G'day Mates

I am just back from 10 days in Australia. (One and a half months on the job, and a holiday already!) A whirlwind trip, but well worth it. I did not visit some of the big cities like Sydney but one thing I noticed on the trip is that the level of customer service was not what I see in Victoria or Vancouver Island. There was a time 5 years or so ago when I really noticed that, in general, the standard for customer service in the US was higher than here. That is no longer the case. In Australia, I noticed it in retail stores and in restaurants (in restaurants the servers receive a higher wage than in Canada, but little or no tips). I wonder why that is? Is it because customers do not expect or demand that level of service in Australia? There may be an opportunity here.

We send a furniture survey questionnaire out with all of our furniture orders. We ask specific questions about order process, the installation, the timeliness and the over all value. The recent results showed a slight decline after many months of improvements. We take customer surveys very seriously and have specific actions to improve results. Furniture sales are often more complicated than our office products sales and we have specific processes in place to achieve the results that our customers expect (we are ISO 900 certified).

In order to qualify for federal government contracts over a certain dollar threshold, Monk Office is required to meet certain Employment Equity standards. This is a laborious process, typical government red tape and, if we don’t comply, we have to walk away from significant government business. We bit the bullet and undertook this six month project. It has required 100’s of hours of staff time as well as surveys and interviews. The draft results look promising. The report will be another 3 months.

I learned a new song in Australia. “My home among the gum trees”. It has actions, two hands. The bus driver showed it to us on route from Alice Springs to Uluru (the road is very straight and flat).