of our new sales office in Huddersfield. We are just getting everything fitted out ready to open in mid January, creating up to 50 new jobs for Huddersfield. This new office will provide excellent facilities for our sales people.

Earlier this week I took part in a four hour meeting at our Customer Street head office to discuss how we can better report on our key business data.

There were several key issues:

• We already have a lot of reports and reporting available to us is it understood?
• We have disparate sources of data. How could it serve the organisation better if we could combine it into usable forms?
• How can we make the business KPI’s understood by all staff?
• Can the reporting focus on measuring KPI’s down to an individual staff level where appropriate?
• How best can we give the Customer Street managers easy access to the information they need to manage in a live format and also by mail/internet?
• How can we use our information to help our staff assess their performance against their KPI’s on a daily basis.
• How do we make a report meaningful for the recipient?