This is a tale of two very different customer service experiences.

Our story starts with home furnishing retailer, Dunelm…

At the Radcliffe household, we’ve recently had a new kitchen fitted which now includes a rather snazzy breakfast bar (if I do say so myself). Excited to make use of this new feature, we purchased two wooden bar stools from Dunelm.

The stools were a lovely addition to the new kitchen – that is, until one fateful morning when my husband, Matt, went crashing to the floor. The stool seat had completely broken away from the base. After tending to Matt’s injuries, we examined the stool and it was clearly a manufacturing fault. We contacted Dunelm with photographs of the stool and Matt’s cuts and bruises and waited for a reply.

Two long weeks passed with no response. Eventually someone from Dunelm emailed back asking if we could provide photos of the stool and Matt’s injuries. We’d already sent them, but we diligently re-sent and waited. Then we waited, before waiting just a little bit more. Long story short – we were eventually passed from team to team over a period of weeks before eventually receiving a carefully worded letter saying that it’s possible we’d tightened the stool too much (we hadn’t) but that they’d send us a replacement stool and a gift voucher for the inconvenience. The stool took another week to arrive which made it around two months in total.

Our story then shifts to jack of all trades, Marks and Spencers…

In another kitchen related purchase, we bought three indoor plant pots on stands to spice up the décor. The order arrived promptly but one of the pots was smashed on arrival. We contacted M&S that day by Webchat and a new pot was issued immediately. We weren’t asked to supply any photographs, we weren’t subtly (or not so subtly) blamed for the breakage and the replacement pot came a few days later, just like magic.

Now to the moral of the story…

If we look back to the first ever blog post I wrote for this website, I shared a quote from author and entrepreneur, Jonah Sachs, who says: “Your brand is a story unfolding across all customer touch points.” Your customer service experience is such a critical customer touchpoint, yet when it comes to brand building, it is so often overlooked.

The experience you give your customers when interacting with your brand should be a reinforcement of your brand identity. M&S have built their brand on the principles of quality, service and trust – all of these were apparent in our experience of complaining to them. Dunelm’s brand is built on the principles of product choice and value. Their mission statement doesn’t really consider their customer at all and, again, this was very apparent in my experience with them.

So, have Dunelm got it wrong?

Technically, no. My customer service experience was in line with a company that puts product above people, so in that way they’ve stayed true to their brand – however, they are missing a huge trick by not placing the customer at the heart of what they do.

When done right, customer service is a sure-fire way to boost brand loyalty. My recent experiences mean that I’ll certainly be looking at the M&S website before Dunelm in the future and I’m not alone – research suggests that 76% of adults in Britain rate a positive customer experience as more important than the actual product they’re interested in purchasing. If that’s not a reason to think about your customer service, I don’t know what is.

*Sales pitch warning* – staying true to my brand

If this is something you struggle with, the good news is – I can help. When clients approach me wanting to build their brand, we always start by looking at the full package. Starting with your customer and what you want your brand to say to them – we review everything to make sure you’re saying just that. This covers anything from your logo, your website, your customer service experience and more.

So…if you’re reading this and thinking your brand would benefit – let’s grab a brew (real or virtual).

A couple of months ago I decided I needed to know more about TikTok. It was something that I’d been hearing about for a while but I’d been putting off learning anything about it as I thought it might be one of those fads that quickly dies out. But I soon realised it wasn’t going anywhere so, as the curious mind and diligent marketeer that I am, I decided the time had come to educate myself.

Initially, I turned to my family for help and asked a simple question – what do you know about TikTok? I don’t know what I was expecting but it turned out to be less about helpful information and more akin to a social experiment. Here are their answers:

• Nephew, aged 12: “I know absolutely nothing about it and I don’t want to do it.”
• Niece, aged 15: “It’s a social media platform where you can show singing, dancing, comedy and lip sinking through short videos.”
• Husband, aged 37: “Aren’t you too old to be worrying about that?”
• Sister-in-law, aged 40-something: “I like it. I did one with my daughter and goddaughter and thought it was fun. I want to do a challenge but I’d embarrass my kids too much.”
• Mother-in-law, aged 60-something “What’s a TikTok?”

Hmmm. Not quite what I was looking for – so I started my own search. Here’s what I found… 

A couple of weeks ago, I was chatting to a good friend and former colleague about Covid-19 and we inevitably started to feel a little glum. There are so many sad stories in the news at the moment – and understandably so. But surely good things must be happening in the world too?

So, with no prior experience and a lot of extra time on our hands, we decided that starting our own podcast to share good news and positivity with the world was the only logical thing to do. Fast forward a week and Comms Vs. Corona was born. 

I know I’m a bit late to the party with this blog as there have been lots of similar posts recently. However, having worked at home sporadically throughout the majority of my career and having been permanently based at home since I set up Radwood Comms, I wanted to share some of my top tips. If it helps just one person ease into this change it will be worth it.

First up, I just want to say that working from home can be amazing. If you’re doing it for the first time, please don’t feel nervous as there are so many benefits.  That said, it can take some getting used to. When I started doing it every day, I found motivation first thing in a morning quite difficult and often found myself wandering around the house doing household tasks (or watching Netflix – shhh, don’t tell my husband) rather than getting on with the ‘day job’.

I’d love to tell you that there’s a magic trick to help you overcome this wayward feeling but really it’s just good old fashioned self-discipline that’s needed. Below you’ll find some of the things I swear by to bring some much needed structure to my working day. I hope you find them useful and, as always, I’d love to hear what you think.

A short but sweet intro to this blog post as I’ll let the content do the talking. I’ve picked three campaigns that I’m really loving at the moment and shared what I think makes them great. From bouncing boobs to penguin retirement, there’s a lot we can learn from these campaigns…

When we were taught to write at school we are told that everything needs an introduction, a middle and a conclusion. It’s drummed into us from an early age and that message only gets amplified as we make our way through the education system. It’s for this reason that writing for digital can be a challenge – it goes against everything we’ve been taught. But why?

Because, generally speaking, digital users behave differently. They want to scan digital content quickly for the information they need. Their main goal is to get in and out as quickly as possible – not read pages of information (even if they are beautifully crafted). This can sometimes feel counterintuitive – particularly if you’re used to the ‘traditional’ way of writing and I feel you – as an English Literature grad it took me years to shake the intro/ conclusion habit.

 I’ve put together my top tips for writing for digital as making just a few quick changes can really make a difference to your content.

Those of you who have visited the Radwood Communications office before might be a bit confused by the title of this blog post. Full disclosure to those who haven’t been… there’s only two of us (four if you count the cats). And we’re married. So it might seem a little strange I’m talking about office culture.

But, having worked in organisations from two to ten thousand, I can tell you that office culture exists no matter how many people work there. And it’s so important to define your culture early as it will shape how you work, who you hire and so much more.

In this blog post, I’ll share a tongue-in-cheek look at the culture at Radwood HQ. I’m not suggesting that you adopt these five ‘rules’ as they absolutely won’t work for everyone, but they should hopefully tell you a little bit more about me and how I work.

If you are interested in finding out more about shaping an office culture, I’d recommend having a read of Charles Handy’s ‘Understanding Organisations’. It’s available here on Amazon and is an oldie but a goodie! If you have any recommendations for further reading on the subject, I’d love to hear from you. It’s a topic that fascinates me. You can comment below.

Before I started working in communications, if you’d have asked me what a ‘brand’ was, I’d probably have said a logo. I could tell you who I thought did branding well but I would not have been able to tell you why. I also didn’t really appreciate the value of a brand – it was just a pretty logo and some colours, right? You need one of those to do business.

I quickly found out this was not the case when I worked on a rebranding project early in my career. I learnt from the awesome branding company we were working with that a brand is so much more than just a logo. When done well, it’s numerous different elements that work together harmoniously to tell the world who you are. It speaks to your ideal customer and shows them you’re right for them. It can even attract the right employees to come work for you (and, importantly, repel the wrong ones – we’ve all been there).

But what are these mysterious elements of which I speak? To answer this question, I thought I’d share some of my favourite branding quotes from some very clever people that sum up brand far more succinctly than I ever could. Why re-invent the wheel right? I wouldn’t want to disappoint though, so I have added in a bit of a summary as to why I’ve included each quote and what we can learn from it. If you’re in the mood for a shorter read you can skip to the bottom for the key takeaways.