Better business practices...
Here are some of the things which most irritate us, and how we avoid them:
| Irritant | How we avoid it |
|---|---|
| Pestering | If you've made an enquiry, we assume that you're adult enough to follow it up yourself if interested. So you won't get streams of emails or phone calls asking you if you've made a decision yet - you won't actually even get one. Just silence, until you contact us again. Please don't misinterpret this as lack of interest - we're just treating you as we like to be treated ourselves. |
| Sales people | One of the things we dread about enquiring about any service is getting a pushy salesperson, who'll do anything to get commission (in Borat in Kazakhstan this memorably included negotiating the number of gypsies that a particular car could kill at different speeds). We don't employ sales staff, and don't offer commission - if you ring us you'll get a Wise Owl doing his or her best to give you honest advice. |
| Aggressive invoicing | You know the scenario - you book a service or buy something, and the invoice arrives by return of post. We fervently believe that you shouldn't have to pay an invoice until after you've received our training - then you've got a chance to dispute payment if you're not happy. Invoicing in advance for goods or services not received is just really bad manners. |
| Automated phone lines | BT must be the worst offenders, but everyone's doing it ... except us. When you call Wise Owl, you'll get a human at the other end of the line between 9.30 and 5pm about 99.9% of the time (in the rare event that all 3 of our lines are busy, you'll get an answering machine). You won't get an automated message system; we don't have one. |
| Waste |
We were fanatically recycling waste long before it became fashionable. We
take all our cardboard to Houghton's in Audenshaw
(they are open to the public every Saturday morning), and our paper, plastic bottles,
tins and cans to the local Tescos. We're rewriting our CRM system to reduce
the amount of paper we send out, and would welcome any suggestions for a more environmentally
friendly binding system. We don't have company cars as a policy, just one shared pool car (Harry the Honda). All of our training centres are deliberately in city centres, to encourage people attending to travel by public transport. We don't, however, have a long printed and bound environmental policy - why waste paper? |
| Junk mail | Whether it arrives by email or by post, junk email is the scourge of modern life. We send out 2-3 single sheet newsletters each year, when we have time, and about 3 informational emails each decade (the last one was about 2003). We also only send these to people who have specifically requested to be kept informed, and we would never, ever, ever give out details to anyone else. Ever. |
We used to have a section of our web site devoted to bad examples of the above, but on a more positive note we've decided to list really good suppliers, who behave as we think we do. So honourable mentions go to:
| Company | Notes |
|---|---|
| Fluidata | Fluidata provide our SDSL lines. They provide exceptional levels of customer service, and we offer this tribute with absolutely no expectation of reward of any kind! |
